How Review Flows Work
What Are Review Flows?
Section titled “What Are Review Flows?”A Review Flow is a guided customer experience. Customers move through the stages enabled by your configuration—whether that leads to Google, another external destination, written feedback, or direct completion.
At its core, a Review Flow gives customers the external destinations and direct-feedback choices you configure. A customer’s rating does not decide whether they may see a public review option.
Review Flows combine configurable review destinations, customer details, ratings, and written feedback. For a questionnaire with your own fields, use a Custom Form. The Review Flow structure supports:
- Review collection — the core use case, offering configured destinations such as Google or Facebook
- Social media growth — using link destinations to drive Instagram follows, YouTube subscribers, or TikTok engagement
- Testimonial collection — disabling review sites, collecting direct feedback, and publishing standout responses on your website or marketing material
- Employee recognition — enabling employee selection so customers can call out specific team members
- Sentiment and satisfaction surveys — using the rating stage as a sentiment score and direct feedback as the open-ended follow-up
- Referral and content paths — using followup destinations or Rich Editor Customer destinations to hand customers off to another Flow, Form, Page, or business link
This page focuses on how the core flow works from the customer’s perspective and how your configuration shapes what they see.
Why It Matters
Section titled “Why It Matters”Review flows are one of the core tools in FSRevs. Understanding how they work helps you:
- Build flows that match your business goals
- Choose the right settings during setup
- Create a smoother path to both external destinations and written feedback
The Strategy Behind the Flow
Section titled “The Strategy Behind the Flow”Every customer interaction is an opportunity to learn something valuable and give the customer a clear next step.
A review flow is designed to help you do two things at once:
- Offer configured public destinations when a customer wants to continue to an external site
- Offer a direct written-feedback path when a customer wants to respond inside the Flow
This allows the same Flow to support reputation growth, team recognition, and service recovery without using the customer’s rating to restrict their choices. Direct feedback is saved as Private when submitted, but it is not permanently private. A permitted team member may later make it Public for FSRevs Public Pages or widgets when the business has the appropriate content-use permission.
An external-destination click is recorded as a Review Attempt. It does not prove that the customer posted a review on that site. Written feedback submitted in FSRevs is a separate outcome.
How the Review Flow Works
Section titled “How the Review Flow Works”A review flow can include up to five stages, but it can be as simple or as detailed as you need. Some businesses may send customers straight to Google with no extra steps, while others may choose to collect contact details, sentiment, employee attribution, testimonials, profile photos, or other helpful information along the way. Because each flow is highly configurable, you can shape the experience around your goals and refine it over time.
Stage 1: Location Selection
Section titled “Stage 1: Location Selection”Purpose: Connect the customer’s response to the correct location so your team can track performance, recognize great work, and spot issues more accurately.
Shown when:
- More than one location could apply
- The location has not already been defined in the flow or link
Skipped when:
- The flow is assigned to a single location
- The location is already preselected in the QR code, smart link, SMS, or email
- The customer is continuing a Journey that already has a valid location
What the customer does: They select the location they visited in a quick first step designed to keep friction low.
Stage 2: Details & Context — The Identity & Sentiment Layer
Section titled “Stage 2: Details & Context — The Identity & Sentiment Layer”Purpose: Gather the customer details and added context that support follow-up, recognition, and more meaningful feedback.
Depending on your settings, this stage can include:
- Required or optional name, email, and mobile phone fields
- Optional, separate email and SMS marketing choices beside valid contact values
- A sentiment selection using the star widget or Customer Recommendation Score widget
- Employee selection
- Custom guidance or prompts to help frame the response
This stage is highly flexible. You can use it to collect valuable context before the customer continues, or skip it entirely when a faster, lower-friction experience is more important.
If only optional customer-information fields are shown, choosing Continue remembers that choice so the same blank fields do not interrupt a reload or resumed record. Browser Back still restores the historical Details screen and allows the customer to add an optional value. A full reload rebuilds the Flow at its furthest valid stage.
Why this stage matters: A rating adds structured experience data before destination choices or only alongside written feedback, depending on the selected timing. It does not determine whether the customer may see an external destination. When Team Member Attribution is customer-selectable, the selector appears only when an eligible team member exists.
Shown when: Enabled in the flow configuration.
What the customer does: They fill in the information you have chosen to request. If marketing permission is configured, they can independently choose email, SMS, both, or neither.
Stage 3: Options & Next Steps — The Decision Gateway
Section titled “Stage 3: Options & Next Steps — The Decision Gateway”Purpose: Present the next paths available to the customer based on how your flow is configured.
This stage can include:
- Review site options, such as Google or Facebook
- A written-feedback or testimonial option
- Links to other destinations, including your website, social pages, or other custom pages
You can also add supporting text and images here to give customers more context and help guide the kind of response you want to encourage.
This stage is highly flexible. Some businesses offer several paths, while others prefer a single destination. If your flow is set up to send customers straight to one place, this stage can be skipped entirely for a faster experience.
Why this stage matters: For many customers, this will be the final step in the flow. If they choose a direct feedback path, they continue to Stage 4. If they choose an external destination such as Google, they may leave the flow at that point.
Shown when: The Flow needs to display external destinations or let the customer choose between destinations and written feedback. A single external destination still displays a button when Keep Your Completion Step Available is on. With exactly one eligible destination, no written-feedback option, and that setting off, the Flow can send the customer straight to the destination after any required earlier stages.
What the customer does: They choose how they want to continue.
Stage 4: Direct Feedback — The Insight Engine
Section titled “Stage 4: Direct Feedback — The Insight Engine”Purpose: Collect written feedback, testimonials, and other customer-generated content directly inside the flow.
This stage can include:
- Written feedback or testimonials
- A configured required or optional mobile phone number
- An optional tagline or category
- Photo uploads
- Additional content prompts, if enabled
When a customer provides direct feedback, their name, public display name, and email address are always collected and required. A mobile phone number can also be configured as required or optional. These same phone rules apply when Written Feedback is offered as a fallback because no eligible external destination is available. This helps connect feedback to a real customer, supports follow-up when needed, and gives you the information required to display submitted content appropriately if it is used publicly.
If configured, this stage can also request email or SMS marketing permission beside the applicable contact value. Permission already granted for the same value is not requested again.
Email and SMS marketing permission allows future contact through the exact email address or phone number the customer accepts. It is separate from permission to reuse feedback or photos and separate from the response’s Public/Private visibility.
Why this stage matters: This stage is most often used for direct feedback, but it can also support other types of customer-generated content. Depending on how you configure it, you can use it to collect testimonials, photos, answers to guided prompts, or other content that supports your website, social media, and marketing efforts. It is a flexible way to gather more useful, more structured responses than a simple public review alone.
Shown when:
- The customer chooses a direct feedback path
- Direct feedback is enabled as part of the flow
- External review and social links are enabled, but the resolved Location has no eligible destination and Written Feedback becomes the fallback
Skipped when:
- The customer selects a review site or other external destination
- Direct feedback is disabled and an eligible external destination remains available
- Both external destinations and direct feedback are disabled
What the customer does: They provide the requested information, share their feedback or content, and submit it.
The submitted feedback starts Private. A permitted team member can later make eligible feedback Public, but changing visibility does not create missing permission to reuse customer content.
The phone field is part of this existing stage; it does not add another screen or change the five-stage structure.
Stage 5: Completion
Section titled “Stage 5: Completion”Purpose: End the current Flow, or guide the customer into the next touchpoint.
This stage can be as simple as a thank-you message or branded success page, or it can send the customer to a review site, social page, offer, mailing list, external website, or even the start of another flow.
Why this stage matters: Completion is not always the end of the experience. It can also serve as the bridge into whatever comes next — a second review site, a loyalty program, a referral request, a piece of content, or another guided experience. Connecting resources with Smart Links and managed Customer destinations can turn a single response into the beginning of a longer customer relationship.
How Configuration Shapes the Flow
Section titled “How Configuration Shapes the Flow”The same Review Flow can create very different customer experiences depending on how it is configured. We will go into more detail about what each setting does in the Creating a Review Flow section, but the examples below show a few simple ways your settings can shape its stages.
| Configuration | Customer Experience |
|---|---|
| Rating before choices, written feedback enabled, Google + Facebook configured | Customer rates the experience, then chooses an external destination or written feedback. |
| Rating disabled, written feedback off, Google only | Customer is sent directly to Google when the shortcut conditions apply. |
| Rating only with written feedback, no eligible destinations | Written-feedback fallback activates and the customer provides a rating with that response. |
| Multi-location flow with employee tracking enabled | Customer selects a location, identifies the employee who helped them, shares sentiment, then continues to the next available path |
Key Settings
Section titled “Key Settings”Review Site Ordering
Section titled “Review Site Ordering”You control the order in which review sites appear. This can significantly influence where customers choose to leave their reviews.
Conditional Stages
Section titled “Conditional Stages”Not every stage appears in every flow:
- Single-location flows skip the location selection stage
- A flow with no eligible external destinations can activate written-feedback fallback
- Flows with written feedback off skip Stage 4 when an eligible external destination is available; fallback can still apply when none are available
Review Flows can be configured in many different ways. Some are designed to gather more context, such as customer details, sentiment, employee attribution, or other useful information for follow-up and analysis. Others are intentionally kept as short and frictionless as possible. The right setup depends on your goals, and the same system can support a wide range of customer experiences.
Customer Identity
Section titled “Customer Identity”FSRevs uses collected contact details to create or match customer records when it can safely identify the customer. A name or a public Smart Link visit alone does not guarantee a match to an existing customer. Personalized requests can provide the customer context before the Flow begins.
When a customer selects a configured marketing choice, FSRevs records contact permission only when it can safely associate the response with a customer. Permission applies to the exact email address or phone number shown and remains separate by channel. It does not grant permission to publish feedback or photos. See Marketing Permission for setup details.
You can view and manage your customer records in the Customers section of the portal.
Flow Activity Records
Section titled “Flow Activity Records”System-sent requests create their Review Record before dispatch so the request retains its historical Flow and Location. Reusable Smart Links may defer record creation until the customer meaningfully interacts; crawlers or an abandoned first page therefore do not necessarily create activity. Once created, the record can show its observed Customer Journey and can be viewed in Flow Activity.
A Smart Link can rotate new visitors across several destinations. Once a Review Record begins, it remains pinned to the destination that originally opened it even if the Smart Link’s active rotation changes.
Work from the Review Flow Directory
Section titled “Work from the Review Flow Directory”Open Review Flows under Customer Engagement to see an operational card for every Flow you can access. Each card keeps the Flow’s scope, response activity, and health together:
| Card detail | What it means |
|---|---|
| New | Completed responses you have not yet acknowledged for this Flow |
| 30 days | Completed responses received during the last 30 days |
| Total | All completed responses you can access |
| Latest response | How long ago the newest completed response arrived |
The card also identifies a location-specific Flow or All Locations scope. Its top bar shows the current response status:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Running | Accepting new responses |
| Paused | Not accepting new responses |
| Trashed | In Trash and unavailable |
If you can edit the Flow, select Running or Paused to use Pause New Responses or Resume New Responses. This changes the Flow’s Accept New Responses setting. Pausing blocks new public starts and new request actions, but customers can still finish personalized requests that were already issued. When direct Journey connections are affected, the confirmation lists them; it does not change those connections automatically.
Notification coverage appears as No one notified, the number of people notified, or the number of people conditionally notified. The count is the number of distinct eligible team members, not the number of events, settings, or delivery methods.
The Smart Link badge shows No Smart Link, 1 active Smart Link, a count such as 2 active Smart Links, Smart Link disabled, or a count such as 2 Smart Links disabled. Select it to open Smart Link quick access. From there you can use Copy link, Open link, Download PNG, Download SVG, Customize QR, or Smart Link setup. A disabled primary link warns that its URL and downloaded QR codes will not open until it is enabled.
Use the card actions to move directly into the Flow’s workspace:
- Activity opens requests and responses locked to this Review Flow.
- Reports summarizes its funnel, outcomes, destinations, delivery, and attribution.
- Configure opens the editable Build & Configure workspace. When you can view but not edit the Flow, the action is View setup instead.
- Links & Connections and, when permitted, Team Notifications are available from the More menu.
Open Team Notifications to configure Review Link Clicked and Feedback Submitted alerts by person. The workspace shows who is active, needs attention, is not configured, or is unavailable, and supports both individual and bulk setup. Review Clicked alerts wait 10 minutes so feedback submitted during that window can replace the click alert. See Notifications for setup, eligibility, and timing details.
Sort the directory by Name, Recent Activity, New Activity, or Location. Filters can narrow it by Location, Scope, Status, and Attention—including new responses, notification warnings, or Journey issues—and can include deleted Flows.
The number beside Review Flows in the portal navigation is your combined unseen completed-response count. It is calculated for your access, stays separate from every other team member’s count, and displays 99+ when the total reaches 100. Open a Flow’s normal, unfiltered Activity page to acknowledge its new responses.
See Flow Activity, Flow & Form Reports, and Creating a Review Flow.
Practical Examples
Section titled “Practical Examples”Review flows are flexible enough to support a wide range of customer engagement goals:
- A restaurant uses a flow built around the dining experience, inviting guests to share what stood out about their meal and compliment the team member who made the visit memorable before continuing to the next step.
- A service business lets customers identify the technician, advisor, or staff member who helped them, so feedback and recognition stay connected to the right person.
- A multi-location business uses one shared flow while still routing customers to the correct location, review page, and follow-up experience.
- A brand focused on customer content uses direct feedback to collect testimonials, photos, and other customer-generated material that can support its website, social media, and marketing efforts.
- A business focused on long-term relationships uses the completion step to guide customers to what comes next — another flow, a referral page, a rewards program, or a social media destination.
These are just a few examples of what is possible. To explore more ideas and see how different flow strategies can work in practice, visit the Recipes section.
Related Pages
Section titled “Related Pages”- Creating a Review Flow — Step-by-step creation guide
- Review Flow Settings Guide — Detailed settings reference
- Followup Destinations — What happens after completion
- Sending Requests — How to send flows to customers
Next Step
Section titled “Next Step”Now that you understand how a review flow works from the customer’s perspective, the next step is to learn how to build one.
Continue to Creating a Review Flow to see how each setting shapes the experience from the setup side.