Review Response Automation Every review answered in your voice, complaints to a person first
Every review is answered in your voice within hours — the negative ones seen by a person first.
- Installed for you · one-time$249
- Run for you$197/month
- Custom build · this process$2,000–3,500 one-time
- Starts whenSchedule Trigger (hourly review collection)
Per business up to five locations and 300 reviews a month. Multi-brand groups, franchise approval hierarchies or review-request campaigns are a custom build. Custom builds start at $2,000 site-wide; this band is for this process and its integrations.
Review Response Automation is an automation Agentmelt installs in your own tools. The free template is a file you import yourself; the kit ($49) adds the setup guide and prompts. Installed for you costs $249 one-time and is live within two working days of access, with a recorded walkthrough and 30 days of fixes. Run for you costs $197/month, with setup and maintenance included. A custom build of this process is $2,000–3,500 one-time; custom builds start at $2,000 site-wide. No call is needed for any option. Written by Max Zeshut; last revised 2026-09-21.
Reference stack: Claude + n8n. Node names are on each step; the file is under the template.
Founder at Agentmelt
Reviews every build before it goes live; the workflow escalates to a person, never past one.
What is review response?
Review response automation answers every review a business receives — Google Business Profile, Yelp, Trustpilot, Facebook, the app stores — consistently and in its own voice: new reviews are collected daily, classified by sentiment and topic, matched to the customer’s visit or order where the record exists, and answered with a specific reply that names what the reviewer said; the reply waits for a one-click approval, and negative reviews go to a person first with the context. Monthly, the topics behind the ratings become a report the business can act on. Responding to every review matters for local ranking and for the next customer reading; almost nobody does it consistently by hand.
- Reviews pile up unanswered, and the last three are the ones people read.
- Replies get written in batches, weeks late, in the same three sentences.
- A one-star review sat unanswered for a week while the owner was on holiday.
- Twelve locations, twelve managers, twelve different tones.
- We do not know which complaint keeps coming back.
If two of these are yours, this is the process to look at first. Free audit — or read on.
What it looks like once it runs.
Responding to every review matters for ranking and for the next customer reading it, and almost nobody does it consistently. The workflow collects new reviews across Google Business Profile, Yelp, Trustpilot, Facebook and app stores, classifies sentiment and topic, drafts a specific response in the business's voice, sends it for a one-click approval, and routes genuine complaints to the owner or manager before any public reply goes out.
- Every hour New reviews are collected from Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, Facebook and the app stores.
- Each review Classified by sentiment and topic; the customer's visit is looked up where you have a booking system.
- Positive A specific thank-you is drafted, never the same twice. Below your rating threshold: the manager sees it first.
- On approval The reply posts; negative reviews carry a resolution status until closed.
Reviews are answered when the owner remembers, in bursts, with the same thank-you copy. Negative reviews sit unanswered for days, which is exactly when a reply would matter, and multi-location businesses have no consistency at all.
Every review gets a response within hours that references what the reviewer actually said. Negative reviews reach a manager first with a suggested resolution, then get a considered public reply. Response rate goes to near 100%, and the monthly summary shows what customers keep praising and complaining about, by location.
Trigger, then 8 steps.
Six of the eight steps run without anyone. Step 05 and 06 waits for a person.
Schedule Trigger (hourly review collection)
Collect new reviews
Google Business Profile, Yelp, Trustpilot, Facebook, TripAdvisor and app stores, directly or via a provider such as Birdeye or Podium, per location.
Classify
Sentiment, star rating context, topics (service, product, wait time, staff, pricing, cleanliness), and whether it mentions a specific staff member or a resolvable issue.
Fetch context
For businesses with a CRM or booking system: the customer's visit or order, so the reply can reference it and a complaint can be checked against what happened.
Draft the response
Positive: a specific thank-you that echoes what they praised, in the business voice, varied so replies never read as templated. Negative: an empathetic acknowledgement, no defensiveness, an offer to resolve offline with a named contact.
Route negatives to a person first
Reviews below a rating threshold or mentioning safety, discrimination or legal issues go to the manager with the draft and the context; nothing is posted until they decide.
Approve and post
Drafts wait for one-click approval by the owner or location manager; approved replies post through the platform API. Optional auto-post for 5-star reviews after a calibration period.
Track resolution
Negative reviews get a resolution status; follow-up reminders until closed; the reviewer's later rating change is recorded.
Monthly insight report
Per location: rating trend, response rate and time, top praised and complained topics with examples, staff mentioned by name, and three operational suggestions drawn from the complaints.
Every review gets a response within hours that references what the reviewer actually said
Every review gets a response within hours that references what the reviewer actually said.
Two decisions, at step 05 and 06. Six steps ran without you.
Each pattern page explains it in plain words and lists every automation that uses it.
The template is built on n8n (how the n8n AI Agent node works); the same steps run on Make, Zapier or plain code. The tool is chosen to fit your accounts, you own the result, and the template comes in all three formats.
Data it touches
- Review platforms (Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, Facebook, app stores) or an aggregator
- CRM / booking / POS for customer context
- Business voice guide and response rules
- Location and manager directory
Guardrails
- Negative and sensitive reviews are never answered publicly without a person's approval.
- Replies never dispute facts in public, mention other customers, or reveal personal data.
- Positive-review auto-posting is enabled only after a calibration period and can be turned off per location.
- Platform rules (no incentives, no soliciting removal) are enforced in the response rules.
Response rate and speed are ranking signals
Google has said that responding to reviews improves local visibility, and the more practical effect is on the reader: a business that answers every review, including the bad ones, looks like one that cares. The workflow makes near-100% response rate the default and gets the reply out within hours, which is when the reviewer is still paying attention.
Negative reviews are a service ticket first
A public reply to a complaint is the second step; the first is finding out what happened and fixing it. The workflow routes negatives to the manager with the context (the visit, the order, the staff on shift) and a suggested resolution before any reply is posted. The public reply then says something true — 'we have refunded the order and spoken to the team' — and the tracking sheet follows the case to closure. Reviewers who are contacted and helped update their rating more often than people expect.
The monthly report is an operations tool
Across a few hundred reviews, the topics repeat: wait time on Saturdays, a staff member who is praised constantly, a product that disappoints. The monthly report surfaces them per location with examples and turns them into three concrete suggestions. For multi-location businesses it is the fastest way to see which location has a problem before the rating shows it.
What it connects to.
| Tool | Role in this workflow |
|---|---|
| n8n | Collection, classification, approvals, posting, reporting |
| Claude | Response drafts and the monthly report |
| Google Business Profile API / Birdeye / Podium | Review sources and posting |
| Slack / SMS | Manager approvals and alerts |
Want this running without building it?
$197/month
We set it up in your tools, run it on our servershost it on our n8n cloud (or deploy it to your own n8n, Make or Zapier), watch it, and fix it when something changes. Setup included, cancel monthly; the automation stays yours if you leave.
$2,000–3,500 one-time
Your systems, your rules, your edge cases. A one-off build delivered into your accounts to keepon Claude and n8n, delivered into your accounts to keep, with documentation and a recorded walkthrough.
Per business up to five locations and 300 reviews a month. Multi-brand groups, franchise approval hierarchies or review-request campaigns are a custom build.
Also sold one-time, installed in your own accounts, as part of the small business owners package and the content creators package — do it yourself $49 · installed for you $249 · done for you $490.
When this becomes a custom build.
The subscription covers the standard version — $197/month, setup and maintenance included. Three things move it to a custom build ($2,000–3,500 one-time), delivered into your accounts to keep. If one of them is you, say so on the audit and the plan prices both.
A multi-brand group or franchise where replies need an approval hierarchy per location.
Review-request campaigns that solicit reviews after a visit or purchase, not only replies.
More than five locations or 300 reviews a month.
Running the standard version first is the usual path: the exceptions it logs in the first month are the scope of the custom build, with your own numbers. How custom builds work.
Frequently asked questions.
Will replies sound automated?
Each reply references what the reviewer wrote and follows a voice guide with variation rules, and a person approves them. After calibration most owners approve without edits, and readers cannot tell.
Which platforms can it post to?
Google Business Profile, Facebook and Trustpilot via API; Yelp and app stores through aggregators like Birdeye or Podium, or handed to the manager for platforms without posting APIs.
Can it ask customers for reviews?
Review-request campaigns after a visit or purchase, within each platform's rules, are a custom addition that connects to your POS or booking system.
Will automated review replies sound automated?
Not with a voice guide and the context: the reply names what the reviewer said, references the visit or the order where the record exists, and follows the business’s phrases and banned words. A person approves each reply until a category — thanks for five-star reviews, say — has earned auto-send. The failure mode is the generic thank-you, and the workflow rejects drafts that could apply to any review.
Which platforms can it post replies to?
Google Business Profile, Facebook, Trustpilot and the app stores through their interfaces; Yelp and some regional platforms allow reading but not posting, so the draft is handed to the owner to paste. Multi-location groups with an approval hierarchy per location are a custom build.
Can it ask customers for reviews?
Review-request campaigns — a message after a visit or a purchase, with the platform’s rules respected — are a separate workflow built on the same record and are a custom build in the standard offer. This one answers what has been written.
What this blueprint is built on.
Vendor documentation the steps rely on, and the rules the guardrails are written against.
- Google — Business Profile APIs developers.google.com/my-business
- FTC — final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials
- n8n docs — Wait node (approval steps) docs.n8n.io/integrations/builtin/core-nodes/n8n-nodes-base.wait/