Salesforce has named Brad Arkin as its new Chief Trust Officer, as the CRM leader aims to tackle customer misgivings in an AI-first world.
As the former Chief Security and Trust Officer at Cisco, Arkin may have lost a word from his job title, but his new position is significant in the context of Salesforce’s AI ambitions.
Having accrued more than 20 years of experience in product and enterprise security, Arkin will tackle one of the biggest issues hampering the implementation of AI – the trust gap.
Arkin emphasized the importance of building a trusted relationship with customers when discussing his new role.
"Every day, our global customer base counts on Salesforce to deliver trusted AI so they can be successful," he said.
As the AI revolution advances, we need to continuously earn the trust of our customers, employees, and stakeholders by raising the bar for data security, transparency, privacy, and performance. That’s the mission. And I can’t wait to get started.
But what is the trust gap? And how will Arkin look to bridge it?
Building Trust
It may sound like something that a pretentious couple would say when announcing their mutual decision to break up – 'A trust gap had opened up in our relationship, and we just couldn’t bridge it' – but trust gaps are a significantly growing concern in the CX space.
In short, the trust gap refers to customer concerns about the ethical use of AI – particularly since the launch of generative AI.
Salesforce itself recently released a report highlighting that consumers were less enamored with AI than they had been in the past, with almost three-quarters of customers admitting to being concerned about how companies will be deploying AI.
