Customer Experience University - Winning Loyalty & Engagement One Customer at a Time
Sep 4, 2026 · 10 min · 8 segments
To get the magic, customers have to let AI know almost everything — and trust in AI is falling, not rising. In this episode, Joseph Michelli makes the case that trust is the real currency of the AI…
Joseph MichelliHost
and your calendar and your medical history and the full contents of your last hundred conversations.
That more or less is the deal we're now asking customers to make with artificial intelligence.
Because to get the magic, the assistant that anticipates, the service that already knows the context, the recommendation that feels almost telepathic, a customer has to let the machine know an extraordinary amount about their life.
And that's exactly why it puts the oldest currency in all of commerce under more pressure than it's ever been.
I've spent nearly four decades working inside organizations that live or die on trust.
Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, Mercedes-Benz, Airbnb, Zappos, Amazon One Medical, just to name a few.
And I've come to believe that in the AI era, trust stops being some soft brand value and becomes the hardest, most defensible asset a company owns.
Because when every competitor has the same powerful models, the question is no longer, can your AI do impressive things with customer data? Everyone's can.
The real question is, do your customers trust you with knowing them that intimately? I call that the trust dividend, the durable advantage that flows to the brands customers feel safe handing their lives to.
Let me give you the numbers because this isn't a vibe, it's a measurable shift.
Edelman's Trust Barometer, which has tracked global trust for more than 20 years, found that trust in artificial intelligence companies fell from 61% to 53% over a recent five-year stretch.
And in some markets, including the United States, considerably lower than that.
At the very moment companies are racing to put AI in the center of customer relationships, public trust in the technology is declining.
We're building the most data hungry customer experience in history on a foundation of eroding confidence.
Cisco found that roughly one in three consumers are what they call privacy actives, people who have already switched companies over their data practices.
And about 75% won't buy from an organization they don't trust to protect their data.
and your calendar and your medical history and the full contents of your last hundred conversations.
That more or less is the deal we're now asking customers to make with artificial intelligence.
Because to get the magic, the assistant that anticipates, the service that already knows the context, the recommendation that feels almost telepathic, a customer has to let the machine know an extraordinary amount about their life.
And that's exactly why it puts the oldest currency in all of commerce under more pressure than it's ever been.
I've spent nearly four decades working inside organizations that live or die on trust.
Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, Mercedes-Benz, Airbnb, Zappos, Amazon One Medical, just to name a few.
And I've come to believe that in the AI era, trust stops being some soft brand value and becomes the hardest, most defensible asset a company owns.
Because when every competitor has the same powerful models, the question is no longer, can your AI do impressive things with customer data? Everyone's can.
The real question is, do your customers trust you with knowing them that intimately? I call that the trust dividend, the durable advantage that flows to the brands customers feel safe handing their lives to.
Let me give you the numbers because this isn't a vibe, it's a measurable shift.
Edelman's Trust Barometer, which has tracked global trust for more than 20 years, found that trust in artificial intelligence companies fell from 61% to 53% over a recent five-year stretch.
And in some markets, including the United States, considerably lower than that.
At the very moment companies are racing to put AI in the center of customer relationships, public trust in the technology is declining.
We're building the most data hungry customer experience in history on a foundation of eroding confidence.
Cisco found that roughly one in three consumers are what they call privacy actives, people who have already switched companies over their data practices.
And about 75% won't buy from an organization they don't trust to protect their data.
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