Privacy policy
Review Accelerator is a service run by Scaling By AI (ABN 30 727 936 559), an Australian business ("we", "us"). It helps local businesses ask their customers for Google reviews by text message and manage the reviews they get. This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with and the choices you have. We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988.
Who this covers
- Businesses and their staff who sign up and use Review Accelerator.
- Their customers, who get a review request by text message and may rate the business on our rating page. The business decides whom to contact; for these customers we act on the business's behalf.
What we collect
- Account details: your name, email address, mobile number, business name, address and phone, logo and brand colour, and a record of when you agreed to our sending rules (with the IP address it came from).
- Customer and job details the business gives us: customer names, mobile numbers and job details, entered by hand, uploaded in a spreadsheet or sent from the business's job software.
- Messages and ratings: the review requests and reminders we send, their delivery status, whether the rating page was opened, the star rating and any private feedback a customer writes, and opt-outs (replies of STOP).
- Google Business Profile data, if the business connects Google (see the next section).
- Billing details: your plan, payment status and invoices. Card details are entered on Stripe's pages and stay with Stripe; we never see or store card numbers.
- Technical details: a sign-in cookie, a push notification subscription if you turn notifications on, IP addresses (used to stop abuse) and standard server logs. On our home page and sign-up page only, analytics about the visit (see Cookies).
- How you use the app: for example which in-app offers you viewed, tapped or put aside.
Google user data
When a business connects its Google Business Profile, Google asks it to allow access with the business.manage permission. We use that access only to provide Review Accelerator's features to that business:
- list the Business Profile accounts and locations you can manage, so you can pick yours;
- read the chosen location's name, place ID and review link, so requests send customers to the right review form;
- read the location's reviews (reviewer's display name, star rating, text and date), to count new reviews, match them to jobs and show them to you;
- post replies to reviews, but only when you have turned on Replies and either approved the reply or chosen to let replies go out automatically.
If Replies is on, a review's rating, text and reviewer's first name, with the business's name and tone notes, are sent to Anthropic's Claude AI model to draft a reply for that business. Anthropic processes this data for us under its commercial terms and does not use it to train its models. Nothing else from your Google account is sent to it.
Review Accelerator's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. In particular:
- we use Google user data only to provide and improve the features described above, which the business can see in the app;
- we do not sell it, use it for advertising, or use it to build or train general AI or machine learning models;
- we only transfer it to service providers who help us run those features, when the law requires it, or as part of a merger or sale with the same protections;
- people at Scaling By AI do not read it unless you ask us to or agree to it (for support, including help checking or improving your set-up), it is needed for security or to investigate abuse, the law requires it, or it is combined and anonymised for running the service.
Google access tokens are encrypted before they are stored. You can remove our access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions; we then stop reading reviews and posting replies. When an account is closed, we delete its Google tokens and Google data.
How we use information
- to send review requests and reminders the business has set up, at sensible hours, and to honour opt-outs;
- to show businesses their ratings, reviews, reports and weekly summary emails;
- to sign you in, send account emails and notifications, and give support;
- to help businesses get the most from the service: authorised Scaling By AI staff can open a business's account to see what the business sees and fix or improve its set-up, such as its message wording, sending hours or customer uploads. Each visit is recorded with the reason and every change is logged. Staff cannot change a business's plan or billing, and they look at Google review data only as set out in the Google section above;
- to bill paid plans and count customers asked each month;
- to keep the service secure, stop spam and abuse, and meet our legal obligations;
- to tell you about other Scaling By AI services inside the app, which you can put aside at any time.
We do not sell personal information and we do not use customers' details for our own marketing.
Who we share it with
Only with service providers who help us run Review Accelerator, under contract and only for that purpose:
- Cloudflare: hosting, database and file storage;
- Telnyx: sending and receiving text messages;
- Stripe: payments and invoices;
- Google: the Business Profile features above, and Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics on our home page and sign-up page, to measure visits and sign-ups;
- Anthropic: drafting review replies when Replies is on;
- our email delivery service, for sign-in links, invites and summaries.
Some of these providers store or process data outside Australia, including in the United States. We choose providers that protect it to a standard comparable with Australian law. We may also share information if the law requires it.
How long we keep it
We keep a business's data while its account is open. If you close your account or ask us to delete it, we delete the business's data, its customers' details and its Google data within 30 days, except billing records we must keep for tax law and opt-out records we keep so a number that said STOP is never texted again. To allow one Free plan per business, we keep salted one-way codes made from a business's email, mobile, Google location and card, never the details themselves.
Security
Data is encrypted in transit, Google tokens are encrypted at rest, each business can see only its own data, and access within Scaling By AI is limited to the people who need it.
Cookies
We use a sign-in cookie and a short-lived cookie while you connect Google.
On our home page and sign-up page only, we use Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics to count visits and sign-ups, so we can tell which of our marketing works. These may set analytics cookies (such as _ga) and tell Google about the visit: the page, your browser and device, roughly where you are, and how you arrived (for example from a search or an ad). We don't send Google anything you type into the sign-up form.
They never run anywhere else: not on the rating page customers see, not on approval or invite links, and not inside the app once you're signed in. So no business's or customer's details reach Google this way, and the rating page loads nothing from third parties.
You can block these cookies in your browser settings, or install Google's opt-out add-on (tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout).
If you reviewed a business on Google
Google reviews are public. When a business using Review Accelerator connects its Google Business Profile, we read its reviews from Google: the reviewer's display name, the star rating, the words and the dates. We don't collect profile photos or anything else about the reviewer. The business sees these reviews in its account so it can follow them and reply on Google, and it may see that a review likely came from one of its own customers. We never contact Google reviewers: no texts, no emails. If a review is removed from Google, we stop counting it.
If you scanned a business's QR code
We record that the page was opened, which of the business's codes you scanned, the star rating you give, anything you write, your first name and your email or mobile if you add them, and whether you tapped through to Google. The business sees these in its Review Accelerator account. Your email or mobile is only so the business can get back to you about your visit: it is not used for marketing, and we don't send you anything. A cookie on these pages, kept for a year, lets us count a phone once per code per day and take one rating a day; we store only a scrambled (hashed) form of it, never your IP address. The page sends nothing to Google or any analytics service.
If you received a text from a business
The business you dealt with gave us your details to ask about your experience. Reply STOP to any message and that number will not be texted again by any business using Review Accelerator. To see, correct or delete your details, contact the business or email us at reviews@scalingby.ai.
Your choices and contacting us
You can ask to see or correct the personal information we hold about you, or to have it deleted, by emailing reviews@scalingby.ai. We will reply within 30 days. If you are unhappy with how we handled a privacy matter, tell us first; if we can't resolve it, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Changes
If we change this policy we will update the date above, and tell businesses in the app or by email before an important change takes effect.
Review Accelerator by Scaling By AI