Most organisations focus on what customers do, the steps they take, the journeys they complete and the feedback scores they leave behind. But trust isn’t built in process or journey steps. It’s built in how well the experience is delivered and how that experience makes customers feel, across each step.
When you design with that in mind, it changes how and what you prioritise, measure and implement next.
Most organisations treat trust as something customers extend if nothing goes wrong. But trust isn’t given. It’s earned. It’s designed.
The Harvard Business Review research tells us that “emotionally connected” customers deliver 52% greater lifetime value than merely “highly satisfied” ones. They buy more, stay longer, and recommend more often. The difference between connected and satisfied is trust.
If you’re not intentionally designing for trust, you’re leaving loyalty, revenue and brand reputation on the table.
At Engine, we measure and design for trust. Working together with our clients, we take big-picture thinking to design experiences that work in real life, and build the trust that keeps customers coming back.
Here are five ways to design customer experiences that build trust.
Ask yourself, ‘How do we want our customers to feel?’. This key question ensures you play a role that goes far beyond what the delivery teams are doing and how you want your customers to behave. Reassurance or belonging, excitement or desire, gratitude or pride… defining the target emotions you want to evoke sharpens design intent and guides the decisions that follow.
Emotion-led design starts with understanding the journey, both functionally (steps, process) and emotionally (desired customer feeling). Mapping the journey this way reveals the highs and lows in feelings, exposing opportunities to amplify trust or soften frustration more meaningfully. Showing that you’re sticking with your customers during the process is a powerful way to make sure they reciprocate that loyalty in the future.
3. Design the moments that make the difference
Focus on the moments that truly matter to cement them in memory. The Peak-End rule (theorised by Daniel Kahneman) shows that people judge experiences by their emotional high or low, and how they end. So it’s important to prioritise these peaks and endings to create stories worth remembering.
4. Collaborate with real people
Emotion-led design requires empathy and a true understanding of the impact your work creates. Seek customers as co-creators. Make them a part of your process. And yes, this absolutely includes those who are perhaps more peripheral to what you’re doing, because that inclusion uncovers the broadest spectrum of responses to work with. Develop emotion-led personas – archetypes that represent your customers – illustrated by feelings, fears and motivations; keeping emotional needs front and centre throughout design. It’s about finding the needs, then meeting them.
5. Collaborate with real people
Capturing trust as a metric that truly matters has long been one of our drivers here at Engine. We’re advocates for moving beyond traditional metrics, and we partner with Adoreboard – a predictive insights platform – to track how your customers truly feel and how much they trust you. The actionable insights tell you where to focus your effort, where to invest in the experience, and where trust is directly connected to your bottom line. We help you build the business case that champions customer experience and trust.
Start designing for trust
When you design for how people feel, not just what they do, you create experiences that earn trust. And trust drives loyalty, retention and growth.
In an age of products and services looking the same, feelings make all the difference. Ready to make trust your differentiator? Get in touch.