Gareth Johns joins TruRating as chief data officer

TruRating, a technology company specialising in point-of-payment customer feedback solutions has announced the appointment of Gareth Johns as chief data officer. The hire of the former Starcount Insights and Dunnhumby heavyweight comes on the back of an impressive growth spurt for the startup, which has now collected over 26m customer ratings across the UK, Canada, Australia and North America.

Gareth joins the company from Starcount Insights – a relatively new data startup in the consumer insight space where he held the position of chief data officer for the past three years. Prior to that, he held a number of senior positions at Dunnhumby where he worked for over 19 years – of which his last post was global capability managing director, Insight.

“We’re thrilled to be welcoming Gareth – his background and fit really couldn’t be any better for us!” says Georgina Nelson, founder and CEO at TruRating. “As a leader in Dunnhumby’s growth – from the 30 person team in 1995 to a global business engaged in marketing analytics and customer insight – Gareth’s career has been focused on defining & executing data & technology strategy, building high performing teams and delivering complex programmes of work. His roles at Dunnhumby (including global head of data, Global head of product development and managing director of platforms and innovation) demonstrate the strength of his knowledge and ability to help businesses use big data & technology to drive growth. At TruRating Gareth will lead our work across data science, merchant product development and client services as we collect customer responses at an unprecedented scale, helping businesses to understand what those customers really think and feel and how this relates to what, when and how they purchase.”

Commenting on his appointment Gareth Johns says: “My career thus far has focussed on helping retailers to put the customer at the heart of their decision making. To date this has only really been possible for businesses where customers visit often and purchase a wide range of products (predominately within grocery retail). TruRating however, are giving a voice to every customer with the simple press of a button at the point of payment. Through this feedback, we’re truly able to help businesses to make better data-driven, customer-centric decisions by combining the real and representative responses to any question with data on the transactions and the items purchased.”

Johns continued: “To be able to bring meaningful and actionable insight to a much wider range of businesses whilst still protecting customer privacy is incredibly exciting. My belief is that this capability will enable a better customer experience for consumers and improve revenue growth for businesses.”