Ross Hancock, Principal Product Manager at Trustpilot explains how AI is transforming the way businesses can utilise their online customer review data.
As the world's largest independent customer feedback platform, Trustpilot continues to grow at a cracking pace. With over 300 million active reviews worldwide, our platform has become an essential tool for both businesses and consumers across all industries and geographies. We recently hosted a webinar with Trustpilot — 'Use AI to analyse reviews, understand your customers and benchmark against competitors' which you can watch in full if you want to learn how AI is being used in the purchasing journey for retail and travel and hospitality brands, as well as how to use your online review data to benchmark against competitors. But, in this blog, we'll be looking at things I specifically discussed in the webinar:
The origin of Trustpilot is actually quite humble - it all began with a washing machine. In 2007, our founder Peter was visiting his family home when his mum asked for advice about purchasing a washing machine online from an unfamiliar business. This sparked the realisation that there was a critical need for a platform where real users could provide trustworthy feedback on businesses, helping consumers make informed decisions and allowing reputable businesses to connect with potential customers. Listen to the story...
For this system to work effectively, the data must be trustworthy. At Trustpilot, we invest heavily in ensuring our content comes from people sharing genuine experiences. This involves both human moderation and sophisticated technologies that detect reviews that go against our terms of use.
"We look at a variety of different signals to ensure trustworthiness, from consumer verification based on IDs that make sure that a Trustpilot account is operated uniquely by a human, through to a variety of user behaviour signaling."
We're witnessing a paradigm shift in e-commerce with the introduction of AI. This transformation is as significant as when e-commerce first emerged, allowing consumers to purchase from businesses worldwide instead of just local shops, or when mobile technology enabled shopping on-the-go.
The AI revolution is shaking things up in two main ways:
The traditional e-commerce journey is a bit of a faff. You see a static advert, click through to a website, hunt for products, select various options, add items to your basket, type in your address and payment details, and finally (if you haven't given up) complete the purchase. But that palaver is changing rapidly.
"What we're seeing now is the ability to interact with adverts directly so you don't have to leave the platform on which you're viewing that advert. For example, you may see an advert on Instagram selling t-shirts. You could directly interact with that advert, either through text or voice, saying 'Is that t-shirt available in red? Can it be shipped to my location?' And that purchase would take place on that social online store."
AI shopping agents are automated tools that can handle parts of the shopping workflow for consumers.
"In the application of the purchasing journey, an agent can find the products you want, personalised to you, without you having to search and sifted through products yourself."
While these technologies are advancing rapidly, human control remains paramount:
"We don’t expect consumers will give full control over to automated agents. The human is still going to be firmly in charge. The purchasing decision will likely be made by a human - it would be the point in which a human approves a purchase for an agent to make."
These innovations aren't from some distant future - they're happening right now:
"This isn't far out into the future. This is happening now. It is being piloted in different geographies and there's great consumer adoption."
For example, Perplexity has released a shopping agent that's rather clever. You tell it what you're after (like a birthday present for a four-year-old), and it serves up personalised product recommendations based on review data and your previous chats. The whole interaction - from exploring options to evaluation to purchase - happens in one interface.
As AI increasingly controls the exploration and evaluation phases of shopping, managing your online reputation becomes more critical than ever:
"It's going to become as critical as ever to manage your online reputation. As these bots take control of exploration and evaluation, they are going to rely on review platforms and other types of signals."
The path to improving your online reputation is clear:
"To improve your online reputation is to improve your business. And to improve your business, it's all about improving the customer experience. The only way you can do that is truly understanding what the current state of that experience is."
This AI revolution extends far beyond retail. The travel industry is likely to be one of the first sectors to see widespread implementation:
"We expect OpenAI to be releasing their operator product in the UK in the next couple of months. One of the core use cases will be for travel purposes. You'll be able to ask, 'Hey, I want to go to Italy. Book me the best hotel as rated on TripAdvisor.' And it will go ahead and do it."
These agents will use sophisticated techniques to navigate websites, analyze reviews, and personalize recommendations based on customer preferences:
"Maybe you value a great breakfast. It will be able to look at the feedback from customer reviews and take that into account appropriately."
As review data becomes increasingly important for AI decision-making, the openness of the platform matters:
"Our core differentiator is that we are open. Anyone can leave a review. Being open is absolutely core and critical and the key differentiator for us. It provides far better, far more honest feedback."
Open platforms typically provide a more accurate representation of customer experiences compared to private feedback tools, which may suffer from selection bias. This honest, representative feedback is vital for businesses looking to genuinely improve their customer experience.
As AI continues to transform e-commerce, understanding the voice of your customer has never been more important. The businesses that thrive will be those that properly leverage customer review data - not just to manage their reputation, but to truly understand and enhance their customer experience. And that, is where the real gold is.
Ross Hancock is a Principal Product Manager at Trustpilot, focusing on API development and integration. Ross specialises in helping organisations leverage customer feedback data to improve their customer experience and business outcomes and we’ve been delighted that he’s been a guest presenter on our Wordnerds webinar.
