Google Business Review Automation with AI, Slack, and Google Sheets

Reviews are the primary communication channel for your customers. The majority of company purchases (66%) are influenced by a company's review, according to BrightLocal. Responding promptly to negative comments can create loyalty among consumers, so companies should take the opportunity to develop a relationship with their customers.

2) Google values your response activity in the form of reviews.

Companies with strong engagement (quick responses) have greater chances of being ranked as a "Top Store" in local search results. Responding to hundreds of reviews manually is time-consuming, physically and mentally exhausting; therefore, companies cannot afford to rely solely on human resources when managing their reviews. Automation of this process is essential.

3) The application of AI as an assistant.

AI allows your business to automate response times and track your company's overall service reputation. Automated responses are immediate (seconds) at any hour of the day. There is no more waiting until the following day to respond to reviews left after business hours, so your company can maintain its reputation without the hassle of manual processes.

4) How AI "reads" reviews.

The AI will interpret a customer's review about your business in three different ways. AI can identify the tone of the review (positive, neutral, negative), determine if the review mentions a particular service, employee, or product offered, and will establish a need based on the customer's intent (thank you, question, or resolve). The AI was trained specifically on sector-specific datasets such as restaurant reviews, automotive repair shop reviews, etc. When a customer submits a review that states the delivery was late and their food was cold, the artificial intelligence system will automatically create a professionally written response containing a sincere apology with an offer for resolution to the problem. To generate the same high-quality response at the same speed without using an automated system would be nearly impossible for a person.

An example of a positive response would be a customer writing "Thank you everything was wonderful!" An AI-generated response would not use the standard, boring, "Thank you for your review," but rather generate a personalized response with offers of special promotions. This will enhance the likelihood of the customer returning to purchase again.

How We Automate Review Response Generation

Profile of AI Generated Review Responses

Step 1: The profile for each review is comprised of the tone of the review and the keywords contained within the review, and matches with the rules database established which describes how to respond to customer reviews (e.g. how to resolve negative feedback, what types of compensation to use, and what tone and style of responses to use). For example, if the reviewer mentions they were unhappy with the price paid; the review response will describe to the reviewer why your service or product is worth what they paid for it.

Step 2: The AI system was developed based on GPT-4; however, the AI was specifically fine-tuned on industry-specific datasets. The coffee shop will receive responses that are warm and inviting while the law firm will receive responses that are much more formal and precise. All responses will automatically adjust according to the individual review.

The time frame to complete the whole process of reviewing the customer's review, selecting the template, and filling out the information required for the template is:

• 5 seconds for tone and keyword analysis
• 2 seconds for template selection
• 3 seconds for verification and personalization
• Confidence below 85% will trigger an automatic message that is sent to Slack for a human to review it.

Setting Up Slack for Notifications About New Reviews

The API and Webhook connectivity of Slack allows for quick connection. You have the ability to set up filters on what reviews you will receive notifications about, like receiving notifications about only negative reviews or mentions of your competitors. The notification you receive will include the text of the comment, the rating, and a direct link to the reviewer. You have the ability to reply to the comment via button, call the reviewer via button, add the reviewer to your CRM via button.

As an example, if there is a Reviewer who complains that they had to wait a long time to get a table, the Manager would know immediately and be able to address the issue within a couple of minutes, which significantly reduces the likelihood of damaging the reputation of the restaurant.

The Reviews and Responses are Automatically Logged into Google Sheets

The Google Sheets database contains a log of all reviews and responses including the date of the review, author of the review, rating of the review, text of the review, generated response, sentiment analysis, and type of problem/issue.

You can filter the database, utilize it for report making, easily identify the most prevalent problems (i.e., if many people are complaining about delivery), and the entire team has access to the database and has hyperlinks to the reviews within Google Business should a review need to be adjusted manually. You can also add fields such as escalation metrics, industry specific metrics, add tokens/meters for customization.

Service Features Provided

Intelligent Analysis and Classification

The AI does not simply search for keywords; the AI understands the context of the phrases used. Example: "I did not expect this quality" can either be considered negative or a pleasant surprise. Sentiment recognition has been found to be accurate 92% of the time. The review management platform automatically categorizes reviews to help identify problem areas and take steps to improve your rating before it falls.

Slack allows you to set up different channels for each notification type (negative reviews, VIP clients, marketing/positive reviews, and detailed answer questions) in addition to having a button on every notification that allows a manager to quickly respond to that type of notification. These buttons allow the user to create a task in their CRM or contact the client directly.

Automated reporting and analytics are automatically populated in Google Sheets, including average response time, AI's share of reviews processed, major issues that resulted in negative reviews, and the trend of ratings. Weekly e-mails and Slack notifications provide reports automatically and minimize the time required for managers to generate these reports each week; the reporting feature is also integrated with Google Data Studio and Looker, providing a visual display of the data for location-based businesses.

Time and Resources Savings with Automation

Historically, managers spent an estimated 2 hours a day on responding to reviews, resulting in average turnaround times of 4-6 hours between responses to negative reviews. Once implemented, automation will reduce this time by a significant amount, requiring an estimated 20 minutes of Slack notifications per day with AI generating a response in 10-15 seconds. As a result, managers save around 33 hours a month. Based on a monthly salary of $1,500, managers are able to redirect a minimum of $1,000 worth of resources back into their business toward growth and sales efforts.

For a Concrete Example, a company with 80 reviews per day is spending 4 hours per day and $1,500 per month doing manual processing. After Automation, 80% of the review processing will be done by the AI and 20% will go through the Manager; therefore, the total amount of time is approximately 24 hours per month and $300 per month will be charged for this work (a savings of $1,200 per month) and a payback period of less than one week!

Increasing Review Response Speed

Customers want to receive responses quickly; therefore, according to recent statistics, 82% of all consumers respond positively to a two-hour response time, and 53% of all consumers respond positively to a ten-minute response time. Our system can respond to customer reviews in ten to fifteen seconds, even on weekends and holidays; therefore, it is almost impossible to maintain a review response time of ten minutes or less for your company through manual processing only. This is especially important for the restaurant and delivery service industry and service businesses, as review response times can happen after business hours.

Real-Time Review Monitoring and Reporting

Previously, review monitoring relied only on notifications about critical incidents. Now, reports are received on a schedule, which is especially useful for Franchisees and Franchise Networks. For example, one coffee franchise that experienced a drop in customer ratings at one location was able to identify the cause, react, and restore its rating in 2 weeks, saving both customers and profits.

Technical Integration and Security

Integration with Google Business API

The process for integrating with the Google Business API is straightforward and completed using OAuth 2.0 with auto-refreshing tokens. After integration, the process is:

1. The system subscribes to new customer reviews.
2. The review is passed to AI.
3. The response to the review is published.
4. The system notifies Slack.
5. The review logs are stored in a Google Sheet.

With a limit of 10,000 API requests per day, even companies with many daily review submissions have plenty of room for additional request submissions under that limit.

To connect Slack & Sheets together, use Incoming Webhooks from Slack to create a generated URL. Simply place that URL in the workflow and receive notifications, as well as filter and perform actions. Google Sheets utilizes OAuth 2.0 to connect by allowing you (the user) to place the table, give your team access to the Sheet, and then automatically inserts review information into rows as they come in through the API.

Regarding Security of Data, Data Handling is compliant with GDPR and global Data Security Standards. Personal Data is not held on our servers, rather, all Data via the API moves directly from the client to Google Business to Google Sheets. Tokens are securely stored in encrypted format, and the logs only contain technical metadata.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is the startup time for this service? The setup time is typically less than 24 hours for the overall service setup. Most clients using templates take less than 4 hours to get started. All clients receive detailed instructions, chat and email support, as well as onboarding sessions.

What types of reviews can we process automatically? Approximately 80-85% of all reviews will be processed automatically. Automatic processing includes replies to Gratitude reviews, replies to Negative-standard reviews, replies to Neutral-Comment reviews, and replies to FAQs. Complex reviews, such as legal threats and large compensation requests, will be flagged for manual review by a Manager.

Do I create AI responses? Yes! You create a Knowledge Base by defining the Communication Rules, Stop Words and Response Templates for each review situation. You will also create the Tone of Voice and include multiple language support options (over 30 languages).

Feedback and Success Stories From Clients

Case Study 1 - Coffee Shop with 15 Locations Called "Fresh Start"

Scenario 1: Before using an automatic review-management system, they received approximately 120 reviews each month. They responded to those reviews within an average of 6 hours after receiving them. As a result, they had difficulty processing all of the reviews, leading to a drop in their star rating to 4.1 from 4.4.

Scenario 2: After using the automatic review-management system, they are now able to use AI technology to respond to 85% of all of their reviews (using Slack to filter the critical reviews and using Google Sheets to track their rating dynamics). The average amount of time it takes to respond to reviews is now approximately 12 seconds. The current rating is now 4.5, and there has been a 40% reduction in negative reviews. Also, the owner of Fresh Start now has an additional 30 hours to spend each month. The system paid for itself in the first 10 days.

Case Study 2 - Auto Service Company Called "Quick Start"

Problem: Currently, they receive approximately 30 reviews each month and are manually responding to the reviews in the evenings. The number of negative reviews is hurting their reputation.

Solution: We trained AI to handle questions about service and repairs, developed a large knowledge database concerning warranties and certifications, and enabled the AI to handle most of the company's review management responsibilities.

Result: Using the new automatic review management system, they can now respond to customer questions in an average of 15 seconds and have automated 90% of all review responses. The company has seen an increase in its rating from 3.9 to 4.3 and an increase in sales orders from 30% to 38% in the past two months.

Automation Comparison Table - MANUAL vs. AUTOMATIC

Technical Specifications/Configurations

You need Google Business, Slack, Google Sheets, and ASCN.AI accounts in order to operate. Everything works in the cloud.

Slack

1. Create an Incoming Webhook in your workspace.
2. Configure your Notification Channel.
3. Paste the URL into your ASCN.AI Workflow.

Google Sheets

1. Create a Google Spreadsheet with the included Headers.
2. Authorize your Google Account through OAuth 2.0 using ASCN.AI.
3. Configure the Workflow to Create a Row for Each Review that is Received.
4. Set Up Your Team to Access Your Google Sheet.