Every decision the system makes about where a customer is sent, in the order it makes them. Read it and check it — that is what it is here for.
A customer finishes a job and gets a review request — by text, by email, from a QR code on the invoice, or by calling a number that records an audio testimonial. When they open it, the platform has to decide where to send them.
It decides in this order, and it decides before the customer has rated anything. That sequencing is the whole argument. A system that asks how happy you are and then chooses where to send you is gating; a system that chooses where to send you from where you can most easily post is routing. We do the second, and here is every step of it.
Nobody should be asked twice. If the review is already in, the survey shows a confirmation and stops.
Confirmation page. If they rated 4 or 5, they are also offered a button to share what they wrote on social media.
Continue to the next test.
That share prompt is the only place in the entire flow where a rating changes what happens, and it happens after the review is already published and public. Declining to help someone advertise a bad experience is not the same as hiding it.
Some businesses want every reviewer sent to Google Business Profile, full stop. If that setting is on, we honour it.
Straight to the Google review form for the nearest matching profile. The request is flagged as auto-routed so the business can see it happened.
Continue to the next test.
Posting a Google review requires a Google account. If the address we hold is a Google account, the customer is one tap from posting; if it is not, sending them to Google means sending them to a sign-up form, and most people stop there.
Sent to Google. If the business has asked for an extra confirmation step, they see a short interstitial first.
Continue to the next test.
This is the test that does the most work, and it is worth being precise about what it looks at: the domain of an email address. Not a rating, not a history, not a guess about mood. It is a question about which login the person already has.
If they are not already on Google, the honest thing is to offer the options and let them pick.
A choice page showing where they can leave the review — Google, Facebook, or any of the 27+ destinations the business has configured.
Continue to the last step.
The customer writes their review on the business's own review form. It publishes to the business's website with the job it belongs to, whatever the rating.
Nowhere above does the system ask how satisfied the customer is and use the answer to pick a destination. It cannot: every one of those tests runs before the customer has rated anything. There is no sentiment to route on, which is why there is no gate.
This matters beyond principle. Google prohibits review gating, and the FTC's Consumer Review Rule prohibits the same conduct with civil penalties attached — and the penalty when a business is caught is not limited to the reviews it suppressed. Screening by sentiment is a genuinely dangerous thing to have running quietly inside a tool you bought.
If you are evaluating any platform in this category, this is the question to ask, and you should expect an answer as specific as this page.
A one-star review goes to the same places a five-star one goes. There is no hold queue, no approval step, and no setting that turns one on. The business is notified so it can respond, which is what a bad review is actually for.
A code on a yard sign or an invoice can be scanned by anyone, so the scan proves nothing on its own. A QR review is not counted until the customer verifies by email or SMS — the step that ties it to a real job and a real person.
We do not incentivise reviews. Incentivised reviews breach Google's policy, and undisclosed ones breach the FTC rule. If a business runs its own incentive outside the platform, disclosing it is on them and we will say so rather than quietly carry it.
Whoever you end up buying from, make them show you this page's worth of detail. It is a short conversation and it tells you a lot.
