The Grade.us "Reviews" feature allows you to see review activity across all of your review site links. From here you can setup email alerts whenever new reviews are posted, filter which reviews will stream on your website and review funnel landing page, and share positive reviews to your social media profiles.

All Reviews

Think of your All Reviews tab as your command center - here you can find the source, date, rating, review content, and customer name for every review that Grade.us has collected. You can use the information here to determine which reviews to share or respond to, and track any actions you have.

From here you can also choose to filter your reviews. You can show reviews by a specific review site, by a specific rating, or any combination of the two.

 

Manually Add Reviews

There are two ways to manually add reviews to your review stream. You can add reviews one by one, or you can add them in bulk by uploading a CSV/XLSX file.

To add a single review manually, perform the following:

1. Click on "+ Add a Review Manually."

2. Fill in the requested information, and click "submit a review."

To add reviews in bulk manually, perform the following:

1. Click on "Upload CSV XLSX."

2. Choose the appropriate rating scale of reviews you are manually adding.

3. Click on the "Upload CSV XLSX" button to upload and attach file.

• A sample spreadsheet file is available for download. Click on the "see sample" link.

4. Organize Columns

• Move the options from the "Columns from file" column to the "Expected for upload" column.

Respond to Reviews

Grade.us provides you the ability to respond to a customer's review through the reviews tab. You can respond to reviews by clicking on the "Respond" button in the "Status" column. Depending on the third-party review site, you will be taken to their main webpage or the review itself.

Share Reviews through Social Media

Grade.us provides you with the ability to Share your reviews to your social media channels as long as your Grade.us account is connected to your social media account. Connecting your social media accounts is covered here.

Before you share your reviews, you can also edit the snippet of the review you would like to share, or you can share the entire review. The bold content in the "Review" column is a snippet of the review that Grade.us has already created. To edit the snippet to your own specifications, please perform the following:

1. Click on the "more" hyperlink to see the full review from your customer.

2. Select the pencil icon next to the green check mark.

3. Edit the snippet of your review and select "Submit" to save.

4. Preview the customer review that will be shared by clicking on the "image" link.

After you have edited the content you would like to appear, you can then continue on to sharing the review on your website by performing the following:

1. Navigate to the "Status" column.

2. Click on the "Share" button.

3. Fill out the following:

• Include review image with post?: This will include the snippet of the review in the post for you. Check this to include the default image. Uncheck this if you would like to customize the image.
  • There are a few placeholders you can use in your post if you choose to customize. Copy and paste the desired placeholders into your post:
    • [[snippet]]: Includes the snippet of the review.
    • [[content]]: Includes the full content of the review.
    • [[attribution]]: Includes the name of the reviewer as displayed on the review site of origin.

• Social Media Check Boxes: Select the social media account(s) you would like to share your review with by selecting the check boxes next to the appropriate account. These accounts need to be set up under the "Settings" tab before they will appear as options here.
• Share Immediately: will share the review as soon as you select the "schedule" button.
  • If you want to share in the future select the following:
    • Date: Select the date you would like review to be posted
    • Time: Select the time you would like the review to be posted
    • Time zone: Select the time zone

4. Select "Schedule."

Status

Grade.us provides a "Set Status" link to keep track of any action taken on a customer review. Use it in a manner that suits your specific business needs - for example, track which customers require your attention and response, and take note of which customer reviews you've shared on your social media account.

Setting the status to "Attention", "Responded", or "Resolved" changes the "Set Status" text.

Stream

This option will allow you to toggle which reviews are shown in your review stream by clicking on the green check mark.

Tags

Utilize the tag function to facilitate a response workflow. You can use tags to identify specific staff to follow up on request, indicate the standing of a customer, or any other attribute that would be useful in organizing your feedback.

To add a tag, click the pencil icon. Type in your tag and press submit to save.

Customer Feedback

When a customer indicates they are unhappy, they are directed to your customer feedback form to address their concerns privately. If you are using our default contact form, those submissions are logged into the Customer Feedback tab. The submissions are categorized with the newest submission first.

Utilize the "Status" and "Tags" actions to flag private messages to follow-up.

You can also click on the "Export to CSV" button to download customer feedback into a spreadsheet.

Review Stream

The Review Stream is a custom code that can be used to show your reviews on your website. It will allow you to take the reviews from all the websites where reviews are being left (and collected by Grade.us) and display them in a  format determined by you.

You can use the Customize Embed Code menu to edit your review stream.

Below is an explanation of the different options available in this menu:

• Show reviews?: Toggle on to display review content. Toggle off to remove them. This is toggled on by default.
• Include empty?: Toggle on to display reviews with no content.
• Show aggregate?: Toggle on to display the business' aggregate rating. If Show reviews is also toggled on, the aggregate rating will appear above the reviews.
• Use reviewer's last initial?:  Toggle on to use only the last initial of your reviewers name.
• # of reviews: Change the number of reviews displayed in your stream at once.
• Exclude / Include only reviews from: Use this setting to restrict the content of your review stream to specific review sites (by default, the stream will pull from all listings you have loaded in for a listing).
• Display as carousel: this option will display only one review at a time, rotating between the # of reviews every few seconds.
• Shuffle reviews: this option will display a random set of reviews instead of the most recent.

After you're made your changes, click Update Embed Code to apply them. Copy your new embed code from underneath the menu and paste into the appropriate place on your website.

Settings

From the Settings tab you can change your Review Alerts, Review Stream, and Social Media settings.

Review Alerts

Review Alerts are emails sent whenever someone leaves a review on any of the sites you are monitoring. The Review Alerts function allows you to CC multiple recipients, and set the rating threshold for an alert. For example, Review Alert settings can be adjusted to only send out emails when customers leave a rating of 3 stars or less.

Stream Defaults

Stream Defaults allows you to adjust the filter settings that populate by default in your Review Stream.

The following content can be modified:

• Auto-publish reviews if rating is...: Allows you to select the threshold of the reviews that you would like to auto publish to your review stream
• Include empty: Toggle this to include ratings with no content.
• ...reviews from...": Allows you to Exclude/Include reviews from specific third party review sites.
  • "+Add Site": Allows you to add additional review sites.

Social Media Accounts

Here you can link your social media account(s) to your Grade.us account and share reviews you have received on Twitter and Facebook.

To add a social media account perform the following:

1. Select "+Add Facebook Account" or "+Add Twitter Account" link.

• A pop-up window will appear. Follow the steps to link your account.

2. After setup is complete, follow these steps to share individual customer reviews from our dashboard.

You can also enable new reviews to auto-share on your social media accounts through the Review Stream Auto-Sharing section. You can adjust the timing, time-window, and amount of new reviews that are auto-shared on your accounts.

Common Questions