Asking for a review on WhatsApp after delivery
Asking every customer for a public review is how you collect bad ones. Ask for a private rating first.
A review request flow waits a day or so after delivery, asks the customer to rate their order, thanks the happy ones and routes the unhappy ones to a person before they write anything public. The ordering is the whole technique.
Most review automations invite a public review from everybody. That is an efficient way to collect the reviews of customers whose parcel arrived damaged. A private rating first costs one extra step and changes who ends up on your product page.
Check the trigger actually fires first
This flow is usually built on Shopify's order delivered event, and that event only arrives if your carrier reports delivery back to Shopify. Many carriers do not.
Test before you build. Place a real order, fulfil it, and watch whether a delivered event ever arrives. If it does not, trigger on order shipped plus a delay matching your typical delivery time instead. Less precise — and it actually runs, which beats precise and silent.
The flow
Rate privately, review publicly
Only the happy ones get the link.
The complaint you get to fix privately.
Install this flow
Needs Shopify connected, an approved utility template, and the team that handles complaints.
Add this automation to my account It installs as a draft. Nothing is switched on and no customer is messaged until you press Publish.Why the first message is a template
A day after delivery, the customer has almost certainly not messaged you recently, so the 24-hour window is closed and only an approved template will send. Keep it utility — it is about an order that exists — which means it is free when a window happens to be open and charged when it is not, per Meta's pricing rules.
Once the customer taps a rating, the window opens and everything after is free text. So the rating question can follow the template as an ordinary message, and the thank-you or apology after it costs nothing.
Use a list, not buttons
WhatsApp allows a maximum of three interactive buttons, and a 1–5 scale needs five options — so set the reply type to list.
Put the number at the front of each label — "5 - Excellent" through "1 - Bad" — because the score is read from the label text. "Excellent" without its digit does not score. The mechanics are in collecting satisfaction scores.
When to ask
| Timing | Argument |
|---|---|
| Same day as delivery | They may not have opened it. Too early for most categories. |
| 1 day after | Opened, tried, still fresh. A reasonable default. |
| 3 days after | Better for clothing and anything that needs using first. |
| A week after | Fine for durable goods; too late for most. |
We are not going to quote you a percentage uplift for any of these, because the figures circulating for review-request timing are vendor marketing rather than research. Pick from the reasoning, then compare your own reply rates.
Ask once
A review request is a message, and it counts against the same finite patience as everything else you send. A customer ordering twice a month should not be surveyed twice a month.
Add a Pause Before Repeating step so the same contact is not asked again within, say, 30 days. And keep the total number of automated messages per customer in view — how many automations a store should run works through the arithmetic.
What the rating will and will not do
- It will appear under Analytics → Customer satisfaction, and give you a trend line.
- It will not post to your public reviews or sync with a reviews app — the flow sends happy customers a link and lets them choose.
- It will not chase a non-response on a later date, because there is no per-contact scheduled send.
Read the low scores, not the average
Response rates are low and skewed: very happy and very annoyed customers answer, the middle does not. So the average is a trend, not a measurement.
The individual 1s and 2s are the product. Each one is a customer telling you privately what they were about to say publicly, in a channel where you can still fix it — which is the entire reason to build this flow rather than emailing a review request to everybody.
Frequently asked questions
When should I ask for a review after delivery?
About a day after delivery is a reasonable default — opened and tried, still fresh. Three days suits clothing and anything that needs using first. Published uplift figures for review timing are vendor marketing, so compare your own reply rates.
Why does my review request never send?
Because Shopify's order-delivered event only arrives if your carrier reports delivery back, and many do not. Test with a real order, and fall back to order-shipped plus a delay.
Should I ask every customer for a public review?
No. Ask for a private rating first and invite a public review only from customers who rated 4 or 5. Asking everyone is how you collect the reviews of people whose parcel arrived damaged.
Why do rating options need buttons or a list?
WhatsApp allows a maximum of three interactive buttons, so a 1–5 scale needs the list reply type. Keep the number at the front of each label, because the score is read from the label text.