Why post-sales service is now your best AI search strategy

We've long spoken about customer service becoming a catalyst for business growth. And until recently that was due to the huge volumes of customer insights the function was collecting.

The idea was simple: tap the contact center logs and your business will have all the data it needs to inform and drive the next growth strategy. 

Then AI search happened, pushing the cost-center-to-growth-driver narrative in a completely new – and mostly unforeseen – direction. In today's trading environment, the better your service, the higher your brand will rank when consumers ask their AI assistants to find specific products, services or retailers. 

That's because AI assistants don't make recommendations based on your marketing promises, but verified third-party mentions of how those promises hold up in the cold light of day. In short, they want to see you truly have a record for CX excellence. 

To do this, they turn to social media, news and media, and third-party review websites, such as Trustpilot. In fact, according to Trustpilot's chief customer officer – and former CMO – Alicia Skubick, reviews are the second most-cited source for AI engines, after brand websites. 

Earlier this year, Trustpilot published research that proved how important experiences – particularly post-sale experiences – are to customers. Its Future of US Retail report analyzed more than 4.5 million consumer reviews from US-based users over the 2025 calendar year and three major trends stand out: 

• 58 percent of consumers have shifted from traditional search to answer engines.
• On average, reviews that mention returns see a 1.7 star decline in the overall rating.
• 60 percent of reviews about how a company uses AI are one-star.

In this interview with CX Network, Skubick talks about: 

• What AI search engines reward – and the signals that show a gap in customer trust.
• Why seamless returns and effective post-purchase support are two of the biggest drivers of trust and competitive differentiation.
• Why you need to keep humans in your service suite and think carefully about automation.

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Customer service as the new SEO and AEO

Perhaps one of the biggest conceptual shifts to happen to customer service is its new role as a driver of SEO and AEO, that is search engine optimization and answer engine optimization. 

"Post-sales care always has been a huge growth engine for businesses, but today it's driving discovery in ways it hasn't done before" says Skubick. 

"What we've seen is that brands that proactively build trust – and some of that is by having a really great experience end-to-end, including that returns process – those brands are cited 75 times more than inactive competitors who are slowly becoming invisible."

This brings a new set of key actions for organizations to ensure they remain visible. 
According to Skubick, service leaders must become co-architects of the overall buying experience, ensuring that brand promises are living up to the recommendations that brought a customer to them in the first place. 

Brands must also monitor reviews much more closely than they did in the past. 

"Part of it is just really ensuring that there is proactive communication versus reactive; when there's a problem, ensuring that you're upfront and clear," Skubick explains. 

"Things happen, making sure that follow-up is still a great experience, even when it doesn't go well, those signals are picked up in AI engines. That is a shift in dynamic, not just for the CX leaders, but for business leaders overall," she adds. 

The two things customers hate, according to their Trustpilot reviews

There are two primary frustrations among customers on Trustpilot. The first is related to returns. 

"We've done the research and found it can be as much as a 1.7 star penalty if that's a real issue for your business," Skubick says.

The other frustration is how AI is used in the service journey, specifically how it so often falls short post-checkout. 

It's one of the greatest disconnects of the entire AI shift: customers may be using their own AI assistants to support their shopping, but they still don't fully trust how brands use AI, especially in service.

As highlighted above, Trustpilot found that although 58 percent of consumers reported switching from traditional search to answer engines, 60 percent of reviews about how a company uses AI are one-star. A mere 26 percent of AI-related reviews are five-star. 

"There's a significant frustration," Skubick says. "People aren't finding AI to be the solution for issues that they're facing or those great customer experiences," she adds. 

Trustpilot is not alone in finding this. CX Network's 2026 research into the state of CX found that AI-first customer journeys are both the third most influential trend for CX practitioners at present and the third most important customer behavior. However, the research also saw consumer privacy enter the top 10 CX trends for the first time, and awareness of how AI works and uses customer data was the number one customer behavior.

Skubick says the problems begin when customers feel deflected. Instead, the "gold standard" is to use AI for speed and low friction experiences. "You have to make sure the automation isn't a barrier for the consumer, your business and your customer service teams," she says. 

"If you use it to plug holes, and you don't really think about where is it appropriate to have a bot, where is it appropriate to have a human, it can create real challenges for your business upstream, which will have big financial consequences," she continues. 

Trustpilot's top tips for improving AI search visibility

Trustpilot's research concludes with 11 recommendations retailers can pursue to leverage their reviews and convert customer trust into a competitive advantage.
When it comes to boosting visibility in AI search, Skubick says that in addition to auditing their service journeys, there are four key actions brands can take:

Review web content: Ensure it is "really structured and detailed," she says.

Swap fluff for specifics: "Fluffy marketing speak isn't helpful. If you're talking about great service, specify if it's 24 hours, or seven days a week. If you rate best in the market, be clear on how. FAQs are also helpful," Skubick says.

Embrace the three Rs: Recency, ranking and relevance. 

Embark on a PR campaign: Focus on high-authority, high-reach domains. "Mentions here can be incredibly helpful," Skubick says.

She concludes: "The sign of a good business is not when you're buying the product and they're all your best friend, but how good they treat you if it goes wrong."

Quick links 

• Leveraging the post-sale journey to perform better in AI search
  
• The A-Z of customer complaints in 2026
• Building brand trust in an agentic economy