Routing, and why ask-all is the default
Routing is the decision Proofloop makes the moment a customer finishes: where do we send them now? Getting it right is most of the value in the product. Getting it wrong is how businesses get their reviews deleted and, in some markets, fined.
How a routing decision is made
A ruleset belongs to a location. Rules inside it are evaluated in order, and the first one whose conditions all match wins. If none match, the ruleset’s default destination is used.
| Condition | Example use |
|---|---|
| Star rating | Offer a private channel first when someone gives two stars. |
| Language | Send Indonesian speakers to a different destination from English speakers. |
| Country | Route to the platform that matters in that market. |
| Source | A QR code on a table can behave differently from an email campaign. |
| Device | Send phones to the app store, desktops to the web review form. |
| Existing review | Do not ask somebody who already reviewed you on Google last month. |
| Rotation | Spread reviews across Google, Facebook and Trustpilot instead of piling them all in one place. |
Every decision is recorded with the rule that produced it, so when a client asks why a customer was sent somewhere, the answer is in the dashboard rather than in your memory.
The default: ask-all
Ask-all means every customer sees the public route, whatever they rated you. Someone who gives five stars is invited to post on Google. Someone who gives two stars is offered a private channel first — a form that reaches you directly, so the problem gets fixed — and is then still shown the public route.
The word that matters is first, not instead. The public path is never removed, never hidden and never disabled based on how somebody rated you.
Why not just filter out the unhappy ones?
That pattern is called review gating, and there are four separate reasons not to use it.
1. Google prohibits it
Google’s prohibited-content policy for reviews forbids selectively soliciting positive reviews or discouraging negative ones. Enforcement is not theoretical: businesses have had entire review histories removed, which destroys years of accumulated proof in one action. The reviews you lose are the good ones you earned honestly.
2. Regulators have caught up
Review-integrity rules have tightened sharply. The US Federal Trade Commission’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, in force since October 2024, explicitly covers suppressing negative reviews and carries civil penalties per violation. The EU’s Omnibus Directive requires businesses to disclose how they ensure reviews are genuine. The UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act made review manipulation directly enforceable. If you run an agency, you are configuring this on behalf of clients who will not have read any of it.
3. It does not work
A page that only shows the Google button to happy customers is trivially detectable by anyone who tries it twice, and a five-star average with no negative reviews at all reads as fake to buyers. Research on review behaviour consistently finds that a small number of critical reviews increases trust rather than reducing it, because it proves the rest were not filtered.
4. It throws away the information you actually needed
An unhappy customer who is redirected into a private form has told you something specific and fixable. Gating hides that from the public; ask-all captures it and sends it to you, while still leaving the customer free to say it publicly. You get the same feedback and none of the risk.
“We are sorry that fell short. Tell us what went wrong — it comes straight to the manager.” A short form. Then, on the next screen: “You can also post this publicly on Google.” with the same button everyone else gets. Nothing is hidden and nothing is withheld.
Gated mode
Proofloop includes a gated mode, because some buyers will otherwise pick a product that hides what it is doing. It is not the default, it is behind an explicit warning, and Proofloop records who accepted that warning and when.
Gated mode filters the public route by star rating. That is what Google’s policy prohibits and what the FTC rule addresses. The acknowledgement is stored in the audit log with your user account and a timestamp — not to punish you, but because an agency turning this on for a client should have a record of having been told. Our advice, and the reason for the default, is not to use it.
The private feedback path
Private feedback is not a lesser destination. It is a first-class object in Proofloop: it appears in its own inbox, it can be assigned and marked as resolved, it shows up in reports as “issues raised and issues handled”, and it is never published anywhere.
For agencies this is often the most valuable screen in the product, because it is the one that demonstrates the client’s money is doing something beyond a number going up.
Testimonials as a destination
Not everything belongs on a public platform. Setting a destination to Testimonial only collects text or video, records explicit publication consent with a timestamp, and files it in your library for the Wall of Love widget. This path needs no external platform and no Google credentials of any kind.
What a customer never sees
- Their words being edited. A testimonial body is immutable once submitted. You can hide it or feature it; you cannot rewrite it. If it could be edited, it would not be proof.
- A coupon in exchange for a Google review. Incentives can only be attached to the first-party testimonial path — see Compliance.
- A dead end. Every route ends somewhere, including when JavaScript is disabled, the camera is refused, or the connection drops mid-upload.