Viewing the conversation transcript

Last updated: April 22, 2026

When a review lands via an AI conversation, the review detail modal shows a Show conversation transcript button below the content. Expanding it surfaces every turn of the chat that produced the review — useful for context on edge-case decisions, like a 2-star review that looks off, or a 5-star review from a chat that went off the rails.

Reviews submitted via the simple review form (non-chat) or imported from a platform don’t have a transcript, so the button doesn’t appear.

What’s in the transcript

Each message shows:

  • Speaker — “BetterReviews” for the assistant, “Customer” for the customer
  • Content — the message text, in chronological order
  • Timestamps — not shown in the UI currently; they’re available through the API (see API reference)

Messages are paginated — up to 100 per load, with a “Showing N of M messages” footer if the conversation ran longer.

Privacy and PII

Customers sometimes type personal information into the chat — especially when routed to the support path (order numbers, emails for follow-up, phone numbers). Two safeguards apply:

  • Email redaction — every message is run through the same redactor the backend uses for logs. Anything that looks like an email address is replaced with [REDACTED_EMAIL] in the transcript you see. The original content stays in the database for GDPR data-request exports, but it never reaches the admin UI verbatim.
  • Admin-only surface — the transcript never appears on the storefront widget, in email notifications, or anywhere a customer can read it. It’s visible only inside your BetterReviews admin.

If a customer requests a GDPR data export, the full unredacted transcript (their side of the conversation) is included in the export — we preserve what was actually said. The admin redaction is an in-product guardrail, not a legal one.

When the transcript is empty

A handful of cases where the transcript shows no messages:

  • Conversation was deleted — if the conversation row was purged via shop-redact or customer-redact, the messages went with it.
  • Legacy reviews — very old reviews predate the messages table; nothing was recorded.
  • Timing edge case — extremely rare, the review was created and the conversation deleted between events.

In all cases the modal tells you what’s going on (“No messages recorded for this conversation”).

AI draft vs shopper edits

When a review lands via an AI conversation, the modal also shows an AI draft vs shopper edits collapsible section — a word-level diff between the AI-generated draft the shopper saw at the confirmation step and the body they actually submitted.

You’ll see three kinds of text in the diff:

  • Plain text — words the shopper kept from the AI’s draft verbatim
  • Green highlight — words the shopper added to the draft before submitting
  • Red strike-through — words the shopper removed from the AI’s draft

If the shopper accepted the AI draft without changes, the diff shows “The shopper submitted the AI draft verbatim” with all text plain. That’s fine and common — the AI draft is the shopper’s own words re-assembled.

Why this is useful

  • Authenticity signal — a review that’s all plain text means the AI produced a draft the shopper agreed with. A review that’s heavily edited means the shopper rewrote it in their own voice. Both are legitimate; the diff lets you see which one it is.
  • Debug signal for your conversation — if shoppers consistently strike through the same phrases, your prompt or review settings might be steering the AI toward wording that doesn’t fit your brand.

When the AI draft doesn’t appear

  • Pre-rollout conversations — reviews collected before this feature shipped don’t have a captured AI draft. The diff section won’t render, or shows “AI draft not captured for this review.”
  • Form fallback — if the shopper abandoned chat and finished via the simple form, we capture their final submission but no initial AI draft.
  • Fallback auto-assembly — occasionally the AI doesn’t return a usable draft on its own and BetterReviews stitches the shopper’s chat answers together instead. In that case, you’ll see a caption underneath the diff reading “AI draft was auto-assembled from the chat.”

PII handling

Identical to the transcript — the AI draft and the final submission are both scrubbed of email addresses on the way to your screen. Original values stay in the database for GDPR data-request exports but never reach the admin UI verbatim.