● Customer reviews
Customer Mediation
Direct customer service access offered to a dissatisfied customer before they post a review. Resolves issues upstream without blocking negative reviews.
Full definition
Customer mediation refers to a mechanism by which an e-commerce business offers a potentially dissatisfied customer direct access to customer service before they post a review. The principle: when a customer receives a review request, they are invited to indicate their satisfaction level. If this level is low, they are offered priority access to customer support to resolve their issue before sharing their experience publicly.
It is essential to understand what customer mediation is not: it is not review filtering. All customers receive the same invitation to post a review, regardless of their satisfaction level. Negative reviews are never blocked or removed. The customer remains free to post their review at any time. Preventive mediation simply provides a resolution opportunity before publication, not a barrier.
The impact of this approach is twofold. On one hand, genuinely resolved issues do not generate negative reviews, because the dissatisfied customer becomes satisfied. On the other hand, the insights gathered during these mediations provide the business with valuable operational feedback on friction points in the purchase journey, enabling product or service improvement at the source.
Concrete example
A customer receives their parcel with a damaged item. Two days after delivery, they receive a review request email. By indicating that they are dissatisfied, they see displayed: "We are sorry for your experience. Would you like to contact our customer service directly?" They click, describe their issue, and the customer service team calls them back within 2 hours and arranges an immediate replacement. The customer, satisfied with the resolution, ultimately posts a 4-star review.
Without preventive mediation, this same customer would likely have posted a 1 or 2-star review describing the damaged item, visible to all future prospects. With mediation, the problem is resolved, the customer retained, and the overall rating preserved. The entire process is transparent: the customer always has the freedom to post their review, whether or not they use the mediation.
With Review Collect
Preventive customer mediation is one of Review Collect's core differentiators. The platform integrates this mechanism directly into the review collection flow: every review request sent by email, SMS or WhatsApp includes a dissatisfaction detection point. Customers with low satisfaction are automatically directed to customer support before being invited to publish.
This system does not filter negative reviews: it resolves problems at the source. The distinction is fundamental. Review Collect clients achieve an average rating of 4.9/5 not because negative reviews are blocked, but because the issues that generate those reviews are resolved upstream. This is a service quality approach, not image manipulation.
