Trustpilot: Over 16k financial services firms at risk of AI invisibility in new discovery era
The UK’s financial services sector is facing a critical strategy-action gap that puts many at risk of losing market share, because they are becoming invisible in the AI answers consumers are increasingly using to make decisions. Many businesses are neglecting one of the most important sources AI tools use to recommend brands – customer voices.
New research from Trustpilot finds that 92% of financial services leaders say their organisation has a strategy focused on when and how their brand appears in answers from AI tools like ChatGPT or Google AI Mode (often called an ‘AI visibility strategy’).* But nearly half (47%) are not collecting feedback through open platforms like Trustpilot, which are often cited by AI tools when consumers are looking for products. This could impact an estimated 16,450 businesses across the UK.
This is despite more than 5 in 6 (85%) being aware that feedback collected on open platforms directly impacts how their brand appears in AI answers. This signals a gap between strategy and action in businesses executing their AI visibility strategies, putting many of them at risk of AI invisibility.
In fact, a recent analysis of over 800,000 AI answers found that review and trust sites are now the #2 citation source for AI systems, behind only general brand websites. The result is that brands that proactively collect and respond to feedback online get 75 times more AI citations than their inactive competitors. With the majority (56%) of Brits already using AI tools to help them manage their money, financial brands that don’t appear in the answers are left out of consumer decision making.
For many financial services brands, feedback is invisible because it sits in internal systems. While 98% of respondents say their businesses collect customer feedback in at least one way, some of the most popular methods are siloed and don’t count towards AI visibility. The most common methods to collect feedback are through internal customer surveys (63%) and customer communications (63%).* While these methods might provide customer insights, neither are cited in answers from AI tools.
Alicia Skubick, chief customer officer at Trustpilot, says: “Financial services leaders are preparing for the era of AI discovery, but there is a critical disconnect between ambition and action. Having an AI strategy on paper means very little if AI systems can’t find or trust your brand.
“Private internal surveys might help you understand your customers behind closed doors, but they do nothing to train the AI models that modern consumers use to decide where they will bank, invest, or borrow. To get the most out of feedback and make sure they are showing up where it matters for their customers, businesses must ensure open feedback forms the foundation of their AI visibility strategy.”