How the review draft is written

Last updated: June 11, 2026

Every review that comes out of BetterReviews is written from what your customer actually said in the chat. We don’t invent words, we don’t add opinions, and we don’t polish things into marketing-speak. The review should sound like the customer — just a little more structured than a chat message.

This page explains exactly how the draft gets built.

The core rule: preserve the customer’s words

When a customer says “the battery is insane,” the draft says “the battery is insane.” Not “the battery is exceptional.” Not “battery life is outstanding.” The words the customer chose carry their personality — swapping them out kills that.

The same goes for the things they complain about. If they say “it’s pretty good but the buttons feel cheap,” the draft keeps that tension. We don’t soften “feel cheap” to “feel less premium” or drop it entirely. Negative feedback is valid review content.

We keep the customer’s exact words even when they read a little unusual. A few specific promises:

We never change what a word means. If a quilter writes “it’s still a flimsy” (a “flimsy” is a finished-but-unquilted quilt top), the draft keeps “it’s still a flimsy” — we don’t turn it into “it still feels flimsy,” which would read as a complaint about quality. Industry and hobby terms are kept exactly as written.
We never add contrast words the customer didn’t use. No slipping in “However,” “But,” or “Although” that reframes a neutral comment as a caveat.
Short answers stay honest. If a customer answers in one or two words (“Strength,” “Storage”), we make it a complete sentence in their words (“I like the strength and storage”) — we never invent an adjective like “great” or “excellent” to dress it up.

What we drop

Chat messages have a lot of filler that doesn’t belong in a review. We trim these:

Hedges — “I guess,” “I think,” “kind of,” “sort of,” “like”
Conversation starters — “yeah so,” “I mean,” “honestly,” “ok so”
Filler questions back to the chat — “does that make sense?”, “you know what I mean?”

A customer saying “yeah so I guess the texture kind of draws you in” becomes “The texture draws you in.” Same meaning, the filler gone.

What we fix

Capitalization — reviews start with a capital letter
Obvious typos — only when the intended word is unambiguous and the meaning doesn’t change. We don’t “correct” an unfamiliar craft term that looks like a mistake but isn’t.
Fragments into sentences — joining a customer’s short answers into complete sentences using their own words, never by adding new descriptors

We never touch meaning or opinion. Only mechanics — and when in doubt, we leave the customer’s wording alone rather than risk changing what they meant.

What we never do

Never invent content. If the customer didn’t say the word “comfortable,” the draft doesn’t either.
Never soften negative feedback. “This isn’t worth the price” stays. We don’t rewrite it as “the value could be better.”
Never add marketing phrases. “Transformative,” “life-changing,” “game-changer” — if the customer didn’t use those words, they don’t appear.
Never use semicolons. They read as formal and customers don’t write that way. Commas or periods instead.

What the draft can reference

The draft is always built from what the customer has said in the chat and what the chat can reasonably infer from the order (product name, purchase date). It doesn’t pull in things from elsewhere — other reviews, the product description, things the customer said to you in email last week.

Photos in the review

If the customer attached a photo (via the photo prompt or the paperclip), it’s automatically included with the review. The draft text doesn’t mention the photo. Adding a phrase like “I’ve attached a photo below” would read as robotic — the thumbnail is already visible next to the review.

If the customer describes what their photo shows (“as you can see the stitching is coming apart”), we keep that description as review content. But we never fabricate photo references.

Why this matters

The point of BetterReviews is that reviews written this way convert better — they’re specific, they sound like real people, they build trust. A review that reads like AI copy does the opposite. We’d rather ship a slightly rough draft in the customer’s voice than a polished one that sounds fake.