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Handling reviews and reputation

What happens when a review is recorded, why a low rating raises a task and notifies a branch manager, what the reputation average is actually measured over, and why nothing is ever posted for you.

Updated

Reviews are the part of engagement where the stakes are highest and the time you have is shortest. A one-star review left on a Saturday needs somebody to see it on Monday, and the reviews page exists so that happens without anybody remembering to check. Recording a review with the number of stars it carried is what makes the rest of it work.

The star rating is the fact everything branches on. When a review is recorded with four or five stars, Social Studio drafts a thank-you from wording that was written and approved in advance, so nobody has to compose one. When it is recorded with one or two stars, three things happen at once: an acknowledgement is drafted, a high-priority task appears on the workspace board carrying the review's own words, and the manager of the branch the review names is notified. A three-star review is left alone, deliberately, because treating a customer who said "fine" as a complaint would put a task on somebody's board every week for no reason.

Nothing is published. This is the part worth reading twice, because it is not a setting and it is not a limitation that will lift. Social Studio has no path that posts a reply to Google, Trustpilot, Facebook or any other review site. What the product does is prepare the wording and record that a person approved it. Publishing it is a step you take on the platform itself, and the approved text is right there to copy.

BEFORE YOU START

  • Access to the workspace, and active membership of the organisation.
  • The "create" or "edit" permission to record a review.
  • The "reply" or "moderate" permission to approve wording or change the referral setting.
  • Branches set up under a brand in this workspace, if you want low ratings routed to the right manager. Without them a complaint still reaches a workspace manager, and the page tells you which route it took.

STEPS

  1. Open Workspaces, choose your workspace, and choose Reviews. The direct path is /app/workspaces/{workspace}/reviews.
  2. Read the reputation figure at the top, and read the sentence underneath it. That sentence says what the number covers, and it matters more than the number.
  3. Work down the list. Each review shows its stars, who left it, what they said, and whatever wording was prepared.
  4. Choose "Approve wording" on a draft you are happy with. For a one or two star review this is required before the wording counts as fit to publish, and it records who approved it and when.
  5. Copy the approved wording and post it yourself on the platform the review came from.
  6. Decide whether thank-you replies may also invite a referral, using the control on the page. It is off until you turn it on.
  7. To bring reviews in, have your own integration post them to the workspace reviews endpoint with a rating from one to five.

WHAT YOU SHOULD SEE

A reputation average with a plain sentence beneath it explaining that it covers the reviews recorded in Social Studio and is not your rating on any review site. Under that, the count at four and five stars, at three, at one and two, and how many complaints are still waiting for somebody to read the drafted wording. Every one or two star review in the list shows "Needs a person to approve the wording" until you approve it, and there is a task on the workspace board for each one.

WHAT THIS WILL NOT DO

  • It will not collect reviews. Social Studio reads no review site. Every review-capable connection is still waiting on the platform's own approval, and none of them has a working path to fetch a review, so no credential, plan or setting starts a feed here.
  • It will not post a reply, at any rating, approved or not. There is no send capability to enable.
  • It will not show you an average when nothing has been rated. The figure is left blank rather than shown as zero, because nobody gave you nought stars.
  • It will not write anything with AI. The wording comes from fixed approved templates, so two identical reviews get identical drafts and nothing costs credits.
  • It will not draft anything for a three-star review.
  • It will not admit fault or offer a refund on your behalf. The acknowledgement thanks the reviewer, says a manager is looking into it, and offers to talk privately. Every decision beyond that is yours.

WORTH KNOWING

The reputation figure is measured over the reviews recorded here and nothing else. If you have recorded four happy customers, it will say five out of five, and that is a true statement about four reviews rather than a statement about your business. The page shows the count beside the average for exactly this reason, and says so plainly below about five reviews.

An unrated review still counts. The general inbox has accepted reviews since long before ratings existed and has no rating field, so a review recorded that way appears in the list and in the recorded total, and is reported separately as unrated rather than being averaged in as a guess.

The rating also raises an automation trigger called "A review is received", carrying the stars, the band, the channel and the branch. If your business wants something else to happen at one star, you can build that yourself in Automations without waiting for anyone.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Why does a five-star review still need me to do something?

Because the reply has to be posted by a person. Social Studio prepares wording that somebody already approved; it cannot put it on the review site.

Who gets told about a bad review?

The managers of the branch the review names, if the review names one and that branch has managers recorded. Otherwise the workspace's managers. Which of the two happened is recorded against the response, and "nobody" is recorded honestly when there was no one to tell. The page does not show it yet, though: the field reaches the browser and nothing on the screen displays it, so you cannot today tell "somebody was told" apart from "the right person was told" by looking at the reviews page. Reading the review response through the API is the only way to see it until the page is changed.

Can I change the wording before approving it?

Not on this page yet. The draft is a starting point, and you can post whatever you like on the platform itself.

IF IT DOES NOT WORK

  • "create or edit permission required." means your role cannot record a review.
  • "reply or moderate permission required." means your role cannot approve wording or change the referral setting.
  • "That location belongs to a brand in a different workspace, so a review for it cannot be filed here." means the branch you named sits under another workspace. A review filed against the wrong branch would quietly distort that franchise's figures, so it is refused rather than accepted.
  • A rating outside one to five is refused rather than adjusted. A ten-point score has to be converted deliberately by whoever knows what it meant.
  • "Publishing a review reply is not built" is the answer to a send attempt, and it is permanent. Do not build a retry around it.
  • An empty reviews page is not a fault and not a silent customer base. Nothing has been collected because nothing collects.
  • Triaging your inbox

    What the unified inbox holds, which networks its comments can actually be read from, the difference between an empty inbox and an unread one, and why empathy analysis always refuses.

  • Drafting replies with rules

    Writing rules that draft a reply for a matching inbox item, approving the draft, and which networks Social Studio can actually post the approved reply to.

  • Managing locations

    Setting up branches, venues or franchises under a brand, who can reach a restricted location, and why the page reports activity per branch rather than performance.