Approving, rejecting, and other review actions
Last updated: June 14, 2026
A review that needs human attention can be acted on from two places: the dashboard review detail page, or directly from a notification email if you have email-driven moderation turned on. The two surfaces don’t expose the same buttons — the dashboard carries the core decisions, and the email flow adds a few inbox-only shortcuts (public reply, private reply, archive, mark-as-spam) for CS teams who never log into the admin. This page covers both; each section is labelled with where the action lives.
Dashboard actions
From a review’s detail page in the BetterReviews admin you get exactly these:
| Action | What it does | Reversible? |
|---|---|---|
| Approve | Publishes the review on your storefront widget. Counts toward your approved-review average. | Yes — re-open by rejecting, or flip back from Rejected. |
| Reject | Marks the review as Rejected. Never shows on the widget, kept for audit. | Yes — re-approve any time. |
| Delete | Removes the review permanently from your admin. | No. |
| Public reply | Write a reply in the Your reply section; it renders underneath the review, attributed to your store name. | Yes — edit or delete the reply later. |
| Request permission | Asks the customer for rights to feature the review in ads or social posts. See requesting permission to feature reviews. | Yes — the request can be re-sent. |
Only Delete is irreversible. Everything else can be changed later.
Where’s Archive / Mark as spam / Reply privately? Those aren’t dashboard buttons — they live only in the email-driven moderation flow, covered below. “Archived” still appears as a stage chip on the Reviews tab (reviews land there when a CS rep archives one from email), but there’s no Archive button on the dashboard detail page.
Approve
Dashboard + email. What it does: the review moves to Published and starts showing on your product page widget. It begins counting toward your approved-review average. If you have the auto-thank-you message wired up in Shopify Flow, it fires unless you opted out (per-review checkbox on the email confirmation, or the store-wide setting in Collect → Email moderation).
When to use it:
- The review has useful content and a reasonable tone
- It’s specific to the product (or close enough)
- It’s not obviously spam or off-topic
Public reply
Dashboard. What it does: the review detail page has a Your reply section where you write a reply that renders underneath the review on the widget, attributed to your store name. This is a separate step from Approve — you can reply on an already-published review, and a reply doesn’t publish a pending review on its own.
When to use it:
- A negative review you want to acknowledge and address publicly
- A glowing review where a thank-you-from-the-store touches the customer
- Any review where future shoppers benefit from your context
Replies render under the review card on the widget. One reply per review — saving a second overwrites the first. See responding to reviews for the full workflow.
Email shortcut: the email-driven moderation flow offers Approve & reply publicly as a single primary button so a CS rep can publish and attach a public reply in one step from their inbox. On the dashboard these are two separate steps (Approve, then write a reply) — same end result.
Request permission
Dashboard. What it does: sends the customer a request for rights to feature their review (and photos) in ads, social posts, or other marketing. The review’s clearance status shows as a badge (“Not cleared” / “Permission requested” / “Cleared to use”).
When to use it: before reusing a review outside your storefront widget. See requesting permission to feature reviews for scopes (text / photo / both) and how the request email works.
Reply privately (email flow only)
Email-driven moderation only — there is no Reply-privately button on the dashboard. What it does: a CS rep replies to the customer over email from the notification flow. The review then moves to On hold so it’s flagged for a follow-up call after the customer responds. The customer’s reply lands in your CS inbox (the address tied to your Shopify store), not back into BetterReviews.
When to use it:
- The customer described a defect or shipping issue and you want to follow up offline before deciding what to publish
- You want context from the customer before approving (e.g. “can you send a photo of the issue?”)
- You don’t want a public-facing back-and-forth on the storefront
This shortcut exists specifically because many CS reps don’t have access to a separate helpdesk — and chasing them off-platform is friction. The private reply lands in the customer’s inbox and they can respond directly. See email-driven moderation for the full support cascade (Hold 5 days, +5 day extensions, Stale).
Archive (email flow only)
Email-driven moderation only — there is no Archive button on the dashboard. What it does: a CS rep hides the review from your storefront but keeps it in your records, directly from the notification email. Archived reviews show up under the Archived stage chip on the Reviews tab and are restorable from there. Different from Reject in tone — Archive is “shelf this for now,” Reject is “this never publishes.”
When to use it:
- The review is fine but you don’t want to surface it right now (off-message for a current campaign, etc.)
- The customer asked you to take it down for non-fraud reasons
- You’re cleaning up the moderation queue without committing to permanent rejection
Restorable from the dashboard. Doesn’t count against the customer’s submission history. (On the dashboard itself, use Reject for a review you don’t want published — it’s likewise reversible.)
Reject
What it does: marks the review as Rejected. It never shows on the widget, but the record is kept.
When to use it:
- Obvious spam or nonsense (“asdasd”, bot-looking content)
- Reviews that reference a competitor’s product, not yours
- Off-topic content (a customer venting about shipping when they were asked about the product)
- Reviews that violate your policies (abusive language, PII, etc.)
Rejected reviews are kept (not deleted) so you can re-approve later if context changes. On the dashboard, Reject is your reversible “don’t publish this” action.
Mark as spam (email flow only)
Email-driven moderation only — there is no Mark-as-spam button on the dashboard. What it does: when the AI flags a submission as likely spam, the notification email surfaces Reject and Mark as spam as primary buttons. Mark as spam reaches the same end state as Reject — the review never shows — plus the signal feeds into automatic spam detection for future reviews.
When to use it:
- Burner-domain reviews with copy-pasted text from elsewhere
- Reviews that look like spam-pattern attempts (keyword stuffing, link drops)
- Anything you’d want the system to auto-reject going forward
Don’t use it for honest critical reviews. Reject those instead — Mark as spam reinforces a pattern, and you don’t want low-rating reviews to train the spam filter. On the dashboard, where there’s no Mark-as-spam button, just Reject the spam.
Delete
What it does: the review is removed permanently. It no longer exists in your admin.
When to use it:
- The reviewer asked you to remove their review
- Rare edge cases where you want the record gone entirely (legal, compliance)
- Testing or obvious duplicates you don’t want to keep
Reversible? No. There’s no undelete.
When you hit delete from the list or the bulk action, we ask you to confirm. Don’t skip the confirmation — there’s no “oops” button after.
The right default workflow
For day-to-day moderation from the dashboard:
- Spam, off-topic, policy-violation, or competitor-product? → Reject (keeps the record, reversible)
- Legitimate review? → Approve, then write a public reply if you have something to add
- Want to feature it in marketing? → Approve, then Request permission
- Customer explicitly asked you to remove it? → Delete
Treat Delete as a special-case action for when nothing else fits.
If your CS team works from email-driven moderation instead, the inbox flow adds a few shortcuts on top of these: Mark as spam (trains the filter on flagged junk), Reply privately (follow up offline on a defect/complaint before deciding), and Archive (“shelf this for now” without rejecting). See email-driven moderation for that workflow.
If a customer wants to edit their review after submitting
Customers can’t edit a review after submission — the chat flow ends at submit. If a customer wants meaningful changes, the simplest path is:
- Delete the existing review in the admin
- Ask them to submit a new one (they can start a fresh chat from the widget or ask you for a request link)
We don’t have in-admin review editing today. If you need a typo fix or redaction urgently, email us.