Seeing such a gap, it would only be human to blame the technology. After all, 94%* of CEOs say they’ll keep investing even if it doesn’t pay off. But your customers don’t know where the blame lies especially when their experience is inauthentic and disconnected. And that’s eroding trust.
This isn’t theoretical. When Air Canada’s AI agent told a customer they could claim a refund, then the company said they couldn’t, the customer sued. The court ruled the company accountable. The lesson wasn’t “never use AI.” It was “you needed human judgment involved”.
Here’s the good news: the trust problem is fixable.
Here’s the bad news: you can’t blame the technology. You have to lead it. As Air Canada shows, the breakdown happened because human judgment was missing altogether. And it’s not enough to simply place a ‘human in the loop’ anymore, you need humans to be elevating the output. They bring critical thinking, craft, and strategic insight that transforms AI-generated work.
Getting it right means designing your AI application with human oversight from the start, that’s what prevents trust erosion and builds credibility.
It’s not about having less AI. It’s about having smarter AI, the kind that’s designed with human judgment woven in from the start.
When you combine AI execution with human judgment, you earn buyer trust. And trust accelerates everything: decisions, deals, relationships.
That’s the combination that wins.
Your teams need to trust AI before your buyers will and right now, 35% of your people are openly asking “Is my job safe?” And 50%* of CEOs believe their job depends on getting AI strategy right. This is where it’s important to be transparent with your teams: “Here’s what changes in your role, here’s what stays, here’s how we support you.”
Here are four core behaviours to shift mindsets internally:
Trailblazer organizations upskill 70% of their workforce and allocate 60% of AI budget to learning. They’re the ones seeing real competitive advantage.
That’s where OLIVER comes in. By embedding human elevators inside your organization, building the mindset shift and upskilling infrastructure that turns AI investment into sustainable advantage.
In the next five years, agents will execute most of your marketing strategy, creative, media and optimization.
Right now, your consumers research you through case studies and conversations.
In the (almost immediate) future, they’ll ask an AI agent about you before talking to a human. That agent will fact-check your promises, evaluate your delivery, measure your environmental impact and assess your reliability, in seconds.
What that AI agent says about you will matter more than your website.
So what builds trust? Three things:
Where you show up signals who you are, 60% of B2B buyers trust you more when they see you in verified environments. But consistency, reliability, and honesty, wherever you show up, is what actually matters.
And that’s exactly how OLIVER builds trust, by amplifying creative thinking with AI rather than replacing it, so distinctive work performs at scale without losing impact.
Now you’re building trust internally and proving it externally. But how do you know it’s actually working? Start by measuring what matters.
Start by separating trust from trustworthiness. Trust is what customers feel. Trustworthiness is what you build and measure. You can’t control feelings, but you can control delivery.
Track these four pillars across your buyer journey:
Measure where confidence drops: first demo, legal review, implementation? That’s your trust gap. Then measure outcomes: NPS (the gold standard for trust in B2B), shorter cycles, higher close rates, faster implementation, lower churn, referral rates or team retention.
Organizations making trust a board KPI are three times more likely to report stronger profits.
The CMOs who win over the next five years are the ones who architect trust both inside and out: empowered teams, measurable proof, transparent process, humans deployed where trust gets built
The speed everyone’s chasing isn’t only automation. It’s trust.
Ready to architect trust into your transformation? Let’s talk about embedding it into your operating system.
OLIVER puts the power of generative AI inside the world’s leading brands – inside their brand, cloud, and operating model – so speed, capability, and competitive advantage accrue to them. We combine human talent with outstanding technology to deliver AI-enabled marketing that’s faster, better, and more trusted. Part of Brandtech Group—rated most innovative GenAI marketing company by Fast Company three years running.
*Insights from: https://commercial.ft.com/campaigns/ft-ipa-trust-research-download/