Trustpilot: Your Brand Is Invisible to AI, And Reviews Are the Fix

How customer feedback has quietly become the most powerful trust signal in the age of AI search 

CX Today's Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Alicia Skubick, Chief Customer Officer at Trustpilot, to unpack the platform's latest research. 

With AI now shaping how consumers discover and evaluate brands before they ever land on a website, the rules of visibility have changed. This is the conversation that makes the business case for trust in real, measurable terms. 

Trustpilot's latest 'What AI Says About You' report analyzed over 800,000 AI responses, and the findings are hard to ignore. Brands without a Trustpilot profile appear in just 1% of AI-generated answers. Those that actively collect and respond to reviews? 75.3%. Alicia breaks down what that means for CX teams on the ground. 

AI behaves like a cautious consumer – it checks ratings, reads review distributions, and flags missing profiles as red flags, just like your most sceptical customer would 

Responding beats collecting – brands that respond to reviews (not just gather them) see citation rates jump from 53% to 75%. Generic replies don't cut it; specificity is what AI crawlers reward 

The NPS question – Alicia makes the case that open-platform review systems are replacing NPS for many businesses, delivering the same real-time insight with the added bonus of AI visibility 

Speed to value is real – setting up a profile and inviting customers can shift visibility from near-zero to 53% in weeks, not months, with AI-driven customers worth 4.4x more on average 

Whether you're a CX leader mapping new customer journeys or an ops manager stretched thin, this one's worth your 15 minutes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello and welcome to CX Today. I'm Reese Fisher, Associate Editor, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Alicia Skubick, the Chief Customer Officer at Trustpilot. Alicia, thanks for joining me. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Great, thank you. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Yeah, yeah. I know we had a little chat just off camera before, but yeah, I'm really looking forward to this chat. Trustpilot is a it's a really interesting brand, I think, in the CX space that perhaps we don't we don't talk about as much as we should. So yeah, looking forward to picking your brain. Uh I know we're going to be kind of mainly talking about some recent research you guys brought out, which had some, I thought some really interesting findings around, I guess, the relationship between AI tools and branding right now and how that can be, or probably is in fact, impacting CX and customer service. Yeah. I thought perhaps one finding that really stood out was that AI tools actually flag a missing trust pilot profile as a red flag for consumers, you know. I guess for CX leaders who've perhaps considered reviews as a marketing metric, how should they maybe reframe that thinking, you know, and perhaps review the strategies when it comes to this?

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Well, yeah, and I think it's um it even before AI tools, it's such a helpful and useful tool to really get under the skin of what's happening with your customers in real time. Um, so that's always been a thing. And I I actually was a um customer of Trustpilot for two different companies before I joined Trustpilot. So I know firsthand how, you know, it's it is a marketing tool and it's amazing and it builds trust and it does those things, but it is incredible in terms of getting customer insights and really deeply understanding key trends and impacts. But I think like CX leaders should really think about it in terms of um how it helps, especially in this AI world, helps their customers and consumers and prospects to really think about um that journey in AI. Um, and it's been true for years, even in the world of SEO and still remains true in both the world of SEO and AI search. Um, but it becomes business critical in that journey, that end-to-end customer journey and showing up and being visible. Um, you know, AI models rely on um the social proof and third-party reviews in the same way that humans do. So they're looking at that, reviewing the content and the insights to really just understand is this business trustworthy? Um, and so I think as a CX leader, you want to think about that full journey and how how it's showing up to consumers.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah, on the trust point there, I know within the report I think it defines trust as a quantifiable high-value asset now. Obviously, that that's a that's a really, really fascinating way to look at it. I guess, particularly in an industry that's always maybe struggled to put a number on CX investment. How do you think a brand actually starts measuring trust in those terms and kind of can make that internal case for it?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Well, yeah, I mean, trust is so interesting. I mean, I'm you know obsessed with it, obviously working for Trustpilot, but as a marketer, I always have been, and as a CX leader. Um, when you think about what are like the fundamentals of trust, um, and I think about those in terms of um a few things. It's it's really kind of your reliability, your transparency, um, and the respect in which you treat your customers. Um, and I think when you think about the what trust pilot enables businesses to do, that's huge. And then you translate that into um things that have always been true. So if you trust a business, you're more likely to spend money with them. It gives you pricing power. You'll probably pay more for a business you trust more. There's advocacy. So I, you know, um, when you think about the platform, this is an advocacy tool on steroids in terms of like talking about um the great experience or the bad experience that you had. But also, you know, again, with trust, you also tell friends and family who would you trust. Um, and then it creates that loyalty. And so those are financial metrics that I think are really, really um important for CX leaders to think about as they measure. And I think then, you know, also looking at um how you measure that trust. So I think when you think about AI citations, this is about AIs um really looking at who's trustworthy. And so you can really kind of measure how you're showing up and whether your business is appearing and is trustworthy based on the feedback that they're getting. So you the the way that trustpilot is cited, and and I think if you look through all of the different um answer engines, whether that's Gemini or Claude or Chat GPT, we show up in the top five. And so um, if if you are showing up and you are trustworthy, you have reviews and you're responding at scale, that gives you a measure of the trust that you um are conveying to your customers and the trust you have in your business.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And your point there around kind of the importance of AI search, now I think it's gone past the importance, it's just it's a must-have. Now, isn't that you have to be built for it? And I think again, the research hammered that home. I think it was 58% of consumers already using AI tools to discover products and services.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

That's right. I mean, it's incredible. It's the highest, sorry, I think I've interrupted you, the highest adoption we've seen in the technology. If you look at like two years ago, it was at 25%. Um, the the growth is incredible and it continues.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, and I was just going to say, kind of with that in mind, where does do you think customer experience fit in that new path to purchase? You know, are we talking about I guess CX almost happening before a customer even lands on your site now?

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the things we um talk to with um both prospects and customers is um the world is changing, but it's also still the same. So um, you know, how um when I think about a business, I always think about it end-to-end. And I think about what is the touch points that you have. Um, if you have retail locations, that is a um interaction with the brand. If you see a billboard, that's the interaction. If you read about it in the press. So you all of these things are are really kind of touch points. And I think this is just a new additional touch point. And as the world moves into agentic, of course, that will also kind of shift and change. But I it's really important that um as a CX leader, you're really monitoring how am I showing up? How is our business getting sighted? Um, and what is that journey in this new agentic world? So I would imagine most CX leaders are mapping those journeys already. This is an additional journey to be adding into that and really ensuring that that's the case. And then I think um slightly on a like a little off topic, but just one that's really top of mind for me, is then really also looking at those, um, as we introduce most businesses are introducing agents of some kind, either it's in support or sales, really ensuring that that journey is really tight, um, that the content on your website is really um, we talk about the three R's, um, which is uh recency, relevance, and ranking, and that you are really thinking about the content that you're providing that allows those engines to really pull that data. And like the trust pilot research does a great job of kind of providing um content that's specific. Um, it's fresh with the reviews, and it also has like high domain authority. So I think those are also really fundamental as well.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Yeah, yeah, you touched on the the kind of the ubiquitous almost nature of these AI agent implementations now. And I thought there was another start which kind of uh set off the AI agent alarm in my brain was around um brands that respond to reviews rather than just collect them. Their citation rates climb, I think, 53% to 75%. And obviously that seems to me like a very almost easy AI use case there in terms of using AI for those responses. I guess what do you think? I suppose, first of all, what do you think about that assumption I'm making? And what do you think the message is for customer service teams who are really owning that that response function?

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Yeah, I mean, it's it's always been the case that um in all of the research we've done over the years, and so again, the AI behaves a lot like humans in terms of do I trust this business? Do I, how are they responding to reviews? We've always had research that told us that companies look at what's their rating, but it doesn't need to be perfect, it doesn't need to be a five. Um they want to understand um how did that what is that rating made up of? So they'll look at the the kind of distribution and go into the detail. AI summaries can help with that in terms of kind of surfacing up things to go deeper on. But it's what's really interesting is um a bad review isn't necessarily something that stops somebody from buying, especially on the way that the company responds. So if a company is um responding to all of their reviews um and with the negative ones really taking action and you know, rather than a vague response really coming in, getting into detail and clearly caring about their customer, that is actually something that for both humans and AIs goes a long way. So I think it's really making sure that as you respond, that it's not generic, um, that it's really reflecting your brand and the qualities of your business and kind of building up that trust. So you can certainly use AI. We have an AI, you know, responses tool. So you can use it to help craft, and that can help, especially if you're applying at scale, at volume. But the final send is is from a human, and we recommend that humans review the content, make it their own, um, to really ensure that you've got the really kind of quality responses because the AI crawlers look for that specificity in those responses.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Yeah, I guess, and this is very much a personal tangent, I suppose. But when you talk there about kind of the negative reviews not being the BLN or when when me and my wife are looking at things, she is very much she looks for the negative one straight away. Even if perhaps the overall score is a four or five, it's got a few really bad ones. She goes straight to those. So I guess as you were explaining there, if you're a brand who has a handful of those bad reviews, if they take in the time to go in, respond to them, try and explain them, that's going to make a big difference to accept people like my wife, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

It's it's it's hugely important. And like we said, it also like helps the responses help with the citations. And I think one of the things we've always said to be true is um, you know, some businesses are afraid to get started on a platform like Trustpilot because they are afraid of the bad reviews. And there's like we always talk about the bad review being the start of a better business because these are conversations that are happening, whether you're they're on the platform or not. And you knowing about them helps you to improve the issues, see those trends, respond to customers in real time. Um, and and again, if you're not on trustpilot, you're not getting surfaced up by the the AI search engines. Um, so it's it's it's actually can be a really powerful tool for a business. Um, those bad reviews if they get them.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Yeah. Again, I'm going on another personal tangent, but it reminds me of you see this trend in podcasts, especially, they'll say at the end, oh, leave us a five-star review once. Well, no, just review us, tell us what you think. And then, like you said, you can you can work on that feedback then rather than just giving five for five's sake, it's not really telling you anything there.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Yeah, I I absolutely agree. Um, you know, it's it's hugely important to be to get that real raw, unbiased feedback. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I guess just on the final question here, Alicia, I was just wondering, you know, if say for a CX or an ops leader who's watching this, who's thinking, you know, so we're we're already a little stretched thin when it comes to a market or it comes to a CX, you know, what's the one thing do you think they should be really focusing on based on your experience and based on the research?

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Well, I think like, you know, um, you know, just getting started with a profile and collecting reviews, like we said, um, it triggers like massive visibility rewards. And that's going to lead to ROI. You know, we what we talked about was like it'll um kind of move you from like 1% to invisible brands to 553.5%. I mean, that's unbelievable. And that is for a not a huge amount of work. That is setting up your profile and inviting your customers. It isn't like a huge, huge um element of working that obviously responding like we talked about it. And I think it's really important that these benefits kick in really quickly. And so it doesn't take months, it can take weeks. Um, and I think that's very powerful. And I think again, one of the stats that we had, um, when you look at customers um who come in through or as our AI search, they're usually worth about 4.4 times more. So again, you've got multiplier effects in this, which is which is huge. The other thing that I think is maybe controversial, but I think is a really important point. Um is, you know, when you think about MPS, if you're running MPS as a as a business, I think think about the costs of how you're running it and also the the time spent there. A lot of businesses um are moving away from MPS to open platform review systems because it's providing the same service, but then giving you that added boost of the AI visibility at the same time. So you're getting this kind of like like multiplier effect, as I mentioned before, um, you know, and you're still getting that real-time rich data to really improve your business. So I think, you know, think about where you're spending your time understanding customer insights as well and how you can kind of boost that in multiple ways.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Yeah, yeah. No, it makes a great deal of sense. Um, yeah, thanks, Alicia. Really, really enjoyed this. Like I said at the jump, I think Trustpilot is almost quite a unique brand in the space. And I think, particularly now with hearing this, there's this lack of trust a lot of times, partly because of AI. So I think, yeah, it's that there's never been a more important time in many ways to kind of refocus on how your organization is proven its trustworthiness. And obviously, trustpilot's a great way to do that.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Thank you. And I think um just on the trust point, you know, I think um trust is the only thing we do. We are obsessed with trust. Um our vision is to be the universal symbol of trust. And so that's kind of every single day we're looking at and safeguarding the platform and ensuring that we are creating like those amazing consumer experiences, helping them make the right choices and helping businesses like build that trust, um, grow and improve their businesses. So it's it's it's at the heart of what we do.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Yeah, I think that's uh yeah, a perfect place to end things. Uh, thanks again, Alicia. Really enjoyed the chat. And I also wanted to just quickly thank our audience as well for tuning in. I'm sure they enjoyed it as much as I did. And if they did, please do like and subscribe to the channel and head on over to cxtoday.com for more stories like this. Until next time, thanks for watching.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Thank you.