Reviews & customer photos: honest reviews without the chasing

Sign in and open Catalog in the sidebar. Reviews & customer photos is under Reviews & reputation, and it opens at aikit.ai/tools/reviews. Pin it to your dock to keep it one tap away. When new reviews or photos arrive, Home shows a row with the count and an Open Inbox button.

The page has three tabs: Requests, Inbox, and Settings. Every tab, filter, and open customer has its own address (for example aikit.ai/tools/reviews?tab=inbox), so any view can be bookmarked or shared with someone on your account, and Back works the way you expect.

Every customer gets the same email and the same review page, whatever they might rate. Your Google review link is on the page for everyone, before and after they rate, and the answer after sending a review is the same for one star as for five. Nothing in the tool sends happy customers to Google and unhappy ones somewhere private; Google calls that review gating and doesn't allow it.

aiKit also never pays or rewards anyone for a review. When you save the request wording, it is checked: wording that asks only happy customers, asks for a star count or a positive review, tells unhappy customers to contact you instead, or offers a discount, credit, gift, or prize for a review can't be saved, and the reason is shown next to the words that caused it. Requests can't go out with that wording either.

You may offer a thank-you for photos (Settings > Customer photos). It is shown to everyone who shares photos, whether or not they review and whatever they rate, and it can't mention reviews or ratings.

Every customer can also add a private note that only you read. It's offered to everyone, not only to unhappy customers.

• Press Add customers. Choose One customer to type a name, email, the job (optional, like "Kitchen backsplash"), the date it was finished, and a phone number for your records.
• Or choose A list or CSV. Paste rows from your spreadsheet, or press Choose a CSV file. Columns are found by their names: name (or first and last name), email, phone, job, and date. Without a header row, the column with email addresses is found and the one before it is used as the name. A preview shows how many customers were found, the first six, and any rows skipped with the reason (no email, an address that isn't valid, or a duplicate). Up to 500 at a time.
• When to ask: "3 days after the job" (your wait from Settings, counted from the finished date, at about 10 AM Eastern), Now, or Don't send (you copy their link and send it yourself).
• Someone already on your list is skipped, so nobody gets asked twice. If you add someone whose job was finished long ago, their request goes out on the next sweep.

Until email is set up for your account, nothing is emailed. A banner at the top says so. Scheduled requests wait, and a customer whose send time has passed shows Waiting for email setup. Each customer's private link is ready: press Copy link on their row and text or email it yourself. Once email is set up, waiting requests from the last 30 days go out on their own; older ones wait for you to press Send now, so an old job gets a fresh look first.

Six count tiles sit across the top: Scheduled, Sent, Opened, Clicked, Reviewed, and Went to Google. Each tile is a button: press it and the list shows only those customers, with a "Showing: Reviewed" line and a Show all → link. Opened, Clicked, Reviewed, and Went to Google also show what share of sent requests reached that step.

Opened means their mail app loaded the email's pictures (a click also counts, since some apps block pictures). Clicked means they opened their review page, from the email or from a link you sent. Some company mail filters open links on their own, so Clicked can run a little high; Reviewed is the one only a person can do. Went to Google means they pressed Post on Google. Google doesn't tell anyone whether they actually posted, so this counts the button press.

The search box finds a customer by name, email, job, or phone, and the menu next to it adds more views: Waiting for email setup, Not scheduled, No review yet, Stopped, and Sent photos. Each row shows the name, email, job and date, where they are, a status, Copy link, and Send now (or Remind, once a request has gone out).

Press a customer's name to open their details. You see their status, job, finished date, and when the request goes out; their private review link with a Copy button; their review, with a link that opens it in the Inbox; and how many photos they sent. Actions: Send now (or Send a reminder now), Or send on a date you pick, Don't send, and Stop all emails to them. History lists everything that happened, newest first: added, scheduled, emailed or not, opened, clicked, opened their page, reviewed, went to Google, sent photos, stopped.

Remove from the list asks before it acts. Their link stops working; any review or photos they sent stay in your Inbox. If a customer pressed "No more reminders, please" in an email, they stay stopped, and only they can change that by leaving a review.

With reminders on (Settings > Timing), each customer gets up to two reminders, on the days you choose after the first email (4 and 10 days to start). Reminders stop as soon as the customer opens their review page, sends a review, or asks for no more emails. Every email has a "No more reminders, please" link.

The email's Leave a review button opens the customer's own page at aikit.ai/r/… with your logo (from your Shop profile) or your business name on top. It's built for a phone: five big stars, "Tell us about it" (optional), their name, which shows on your site as first name and last initial, and a box to tick if it's OK to show the review on your website. Leave it unticked and only you see it. "Add a private note for the business" opens a note only you read.

Below that is "Prefer to review on Google?" with a Post on Google button, the same for everyone, plus any other review sites you listed. After they send, the page says thank you, offers Copy my review so they can paste it on Google, and lets them change their review until you publish it.

"Share photos of the finished job" takes photos (made smaller on the phone first) and short videos up to 4 MB, eight items in all, with a caption and its own OK-to-show box. A longer video can come in as a YouTube, Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud link. Nothing on the page asks for an account, and the page is never shown in search engines.

• Views: Needs a look (new), On your website, Kept private, Photos & videos, Spam, and All, each with its count. The search box finds words, names, and jobs.
• Each review shows its stars, the customer's name (press their email to open their details), the job, when it came in, the words, any private note (marked with a lock), and how the name reads on your site.
• On my website turns a review or photo on for your reviews wall. It's locked when the customer didn't OK showing it, or when it's in Spam. You can't edit a customer's words.
• Reply adds a public reply that shows under the review on your website. "Suggest a reply in my voice" writes one in your Brand Voice for you to read and change before saving: for a critical review, it thanks them, owns the problem without arguing, and invites them to talk, and it never offers anything to change or remove a review.
• Keep private marks a new item as seen without publishing it. The … menu has Mark as spam or fake, and Delete when the customer asked you to remove their review.
• Your average (next to the tabs) counts every real review sent through your review pages, published or not; only Spam is left out. Choosing what to show never changes the number.

New reviews with links, keyboard mashing, strings of one letter, common spam words, or a filled hidden field go straight to Spam with the reason shown. Nothing is deleted on its own, nothing published is ever touched, and short reviews like "Great job!" are not spam. Check for spam re-checks every new review. In the Spam view, Not spam moves an item back, Delete removes one for good, and Empty spam removes them all. A real review can only be deleted when the customer asked.

• Business name: shown on the email and on each review page.
• Google Place ID: the ID of your Google listing. Paste the ID or your Google review link and aiKit pulls the ID out. "Check it opens your listing" opens Google's write-a-review page to confirm. Without it, review pages offer no Google link.
• Other review sites: up to four, shown to everyone as "Also find us on…". Some sites, like Yelp, don't allow asking for reviews, so these are listed, never requested.
• Timing: days after the job before asking, reminders on or off, and the days for each reminder.
• The request: the subject and message, with fill-ins {first_name}, {business}, and {job}. The greeting and the Leave a review button are added for you. "What a customer sees" shows the real email as it would arrive. "Write it in my Brand Voice" writes new wording in the voice of the website you publish to (or your own voice) for you to read and save; wording that breaks the review rules is never returned.
• Customer photos: ask for photos on the review page, and an optional thank-you for photos.
• Your website's reviews wall: Publish to picks the aiKit website that shows what you publish. Product name for search results stays empty for a service business (see below).
• Save settings is on a bar at the bottom, with Undo changes.

Add the Reviews & customer photos module to the website from its Kit tab, and choose that website under Settings > Publish to. The wall page (/reviews/ on your site) shows the reviews you published with your replies, an average from every real review collected ("4.6 average from 23 customer reviews (12 shown here)"), your Google review link, and a gallery of the photos and videos you published, with a full-size viewer. It lists reviews newest first, never by rating. A publish shows on the site within a minute, with no rebuild, and the page is also written out when the site is built so it reads without JavaScript.

Search results: Google doesn't show review stars for reviews a business collects about itself, so for a service business the wall adds no review markup (adding it earns no stars and can count as spammy markup). If every review is about one product you sell, enter its name in Settings and the wall marks up those reviews, and only the ones visible on the page, as reviews of that product. Reviews from Google or other sites are never copied in or marked up.

• Emails go out once email is set up for your account. Text messages aren't sent; copy a link into a text yourself.
• Photos and videos are up to 4 MB each (photos are shrunk first); longer videos come in as a link. Eight items per customer.
• Reading or replying to your Google reviews inside aiKit needs a Google connection that isn't built yet.
• AI-written wording and replies can miss the mark; read them before you save.