Moderating and replying to reviews

Reviews live in Settings > Reviews. Verified patient reviews, the ones collected automatically after visits, publish themselves: every review appears on your booking page and directory profile whatever its rating, and your job is to reply well, not to choose what shows.

Replying to a review

Press Reply beneath any verified review to write a short public response. It appears as "Response from your clinic" under the review, on your booking page and your directory profile. Replies are worth the minute they take: a gracious reply to praise reads well, and a calm, professional reply to criticism often reads even better than a wall of five stars. You can edit or remove your reply at any time.

One rule matters more than any other: never confirm who a reviewer is or any detail of their visit. Many patients review anonymously or with initials, and a reply like "lovely to see you on Tuesday" undoes the anonymity they chose. Keep replies warm but general.

Hiding a review: abuse only

You can hide a verified review, but hiding exists for abuse, not for criticism. When you hide one you choose a reason (abusive or offensive, fake or not a genuine patient, or other, with a note), and the review keeps a record of who hid it, when and why. Unhiding restores it.

Two things keep this honest. First, UK consumer law prohibits suppressing genuine reviews because they are negative, and your patients can tell the difference between a genuine picture and a curated one. Second, a hidden review's star rating still counts in your public average: hiding removes the text from display, never the number, so hiding a review can never improve your score. If a review is genuinely fake, contact support and we will remove it properly after checking.

A critical review is not an emergency

Every clinic collects the occasional imperfect review. Prospective patients trust a page with a considered response to a 3-star review far more than a suspiciously perfect wall. Reply once, professionally, resolve what you can offline, and move on.

Imported and manually added reviews

If reviews were carried across from a previous system or added by hand, those work the old way: they sit in Settings > Reviews as pending until you publish them, because we cannot verify them against a completed appointment the way native reviews are verified.

Who can moderate

Only clinic owners can reply to, hide or unhide reviews. Other team members can see the page but not change anything.