Our Review Process
If a review of your business has arrived and you weren't expecting it, this page is for you. It sets out exactly what we looked at, what we never touch, how we tell the difference between a fact and an opinion, and what happens next - which is, in most cases, nothing at all unless you want it to.
We look for established, owner-led businesses with a good reputation - usually three or more years old, doing real work well - where we think there may be genuine, specific opportunities to improve how the business runs. Not opportunities to sell you something. Opportunities that exist whether or not we are ever involved.
Businesses reach us in three ways: someone we already work with mentions you, you find us yourself, or we come across you while looking at the sector you work in. Whichever it was, one person read what we found and decided it was worth your time before anything was sent.
Nobody paid for your name to be on a list. We don't buy contact data, and we never will.
Everything in a Mini Review comes from information any member of the public could find. There is no privileged access of any kind, because we have none.
We will never ask you for a password, a key or a login. Not now, not later, not if we work together. If we ever need access to something, you grant it on your own account, in your own name, and you can revoke it in one click.
That is worth remembering beyond us: if anyone ever asks you to email them a password, that is the moment to stop.
Most reports of this kind blur the three together, which is how a business ends up being told to fix something it fixed two years ago. We keep them separate and label them, so you can tell at a glance how much weight any line deserves.
Two things follow from this, and they matter more than anything else on this page. We never state as fact something we could not verify. And we never put a price on something we could not verify - because a price attached to a guess is just a guess with more confidence.
Both of those are written down as standing commitments, along with twelve others, at What we commit to.
A Mini Review is a read of your business from the outside, and the outside is not the business. A great deal of what looks missing turns out to be paid for and switched off, handled by software we can't see, or already on your list for next month.
So every review we write carries a section on its own limits.
It names what we couldn't check, what might already be handled, and what would change our view entirely if it turned out to be true. A review without that section isn't finished, and we don't send it.
If we've got something wrong, please just tell us. We'd genuinely rather know, and we'll correct it.
The review is yours. Read it, ignore it, hand it to whoever looks after your website, or do the fixes yourself - the instructions are written so you can. All of those are fine outcomes and none of them is a failure from our side.
We don't book calls off a review. If you'd like to talk, the number and the email address are at the bottom of every page and you're welcome to use them.
If we don't hear back, you may receive a single follow-up containing one or two further useful things and no request of any kind. After that we stop, and we won't write again unless you write first.
A Full Discovery is the next stage, and it only happens if you ask for it. It combines what we found publicly with what only you can tell us - because half of what a business actually runs on is invisible from outside. It costs nothing, and it ends with a written plan that is yours to keep whether or not you engage us to build any of it.
There is never any obligation to engage Coalesce. Not after a Mini Review, not after a Full Discovery, and not after a proposal. You will never be charged for anything you did not agree to in advance, in writing, with the price stated.
Reply to any message from us with the word stop, or email hello@thecoalesce.co, and that is the end of it. No reason needed, no confirmation step, no follow-up asking why.
You can also ask us to delete the notes we hold about your business, and we will. See Privacy for what we hold and how to ask.
Prefer to speak to a person? 0427 477 597.