← The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#695: Why Trust Is a Strategy, Not a Sentiment with Dana Bodine, Trustpilot
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- [00:00]
Greg Kilstrom
What if your customer experience and culture strategy didn't just create value but actually funded your growth? I'm inviting you to join me in a powerful mastermind group I'm co leading with Journey Spark Consulting. It's called the CX and Culture Connection creating a self funding growth flywheel and it brings together CX and culture leaders who want to drive change, build stronger internal collaboration and actually reinvest efficiency savings into growth driving initiatives. This isn't just theory. You'll get monthly virtual sessions, one on one coaching, quarterly workshops and access to the value Accelerator tools focused on strategy, cultural alignment and voice of customer. Plus you'll connect with leaders across functions from marketing to product to ops who are facing the same challenges and pushing towards the same goals. Up to four team members can participate from your organization so you're building alignment while building momentum. Want in, learn more and sign up at journeysparkconsulting.com that's journeysparkconsulting.com mastermind let's turn your CX investment into a growth engine.
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Dana Bodine
The Agile Brand.
- [01:15]
Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to Season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and martech platforms as we explore marketing technology, AI, e commerce and whatever's next for the Omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. And now onto the show.
- [02:13]
Unknown
If nearly half of consumers spend more with brands they trust, why aren't more companies making trust a core business strategy instead of just a tagline?
- [02:21]
Greg Kilstrom
Tell me Explore this question. I'm joined by Dana Bodine, US Vice.
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Unknown
President of Marketing at trustpilot, the world's largest independent platform for customer feedback. Dana, welcome to the show.
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Dana Bodine
Thank you. Thanks Greg for having me.
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Unknown
Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. Before we dive in though, why don't we start with you telling us a little bit about your background and your current role at trustpilot.
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Dana Bodine
Sure. So I joined trustpilot three years ago in the coming weeks. So very excited to hit that milestone.
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Unknown
Nice, nice.
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Greg Kilstrom
Congrats.
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Dana Bodine
Thank you. I came up most recently have been focusing on B2B marketing in digital payments and financial inclusion, which was actually a really interesting spot to end up with. Never thought I'd be be in finance early on in my career, but I was most recently at a startup called Pagayo which was about all about creating more lending opportunities that people who were excluded from the financial service community. I was Most recently at MasterCard where I worked in the B2B space looking at innovative ways we can get more folks access to financial products around the world. And before that, I came up through the rough and tumble streets of digital media for about 10 years. And what led me really to Trustpilot. I think what was really interesting about my background in payments is I got to be closer to folks most important decisions when they're going to buy a house, if they can get credit, if they can save up money to ensure the future for themselves and their children. And trustpilot was kind of a natural next extension of how we can help people make better decisions across the board when they're being really thoughtful about their time and their money.
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Unknown
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. It's interesting. Trust in a number of ways kind of has intersected all of those roles, sometimes in very different ways. That's really interesting. So, yeah, let's start there and let's talk about trust. You know, it's easy to say that you trust your customers and that you provide something that's trustworthy. But trust is easy to say, but hard to earn and even harder to quantify. How do you define customer trust in today's market? And how does a company like trustpilot help brands turn that into something measurable?
- [04:32]
Dana Bodine
Yeah, great question. Trust, I think always for a marketer, has felt kind of like a squishy brand pillar. You know, it's something that we define as our personality. But at trustpilot, we really pride ourselves on our ability to quantify that and make that a real actionable tool. And it's not just a nice to have. It's not just something you stand in front of your board and say that you do. It's actually a metric that you can move and you can collect. So we see that through the value of reviews on our platform. Yeah, and those reviews, they're completely anonymous. We have a robust tech stack that look at its authenticity. We removed over 4 million fake reviews last year alone. So we really take trust seriously in the fact that we're Looking very deeply at the reviews that are being left on our platform because we know how critical they are to businesses, understanding their audiences. So for us, we're able to provide a platform that is really fair, transparent and open to all. And then the tools for businesses to then understand their consumers, what they're doing on our site when they're leaving different types of reviews, what different sentiment analysis there is, and then taking those reviews and being able to respond to them more quickly and then using them as social proof. So what really gets me excited as a marketer and especially Trustpilot, my target audience on the B2B side is marketers like myself. So I get to be with the people that I love most is that it's not just a brand measure like MPS or other ways that we look at brand health. It's something that actually has meaning when you put that back out into the world. So our businesses use their trustpilot scores in advertising and out of home in digital ads. And we see the looked at studies where engagement on digital advertising that use someone's Trustpilot score go, you know, 10x more clickable than they are without. So it's really a feedback loop where people feel that they can trust trustpilot to actually capture their authentic reviews. Brands take it very seriously and able to quantify it and look at it deeply to understand whether it's something around the production of their individual products or it's the delivery mechanism or it's just the customer service be able to remedy that and then also take some of the reviews and actually use them in their, their advertising and generate some, some really great performance on, on their return on ad spend.
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Unknown
Yeah. And I think that's, that's a critical part is, is using those reviews and using the tools that you're able to provide as part of their strategy as something actionable. Right. I know you mentioned briefly there, you know, how some of these things could, could be done. Can you walk us through, you know, and there's an, apparently a new suite of tools as well that trustpilot released. Can you talk us, you know, what these tools are doing and how they're helping brands go from, you know, getting feedback, which is critical, but also to growth.
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Dana Bodine
Yeah. So I think the biggest thing, and this is something that's just a best practice we stress across the board is we really, we really ask our businesses invite every single customer to review.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
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Dana Bodine
Good, bad and ugly. As a marketer you always want to, you know, show the bright shiny objects, but the real intelligence of the data is when you get as many people as possible weighing in and overall that will benefit brands. We just released a suite of tools that make, you know, after the collection of that data, data is only as good as what you can do with it afterwards. So one, it gives our brands more insight into the, into the consumers that are visiting their page and leaving a review. So more depth of data of who these folks are, what they're doing, be able to learn more from reviews, so able an aggregate look at sentiment, be able to post immediate feedback and questions back. And really the interplay of brands talking directly back to consumer reviews is really interesting. So we've supercharged those tools as well. A deep dive into looking at the trends and the patterns of being able to see the forest through the trees of understanding. And we've had some really interesting anecdotal information from brands where they've noticed a downtick in their trust score. They go deeper and they actually find out that one of their shipping suppliers is dropping the ball on some of the services. And then they've been able to identify that. So giving more tools to be more exact and understanding where in the chain of their business that they're losing trust or there's some sort of malfunction that they can address really carefully with a scalpel and then the ability to promote those reviews. So we see a huge amount of value not just from the learning of brands looking at what they do great and what they can improve on, but then being able to use smart widgets on their site to ask for reviews, to showcase and highlight reviews, and then be able to create the assets and the marketing assets to use those reviews in new ways in their advertising. So we've refreshed all of those tools so it's one, refreshing the tools to understand the data, refreshing the tools and supercharging them to understand the visitors and then really supercharging the way that brands can use their trust score to really supercharge their marketing campaigns.
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Unknown
Yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah, there's a lot there. But to go back to the anecdote about the shipping supplier, I think that's so critical, you know, because you get a bad review or even a good one, but like you get a bad review and there could be innumerable, you know, aspects of that and maybe sometimes people just have an across the board bad experience, but that's rarely the case. Right. There's usually a reason. So I mean, root cause analysis is so difficult with so many different types of tools. So that's, that's really interesting that you're able to help isolate some of those things.
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Dana Bodine
And when some of our big customers, we've looked very carefully, especially enterprise customers that have literally millions and millions of consumers or potential consumers. There's also the folks, when you're looking at financial services, there are folks that maybe fall in this grace area of they applied for a loan and maybe got denied. Are they a customer, are they not? We care about all that feedback. So we've developed numerous ways where folks can actually pinpoint what customer service reps someone has interacted with to be able to look at the reviews and be able to pinpoint, you know, great customer service or areas for improvement. And then like I said, also look at suppliers or look at regional issues where they might be seeing some delays or malfunction in one part of the country versus another and very strategically pinpoint that. And because we've been in this space for 17 years and you know, with the proliferation of AI and obviously big data, it's all on the tips of our tongue on how we've been doing it. But we've been using large data models and technology to one, glean insights and two to 10 fake reviews for many, many years. So it's a space we're really comfortable with and really excited that our customers are now feeling more comfortable diving into those data insights using tools like AI.
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Greg Kilstrom
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Unknown
So let's talk a little bit about influencers or maybe more specifically de influencing. And I'll pause there. Can you define what do we mean when we, when we say de influencing?
- [12:47]
Dana Bodine
I think, and this is very much what I see as a consumer myself, as a, as a late stage millennial, elder millennial I think I am, is kind of folks that are, it's, it's the, it's the boomerang effect of the, the influencing industry. So I think folks have become really comfortable with knowing that folks that they Follow on social media, even celebrities, even folks that are just subject matter experts in their field, there is a certain amount of pay to play. There is still a level of trust. But I think consumers are more savvy than ever to actually question that. And I think part of it is entertainment. There's always been, you know, you're following the people you care about and they're recommending things and, and, and that's a data input that you take somewhat seriously. But I think folks are questioning that in a little bit more depth than they did before. And I think now, especially with the consumer sentiment in the US where people are kind of really taking a pause and thinking about how they're going to spend their money, what products are going to be worth buying now or worth buying later, people are taking a bit of a pause and I think widening their view of what's the end motivation of the influencer economy and what other sources do folks need to really make those purchase decisions?
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Dana Bodine
So I think especially if money is tight, people are reevaluating the way that they get in that information and I absolutely believe influencers and that content is always going to be an input. But I think what we see, the consumers on our site and also looking at other sites like out there that are anonymous where there's no clout in leaving a review, that there's something altruistic about that that feels safe and feels a little bit more credible. So you might, you know, at least I can talk about my own purchase journey. You see something hyped up on social media of influencer. I follow, I trust I may know there's some sponsored content or partner alignment but then I'll go in and do my due diligence on trustpilot. And it's, and it's, I think it's just the de influencing, it's, it's more like the de centering of one voice and using it as an equal input to lots of different things. Whether they're getting additional information on trustpilot from friends and family, reading the news. I think different companies reputation and how they show up in the world is also become a huge factor in how people spend their money.
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Unknown
Yeah, yeah. And I mean in a sense that makes a lot of common sense. You know, if you buy, I mean some of the, some of the enterprise software you're talking about, I mean it's, you know, it's potentially millions of dollars. So you know, you're not going to buy a million dollar piece of software because one person recommends at least I hope I hope not. But, you know, it's an. It is still a good way to your, to your other point, it's a good way to get attention and awareness about something as long as you do your due diligence. But yeah, maybe the, the honeymoon phase of some of the influencer stuff is, is ebbing away a little bit. But you know what, how does that change the way that brands should think about advocacy, partnerships, things like that?
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Dana Bodine
I think, and this is not a. As a marketer, this just adds to their to do list. But I think everything matters. Everything matters. I think influencers absolutely matter when you have folks that have values that really align and an audience that really aligns with what you're trying to. You know, I think we saw Sofi do a really great partnership with your rich bff, which is a really brilliant online with an Instagram personality that advises on personal finance, where there's a total alignment there. But the end of the day, when you're opening up a credit card, a line of credit, you're going to go even deeper than that. So I think for me, it's an awareness play. But then brands have to be everywhere. They have to be on trustpilot or other review platforms and they have to be collecting as many reviews as possible. The good, the bad, the ugly, it all matters. And that's part of understanding that. Signals come from all different places and you have to be an active participant and you have to be staffed in a way where you can respond to reviews. You can be looking at it on a daily basis. You should have a screen in your headquarters where you're actually seeing these reviews in real time. That's what we do at trustpilot. Our CEO looks at our reviews every single morning. Is that you can't just sign up and claim a page. It's not just a box to be checked like some sort of martech tool or platform. It has to really be watered and gardened and looked at really critically every single day.
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Unknown
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I mean, another thing that you mentioned earlier is getting feedback from everyone as well. I mean, I think, you know, I, I'm involved, you know, some of my consulting work. I help large brands make big software decisions. And if I were to go to a page and 100% of the reviews are five stars and this software is amazing. Whatever. Like, you know, like what's, what am I not seeing here? Right. So it's like, it's, in a sense, I mean, you don't want it to be one star out of five, you know, over millions of reviews of course. But it's like you want some realism and, and some of what I look for as well is like is the brand watching? You know, are they, are they responding? And you know, and stuff like that. And so I guess as, as stuff like that goes like brands, how should they be leveraging, you know, people in their existing networks, trusted voices as opposed to maybe influential people but maybe a little less close to the subject matter. Like how this is, this becomes about authenticity. Right.
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Dana Bodine
Yeah. And I think that's where again it's, it's. And we've, we see data like this all the time where someone would rather pick a business that has a 4.8 versus a 5 star review.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
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Dana Bodine
Because we're inherently cynical and we've been jaded. Right. Like we're questioning what our eyes are seeing and what our ears are hearing. And you know, I think especially in the US we're inherently cynical these days. So you know, really it thinking about that every, and I think marketers by nature are you know, obviously obsessed with our customers or should be. Every experience matters whether they have a following of 5 million folks or zero folks that, that someone's unique experience. And I think this gets into the trend of, of understanding experience rather than just purchase data or intent of you know, it's not just about the loan that I secure. It's the way that I was spoken to. It was feeling safe, feeling like there was not, I wasn't discriminated against or there wasn't any predatory practices. There's a whole aura of the product experience, especially when we talk about services, which is a lot of where our business is. And I think for brands it's knowing that you one, I mean our tools are able to collect at all different parts of the purchase journey is that you really need a 360 view and where influencers might be on awareness and about getting your brand in front of many different folks to open that door. It's not just about the happiness or sadness around one purchase or service decision. It's about the entire process and experience.
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Unknown
Yeah. So I know we talked a little bit about the data component of this, but I want to go back there a little bit and certainly I've written about it too, but there's a lot of talk about being data driven and the need for good data to do that because just because you have data, not all data is created equal. Right. So what do brands need to look at more closely to get the real story behind their customer experience?
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Dana Bodine
I think like I said Collecting everything more. And again, at least we have the platform where, you know, more, more data. And I think this is what I've really thought about too is more data. It like are we collecting, collecting all data? Never. You know, sometimes isn't the, the solution. It's like how do we collect the right data? So giving folks the tools and again, I emphasize on hearing from all customers, but we're also doing it in a way that's very structured and we're really getting from all customers the, the very specific information that's needed and then it's the ability to look at it in real time and I think staying on top of it because otherwise it becomes a mountain of data. You know, it's the homework that never gets done unless you're doing a little bit every single day. So I think you have to do the homework every single day so it doesn't build up the night before. And then I think that's where the magic happens when you're looking at those. And again, as marketers too and I think because our platform really spans a use case for marketers and, and CX professionals, folks that are really just looking at the journey in a very systematic way, they're going to use our tool to really evaluate every single point of contact and understand where they can optimize that. When markers are really understanding the heart and the soul and the sentiment of how they talk about it is that you have to lean in, you have to respond and you have to constantly question the data and question everything and you know, again, nobody's perfect. We do a lot of work on removing the fake reviews. And I think every marketer needs to come to the table with a depth of understanding of looking at the data and finding ways to educate themselves to use it and then also questioning it and then questioning themselves and using it as a feedback loop to bounce against of. Because ultimately the truth lies in between all of these different things and sits in the heart of your marketing or CX department.
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Unknown
Yeah, yeah. And I think that, you know, what you mentioned there about it's also across that, that customer journey. Right. Because I mean, you know, I'm sure there, there can be a bias before you start using something, you know, in the beginning of the sales process versus post purchase. So you know, it's, it's so critical to look at things throughout that. And again, it doesn't mean that something is all bad. It just means there may be an area for improvement at some specific points to make it better overall. Right.
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Dana Bodine
And I think, and what we Also see too, when we have brands that actually respond to reviews on the platform or follow up, even when they're able to identify, you know, areas of improvement, like there's such, actually such a swing where someone can have a really disappointing experience with a brand and then a brand engages with them and say, hey, we want to make this right, we want to understand what went wrong. And then all of a sudden the pendulum swings in the other direction. It's like they came back to me, they acknowledged, I think the acknowledgement of someone's experience from a brand is incredibly powerful of the brand's not just reading it, but responding to it creates a huge bond between that disgruntled customer in general and then also can make them an advocate for life once that's been resolved. So I think that really recognizing people's experiences, human to human, and brands coming back and validating in that and saying, hey, we want to do better, we want to learn more. I would take that level of, of interaction more than just a blanket five star without any insights.
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Unknown
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean that's, that's worked on me. I mean, you know, I always say like the test of a relationship is how things go when things are bad, not one thing, you know, when things go wrong, not when you know, every, if everything is great, that's good until it doesn't go great. Right.
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Dana Bodine
And again, I think that's also a forgettable experience for a marketer if it checks. I mean there's certain things you want to be seamless. I want to make sure my lights work and I never have anything. But especially when, and this is our sweet spot when we're talking about finance, insurance, mortgages. That's a long term relationship. It's like, like you just said, it's the same things that you go through when you're in a relationship with another human being. It's testing that in the times of trouble is where you really, really strengthen it and for the long term. And again, people are going to be working with their mortgage lender for 30 years. Their initial interaction is not going to be the first. So people really want to feel invested in and that it's a two way street.
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Unknown
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, Dana, thanks so much for joining today. One last question before we wrap up here. I like to ask everybody, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
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Dana Bodine
I think really having a very flat organization and a really honest conversation with everyone around you at work? You know, I'm in a very specific part of my life. I'm a young, you know, have a young child, a young family, but really having a and we have slack channels. We have really beautiful spaces at work where I'm learning all of the riz and information from our Gen Z. I.
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Unknown
Might know what that means or not, I don't know.
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Dana Bodine
I didn't use it right but I know it exists. But really having an open honest discord course. And again, I came up through a world in old school media Devil Wears Prada land where this didn't exist, where you can just, you know, part of my language shoot this with everyone folks that are 10 years younger than you, 10 years older than you and really being curious and have fostering real relationships with the people that work for you. So knowing what they do on weekends, caring about what they're reading. You know, it's all about reading podcasts. I do all that stuff too, but I care more about what other people are reading and consuming and being curious about that.
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Unknown
Yeah, love it. Well again I'd like to thank Dana Bodine, US VP of Marketing at trustpilot.
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Greg Kilstrom
For joining the show.
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Unknown
You can learn more about Dana and trustpilot by following the links in the show notes.
- [26:24]
Greg Kilstrom
Thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagile brand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.gregkillstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
- [27:18]
Dana Bodine
The Agile Brand.
- [27:22]
Greg Kilstrom
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