What is Review Gating?
- Dale Clifford
- Apr 4
- 5 min read
As Customer Experience Practitioners, we spend a lot of time reviewing - you guessed it - customer reviews. Benchmarking and understand customer needs and pain points is critical.
However, every now and then we come across some big brands that have a disproportionate amount of positive 5-star reviews.
Word of mouth is the lifeblood of any business, right?
Whether you’re running a café, a retail brand, or a financial services company, they’re often the first thing customers check before deciding to trust you.
But here’s the thing - we’ve noticed some businesses seem to have too many glowing reviews.
Like, tens of thousands of five-star ratings and barely a single complaint.
That’s when alarm bells start ringing.
The culprit? Often, it’s review gating, an unconventional practice where businesses cherry-pick positive feedback and keep the negative stuff out of sight.
Sure, it might seem clever, but it’s risky, outdated, and, frankly, not worth the hassle anymore. Let’s break it down.
Review Gating: What is it?
You might not have heard about review gating, but simply, it's all about filtering.
A business asks a customer for feedback, and if the response is good, they ask them to leave a public review. If it’s bad? They quietly thank them and move on.
It’s like showing off only the good bits and hiding the rest.
Great marketing tactic, but it's not representative of the real customer experience.
And Google agrees. In fact, platforms like Google and Trustpilot have outright banned the practice, and even the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) isn’t a fan.
Suppressing negative reviews or only showing the positives could land you in hot water with regulators and customers alike.
Touchpoints: Sales vs Service vs Claims
Ensuring that you capture a representative sample of your real customer interactions is important too.
Something else we've noticed with some insurance brands is that there's a lot of great reviews around pricing and sales experience: especially during promotional campaigns.
But what we find interesting is that there's very little commentary around insurance claims: are insurance brands forgetting to ask customers for reviews after a claim has settled or throughout the claim lifecycle?
Some of them only ask for reviews when customers are buying a policy. Makes sense, right? You’ve just given someone a great price, and they’re happy - they’ll leave you a glowing review. But what about later?
We often see restaurants and cafes offer freebies or discounts at the time of purchase if the customer leaves a review. This often skews the review score to be favourably positive, and is frowned upon by review sites - especially Google, who says this practice is unacceptable.
When a customer makes a claim - arguably the most emotionally charged moment of their relationship with an insurer - reviews suddenly go silent.
Why? Because those moments often come with frustrations, delays, or disappointments. Instead of facing those potential negatives head-on, some brands avoid promoting reviews altogether.
We know that many insurers actively seek feedback from customers during and after the claims process (e.g. transactional NPS touchpoints) - this customer insight is used internally to help improve processes and the customer experience, but often customers are not invited to leave public online reviews at these highly emotional touchpoints.
Is this review gating, or just an oversight because marketing functions focus so much on growth and sales that the invites for reviews are only sent at this touchpoint?
By failing to capture feedback during critical (and sometimes tough) moments, you’re missing out on genuine insights and the chance to show how you handle customers when it really matters.
What Does the ACCC Say?
The ACCC has been clear on this: reviews must be genuine, transparent, and fair. Under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, businesses need to:
Show All Reviews: Don’t only highlight the good ones while suppressing the bad. That’s misleading conduct.
Disclose Incentives: If you’re offering discounts, rewards, or anything in return for a review, you need to make that obvious to everyone.
Avoid Fakes: Writing fake reviews, asking friends or family to review without disclosing the connection, or manipulating feedback is a big no-no. Usually the culprits are cafes and local businesses, and this is uncommon with big brands.
The fix is simple: ask everyone for a review at every stage of the journey.
Some survey platforms make it easy to consistently ask customers for reviews.
Don’t just cherry-pick the easy moments, like a purchase. Here’s how to do it right:
Ask at Critical Moments: Whether it’s a sale, a claim, or even a complaint, ask for feedback. Customers want to know how you handle the hard stuff.
Be Honest About Incentives: If you’re offering rewards for reviews, let people know and don’t hide it.
Embrace Criticism: Use negative reviews as a chance to improve. Customers love a business that’s not afraid to admit its mistakes and fix them.
If you manage a Google Business Listing, you will get regular reminders from Google around its acceptable use policies.
Not only will this keep you on the right side of Google and the ACCC. It'll show your customers that you value their feedback, no matter what stage of the journey they’re in.
Review gating might feel like a shortcut, but it’s risky.
Between Google’s penalties, the ACCC’s consumer protection laws, and customers’ growing demand for transparency, it’s just not worth it.
Instead, focus on authenticity. Ask for feedback from everyone - whether it’s during a sale or a claim. Listen to what your customers are saying - good or bad - and use it to grow. I
In the long run, being honest and open will do more for your business the practice of gating reviews ever could and you'll uncover painpoints that you can resolve openly with customers if you encourage critical feedback.
In the end, trust and loyalty is built by brands that listen to customers and evolve their products and service offering.
If you’re rethinking your review strategy or wondering how to capture feedback across the full customer journey, connect with us. We can help you get it right - no shortcuts needed.
Commentaires