Key Concepts

This section provides a foundational overview of key concepts essential to managing ratings within our portal. These concepts are fundamental building blocks that enable businesses to effectively manage reviews and verify users, ensuring credible and high-quality feedback on their products and services. By understanding these core elements, businesses can maintain reliable, and insightful feedback that captures genuine customer experiences.

Ratings & Reviews are essential tools for collecting customer feedback and insights on both products and locations. They allow users to rate products, services, or physical locations, typically using a star or numerical system, and provide written reviews detailing their experiences. This feedback not only helps other consumers make informed decisions but also offers businesses valuable data to enhance their offerings. By understanding customer satisfaction and addressing concerns highlighted in reviews, businesses can improve product quality, service delivery, and the overall customer experience.

Product Ratings and Reviews allow customers to share their experiences and opinions about specific items they have purchased or used. Customers can rate products on a scale, often using stars or numerical values, and provide written feedback highlighting what they liked or disliked. This feedback helps other potential buyers make informed purchasing decisions and provides businesses with valuable insights into product performance, quality, and areas for improvement.

Location Ratings and Reviews enable customers to evaluate physical stores, service centers, or other business locations based on their experiences. These reviews might cover aspects such as customer service, ambiance, cleanliness, or convenience. Just like product reviews, location reviews are crucial for businesses to understand customer satisfaction at specific sites and to make necessary improvements to enhance the overall customer experience.

The Ratings and Reviews service is designed to systematically organize user feedback through several key components, enhancing the overall evaluation process. It starts with Aspects, which represent specific product features that users can rate. These aspects are grouped into aspect groups to improve organization and management. Each Aspect Group can include associated Question Groups to further refine the feedback, allowing for more detailed and targeted input. Additionally, the service includes a Questions and Answers feature displayed on ratings and reviews collection pages, capturing deeper insights into customer experiences and preferences.

Within the Ratings system, there are two primary actors: the Customer and the Moderator. Customers can rate aspects, write reviews, attach images, recommend products or locations, vote on reviews, and report inappropriate reviews as well. Moderators, on the other hand, have the authority to accept or reject reviews; accepted reviews are published, while rejected ones are disregarded. They also respond to reviews, address customer-reported issues, and verify or unverify users based on their invoices and phone numbers. These components and roles work together to create a robust feedback system that supports informed purchasing decisions and ongoing product improvement.

Ratings concisely express overall satisfaction with a product, service, or location. Typically represented by a numerical scale or star system (e.g., 1 to 5 stars), ratings provide a quick snapshot of user sentiment. They are useful for aggregating feedback into a simple, easily interpretable score that reflects general user satisfaction. Whereas Reviews are detailed written feedback that accompanies ratings. Unlike ratings offering a summary, reviews provide context and specifics about the user’s experience. Reviews can include observations about particular features, quality, usability, and any issues encountered. They offer a deeper understanding of the rating by highlighting both positive and negative aspects of the product, service, or location.

Aspects are a product's specific elements or attributes that customers can rate and review. For example, a pair of running shoes might have quality, durability, design, fit, comfort, and value for money. Customers can rate each aspect individually, providing more granular feedback. This detailed feedback helps businesses understand which specific areas are performing well and which need improvement.

In the Aspect Groups section, you will find organized collections of related aspects. For example, a pair of running shoes might have aspect group Quality including aspects such as material quality, fit, stitching, and overall durability. This group focuses on how well the shoes are made and how long they last under regular use. Grouping these aspects helps businesses analyze customer feedback in a structured way and identify areas for improvement.

The Overall Rating is the aggregate score derived from the individual ratings given for various aspects of a product, service, or location. It represents the general satisfaction level and provides a quick overview of how well the product or service is perceived by users. This rating is often prominently displayed to give potential customers a snapshot of overall performance.

Aspect Rating refers to the individual scores assigned to specific attributes or features of a product, service, or location. For instance, a product might be rated on aspects such as quality, durability, and design. These ratings contribute to the Overall Rating and offer insights into which particular elements are performing well or require improvement.

Review Text is the detailed written feedback provided by users alongside their ratings. It includes comments and observations about their experience with the product, service, or location. Review Text offers context to the rating, detailing specific strengths and weaknesses, and providing valuable qualitative data that can help businesses understand customer experiences more comprehensively.

Questions are used to solicit detailed feedback on specific aspects of a product, service, or location. Users respond to these questions to provide targeted insights into particular features or experiences. This feedback helps businesses gather detailed information about specific areas of interest, contributing to a deeper understanding of user satisfaction.

The Question Groups contain collections of questions along with associated answer options, designed to gather detailed feedback on specific topics. These questions are organized into groups and can be linked to an aspect group, which represents particular attributes of a product, such as battery life, camera quality, or user interface for a smartphone. When customers respond to these questions, their answers contribute to the overall product rating by providing insights into specific aspects. This structured approach ensures that feedback is both detailed and targeted, enabling businesses to make informed improvements.

Voting allows users to express their opinions on the usefulness of reviews and feedback, typically through mechanisms like “helpful” or “not helpful” buttons. This process helps highlight valuable and relevant reviews, ensuring that the most useful feedback is prominently displayed and accessible to other users.

The Report feature in the Ratings and Reviews service allows users to flag inappropriate or non-compliant reviews for further evaluation. When submitting a report, users can include a comment detailing their concerns, such as offensive language, spam, or content that violates the platform’s guidelines. These reports are visible to moderators in the portal, where they can review the flagged content and take appropriate actions, such as rejecting (taking down) the review.

Moderation is the process of reviewing and managing user-generated content to ensure it meets established guidelines and standards. In the context of reviews, moderation involves assessing submissions for appropriateness, relevance, and compliance before publication. This process helps maintain the quality and integrity of the content, ensuring that feedback is constructive and aligns with the platform’s policies.

Moderators play a crucial role in this process by approving, editing, or rejecting content based on these criteria. They are also responsible for manually verifying users, reviewing reported reviews, and taking appropriate actions. Additionally, moderators respond to customer reviews (client responses), addressing feedback and engaging with users to maintain a positive and trustworthy community environment.

Reviews are a critical component of the feedback system, allowing individuals to share their experiences and opinions about products, services, or locations. There are two types of reviews within UpStart Commerce Employee Reviews and Customer Reviews.

Employee Reviews

Employee reviews refer to the feedback provided by employees about the products and services. These reviews offer valuable insights from the perspective of those who are closely familiar with the company's offerings. For example, employees might rate the usability, quality, and overall performance of a product, providing constructive feedback that can help improve product development and customer service.

Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are feedback provided by customers about products or services they have purchased or experienced. For example, a customer might rate a product on a scale of 1 to 5 stars and leave a comment about their experience. These reviews help potential buyers make informed decisions and provide valuable insights to businesses for product improvement and customer satisfaction.

Client Response enables businesses to directly engage with customers by replying to approved reviews. Through the Client Response box, the Moderator can write a detailed reply and attach a photo if needed, allowing you to address feedback, clarify issues, or provide additional information. This feature ensures that responses are made to reviews that have passed moderation, enhancing transparency and demonstrating a commitment to customer satisfaction.