Best practices for collecting customer reviews

You will learn

Learn some recommended best practices for enabling transparency, fairness, and compliance with certain regulations that govern collecting and managing reviews.

The regulations governing reviews include:

• United States
  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act including FTC's Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (Endorsement Guides) and the Consumer Review Fairness Act (CRFA). The FTC also has published business guidance resources on reviews. 
• EU
  The Enforcement and Modernisation Directive (2019/2161) (the Omnibus Directive).
• Australia
  Australian Consumer Law
  The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has published business resources on reviews.

Collecting reviews

In general, request reviews fairly, and treat all honest reviews the same, whether they are positive or negative. 

• Encourage authentic and unbiased reviews. 
• Request reviews from people that have used and experienced your product or service. 
• Don’t hand-select review requests from customers you think will rate you positively, and don’t discourage negative reviews.
• Don’t request or collect reviews from anyone who has not used or experienced your product or services. 
• Don’t limit or restrict a person’s ability to leave an honest review or penalize them for posting a review, including a negative review.
• If you offer incentives for leaving a review, don’t condition it on the review being positive, (e.g., 20% discount for your next purchase for a positive review). Always disclose when a reviewer was incentivized to write a review. 
• Don’t commission or use a third party to submit fake reviews.

Moderating reviews

Implement a reasonable process to ensure that reviews are honest, authentic, and adhere to your review policy. 

• Have reasonable procedures to identify fake or suspicious reviews. If you’ve been alerted that a review may be fake, investigate and take appropriate action. 
• Don’t alter reviews. Don’t change a negative review to sound positive or remove parts of the text.
• Treat all authentic reviews, positive or negative, equally.
• Generally, a review may be rejected or removed for the following reasons:
  • It contains confidential or private information (e.g., a person’s financial, medical, or personnel file information or a company’s trade secrets).
  • It is libelous; harassing; abusive; obscene; vulgar; sexually explicit; or inappropriate with respect to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or other intrinsic characteristic.
  • It is unrelated to the company’s products or services.
  • It is clearly false or misleading.
  • It is a fake review.
  • The reviewer requests removal.

Specifically under the EU’s Omnibus Directive, you must take reasonable and proportionate steps that verified product reviews submitted are genuine, and that the reviewer who submits a review has purchased or used your product or service. You must describe the verification process you have in place and make it available with the reviews. 

If a verified review is not published or rejected within 14 days of submission, Klaviyo will automatically publish it.

Publishing reviews

When publishing reviews, exercise fairness and transparency, and publish all authentic reviews, whether positive or negative.

• Avoid displaying reviews in a way that might mislead a potential customer. 
• For example, don’t hide the reviews with the lowest rating at the bottom and move all the highest rating reviews to the top. Instead, display ratings chronologically.

• Disclose any material connections between a reviewer and your brand. Clearly indicate any connection in the review. This includes disclosing when:
  • A reviewer has been paid for their review.
  • A reviewer received a free product in exchange for their review.
  • A reviewer has a personal relationship with the company (e.g., is a company employee, or is a relative or friend of an employee).
  • A charitable donation was made each time someone submitted a review.

As a guiding principle, disclose any incentive or relationship that might cause a review reader to evaluate the review differently. 

Further considerations

• Publish clear review guidelines that outline how you manage reviews. The policy should cover guidelines for acceptable content, moderation practices, and any specific criteria for publishing and rejecting or removing reviews. 
• Disclose and obtain necessary consent, through terms of service and/or a privacy notice, for: 
• The processing of personal information in compliance with applicable privacy laws when collecting and using personal data for review purposes, and 
• The use of review content for other marketing/advertising purposes.

Additional resources 

• Getting started with Klaviyo reviews
• How to request reviews from your customers
• How to disclose reviewer incentives