Many branding and marketing books will try to tell you that there’s some secret formula to making your market feel confident in your company’s ability to deliver, but it’s really rather straight-forward.

To win confidence, you simply have to consistently deliver on what ever promise your company or brand makes. Whatever that promise is, you have to consistently be there.

A lot of companies make a lot of plans around a promise – whether it’s Domino’s promise to deliver your pizza 30 minutes or else it is free or J. Crew’s absolutely no-hassle return policy – if you don’t deliver on that promise, it’s going to cost you.

And even with customer service, as a society we have become more demanding in the quality that we expect and the minimum levels of customer service we’re willing to accept. And, as the world gets smaller with Internet communications, companies need to make pure craftsmanship of customer service.

But, it all starts with being consistent.