How Klarna turns half a million reviews into a real-time analytics engine

We sat down with Klarna CMO David Sandström at OMR Festival to talk about why open consumer feedback has become core infrastructure — for marketing, product, and staying discoverable in the age of AI.

In an era of large language models (LLMs), Klarna and Trustpilot are collaborating to prove that authentic human experiences remain a brand's most valuable asset. 

Here’s how Klarna uses that sentiment data to stay visible, trusted, and discoverable in the age of AI.

To drive change, not reflect past performance 

Some businesses treat feedback platforms as a passive record of yesterday's transactions. Klarna looks at Trustpilot as a real-time analytics engine.

Traditional market research tools, like slow surveys and curated focus groups are not only costly, but often invite unnatural, filtered answers. To understand how consumers think and speak in the wild, Klarna turns to raw data from their half a million Trustpilot reviews. By building a custom chatbot layer (which they call the Trustpilot Review Explorer) on top of this data, teams across marketing, product, and customer experience can instantly track live consumer trends.

"The wrong way to think about Trustpilot is as a rearview mirror," says Sandström. "When we reach a certain threshold of people reporting specific issues or appreciations, I use it as a forward-looking tool." Klarna even uses this real-time feedback to simulate how real people might react to a new app layout or user experience before a single line of code ever launches.

To get AI recommended

The way buyers find businesses has fundamentally changed. Traditional search engines are rapidly losing ground to conversational AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. But with AI as the new gatekeeper of search, how does it choose which brands get recommended?

AI models build their definitions of quality on consumer experience, meaning an open feedback ecosystem provides the transparent data layer required to be a top-cited answer. In essence, they read what people say about a business on authoritative, open platforms.

"Reviews are a primary source for AI answers because algorithms only know what we feed them," Sandström notes. AI search identifies the best options based on honest human consensus, which is why keeping a transparent footprint of consumer feedback is so critical for modern discoverability.

Watch the masterclass

Ready to win the new rules of AI search?  Watch the full OMR Masterclass for the full discussion and actionable insights on trust, data, AI search, and future consumer trends.