Make Public Trust a Number You Can Report On
Turn public sentiment and emotion into a single trust score so you can track changes to your reputation in real-time.
Built for the public sector
We’re proud to be the community engagement platform of choice, trusted by 400+ public sector organisations from emergency services, to local and central government, housing and healthcare, to education, and travel and transport.
The only platform that measures public trust as a score
How it works: The Trust Indicator measures public sentiment and emotion across your inbound inboxes and every conversation your organisation is part of on social media, reviews, forums, news, and more. It combines this data into a single trust score from -100 to +100 using our AI-powered technology, influenced by ground breaking research conducted by Harvard Business School.
By tracking these long-term trends, you can prove the impact of your community engagement strategies with precise, data-backed metrics for senior leadership.
Basildon Borough Council used Orlo’s Trust Indicator to measure levels of trust, they were able to turn qualitative noise into a quantifiable Trust Score that leadership could readily use to inform strategic planning, resulting in a 73% recovery in public trust.
Listen: understand how your community feels
Build listening streams around your organisation, services, places and campaigns across social media sources and your inbound inboxes. The Trust Indicator feeds in real-time data from every stream, giving you a live picture of how your community perceives you giving your insight into not just what they’re saying, but how they feel about it.
Score: turn sentiment into a single trust metric
Orlo converts the sentiment and emotion captured from your listening streams into a single measurable score. Rather than manually interpreting thousands of conversations, your team gets one clear number that leadership, communications and policy teams can act on. Set benchmarks, monitor progress, and present trust data in board-ready reports.
Track: prove how trust is changing over time
Orlo’s Trust Over Time feature tracks your score’s momentum so you can see whether confidence in your organisation is growing or declining. While Moments in Time lets you annotate key events like a policy announcement, an incident or a campaign so you can understand exactly what caused trust to shift. It’s the evidence layer that turns community engagement from a soft metric into a strategic one.
Wakefield Council increased their Trust Indicator score from 46.55% to 76.82% after overhauling their social media strategy and centralising community engagement on Orlo, demonstrating that trust is measurable, improvable, and directly linked to how you engage.
See Orlo’s Trust Indicator in action
What to expect
See Orlo’s Trust Indicator in action
What to expect
What public sector organisations use the Trust Indicator for
Frequently asked questions about measuring public trust
What is public trust measurement?
Public trust measurement is the process of tracking and quantifying how much confidence a community has in an organisation over time. For public sector organisations, this typically involves analysing sentiment and emotion across social media, news, reviews, and public feedback and converting that data into a reportable score. Orlo’s Trust Indicator is the only platform built specifically to do this for UK public sector organisations.
How does Orlo's Trust Indicator measure public trust?
Orlo’s Trust Indicator analyses sentiment and emotion from conversations across social media, online news, reviews and more. Inspired by research from Harvard Business School, it converts this data into a single score from -100 to +100. The platform tracks how the score changes over time and identifies the specific themes driving trust up or putting it at risk, giving communications teams a live, evidence-based view of public confidence.
Why should public sector organisations measure community trust?
Public trust is the foundation of effective service delivery, policy implementation and democratic accountability. Organisations that can measure trust are better equipped to identify reputational risks early, respond to emerging crises before they escalate, demonstrate the value of communications work to senior leadership, and make evidence-based decisions about engagement strategy. As trust in public institutions falls – with 42% of the UK population distrusting their local government – being able to track and improve confidence is increasingly business-critical.
Can trust be measured for specific services or campaigns?
Yes. Orlo’s Trust Indicator allows you to build listening streams around specific services, places, campaigns and topics, so you can track trust at an organisational level or drill into a particular area. For example, you might track community confidence in a planning consultation, a housing regeneration project, or your NHS trust’s communications during a winter pressure period.
How is the Trust Indicator different from social media analytics?
Standard social media analytics measure activity – reach, impressions, engagement rate. The Trust Indicator measures something fundamentally different: how people feel about your organisation. Rather than counting interactions, it analyses the emotional quality of conversations to produce a single trust metric. This gives public sector leaders a strategic measure they can report on, act on, and improve – rather than a volume metric that doesn’t reflect community confidence.
Which public sector organisations use Orlo's Trust Indicator?
Orlo’s Trust Indicator is used by over 400 public sector organisations across the UK, including local councils, NHS trusts, police forces, fire and rescue services, housing associations, and central government departments. Customers include Surrey County Council, Greater Manchester Police, Devon County Council, Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, and Wakefield Council.
Is the Trust Indicator available as a standalone product?
The Trust Indicator is part of Orlo’s Insights suite, which sits within the broader Orlo platform alongside social media management, social listening, community engagement, and customer service tools. To find out how the Trust Indicator fits your organisation’s needs and budget, book a demo with the Orlo team.
