Private Feedback vs Public Reviews: Which QR Campaign Should You Use?

Start with the outcome, not the QR code

A QR code can open a hosted feedback form or an external review destination, but those paths are not interchangeable. Private feedback is visible inside the workspace and can include a score, reasons, text and optional contact details. A public review is written and governed on Google, Trustpilot, Tripadvisor, Facebook or another external destination.

Choose the campaign mode before creating placements. The campaign owns the form, destination, language, appearance and notification rules; each receipt, table, counter or package then gets its own measurable QR placement.

• Private feedback: diagnosis and operational follow-up
• Public review: external visibility and customer proof
• Combined: private response plus the same public-review option for everyone

Use private feedback when the team needs detail it can act on

Private-feedback mode opens a branded mobile form. It can ask a CSAT, NPS, smiley, thumbs, choice or text question and preserve the campaign, placement, form version and time with the response.

Responses enter the shared inbox, where a team member can read the context, assign an owner and move the item through new, in progress, resolved or closed states. Contact details remain optional, and permission to follow up is recorded separately.

Use a public-review campaign when one external action is the whole journey

Public-review mode sends the scan to the selected external destination. It fits a neutral request such as “Share your experience” when the business does not need a private survey first.

The destination can be Google, Trustpilot, Tripadvisor, Facebook or a custom HTTPS link. Mosaqo can measure the QR journey and outbound action it controls, but the external platform decides whether a review is completed, accepted or published.

Use combined mode for both signals without filtering customers

Combined mode collects a private response and then offers the public-review action. The important policy boundary is that the action remains available on the same terms to every respondent, regardless of whether the private score was high, neutral or low.

Do not send satisfied customers to a public platform while hiding that option from dissatisfied customers. That pattern is review gating. A low score may trigger an internal alert and recovery workflow, but it must not remove the external-review choice.

Choose the mode by the business decision

Use private feedback to understand a service failure, compare locations or collect structured reasons. Use public reviews to make a fair, neutral invitation after a genuine experience. Use combined mode when the team needs operational feedback and also wants every respondent to have an equal public-review path.

Different moments may need different campaigns. A restaurant can run a short table-service CSAT campaign and a separate public-review placement without pretending that one score caused the other.

• Need a score, reason or inbox workflow: private feedback
• Need one direct external action: public review
• Need both outcomes in one neutral journey: combined
• Need different questions or owners: separate campaigns

Measure only what the journey can prove

For hosted private or combined journeys, read scans, hosted views, feedback starts and submissions as separate steps. Review clicks show that someone selected the outbound review action.

A scan is not a response, a submission is not a public review and an outbound click is not proof of publication. External platforms do not return a per-visitor publication result to Mosaqo, so campaign reporting must preserve that attribution boundary.

Launch a fair campaign with a clear owner

Write neutral copy, choose the mode, verify the destination and publish only after scanning the final physical material on a real phone. Give every physical surface its own placement so results remain comparable.

For private or combined campaigns, set the low-score threshold and decide who owns the inbox before launch. For public-review campaigns, follow the destination platform’s current invitation rules and never offer a reward for positive sentiment.