Review Reply Agent
Every review answered within a day, in your voice.
Every morning before you unlock the front door, this agent has already read every new Google review your shop received in the last 24 hours — plus any Yelp review you pasted in, since Yelp offers no automated feed — and drafted a reply for each one — thanking the five-star visits by name, apologizing for the slow Tuesday rush without admitting fault, and flagging the one review that mentions a health complaint for you to handle personally. The drafts land in a Slack channel or email digest, written in your shop's actual voice because you fed it real examples up front. You read each draft in about fifteen seconds, tap approve or edit, and it posts. What used to be a guilty pile of unanswered reviews becomes a five-minute morning habit.
What this agent takes off your plate
- Every review gets a reply within 24 hours, not whenever you remember
- Replies sound like you, not like a corporate template
- Sensitive reviews (health, safety, legal) are flagged and never auto-posted
- Five minutes of daily approval instead of an hour of dreaded review-reading
- A searchable log of every review and reply for pattern-spotting later
The stack
Real costs & ROI
- Claude.ai or ChatGPT (free tier)$0/mocovers most independent cafes; upgrade only if you outgrow the daily limit
- Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus (optional)$20/moonly needed if you handle 10+ reviews/day or want a faster model
- Zapier (free tier)$0/mo100 tasks/month covers roughly 3 reviews/day. The free plan only allows two-step Zaps, so the full Step 4 recipe needs Zapier Professional (~$20/mo) or Make.com's free plan, which allows multi-step scenarios
- Google Business Profile + Yelp for Business$0/moboth platforms are free to claim and manage
The math
Owners typically spend 45–60 minutes a week hunting down and answering reviews, and most weeks a few just don't get answered at all. At $30/hour of your time, that's $22–30/week, or roughly $100–130/month. This agent turns that into five minutes a day of approving drafts — about 35 minutes/week, or $17.50 of your time. Even at the $20/mo paid tier, you're saving $80–110/month in owner time, and — the part that doesn't show up in a spreadsheet — you stop losing customers who searched your shop, saw three unanswered 2-star reviews, and picked the cafe down the block instead. Break-even is immediate: the first consistent week pays for a year of the paid tier.
Build steps
Write your voice guide
Before the agent can sound like you, you need to teach it what "you" sounds like. This step alone is worth doing even if you never automate anything else.
Data you need
Pull 5–10 of your past Google/Yelp reviews (a mix of positive, neutral, and negative) and, if you've replied before, your past replies too. If you haven't replied before, that's fine — just gather the reviews.
I run a [NEIGHBORHOOD/CITY] coffee shop called [SHOP NAME] and I want to build a voice guide so an AI can draft review replies that sound like me, not like a corporate template. Here are [NUMBER] real reviews we've received, with any replies I've written in the past: [PASTE REVIEWS AND ANY PAST REPLIES] My shop's personality: [e.g., warm and a little goofy / no-nonsense and efficient / cozy neighborhood spot] Things I never say: [e.g., "we value your feedback," "we apologize for any inconvenience"] Phrases I actually use: [specific to how you talk] Please build me a voice guide with: 1. **3–5 tone words** that describe how I sound (not generic ones like "friendly" — specific, like "warm but brief" or "proud of the coffee, humble about mistakes") 2. **A greeting style** — how I open a reply to a 5-star vs. a 1-star review 3. **A sign-off style** — how I close, and whether I sign with my name or the shop's name 4. **5 example replies** written in my voice for different review types: a glowing 5-star, a lukewarm 3-star about slow service, a 1-star about a rude interaction, a 1-star about a wrong order, and a review that mentions a specific staff member by name 5. **A "never say" list** — corporate phrases to permanently ban from my replies 6. **A length rule** — my replies should be [SHORT: 2–3 sentences / MEDIUM: 4–6 sentences] Save this as a reference doc — every future prompt will point back to it.
Connect your review platforms
Give the automation a feed of new reviews to react to. Google is fully automated; Yelp is a manual paste, because Yelp has no public review API and no Zapier trigger — anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. Google (automated): Zapier → Create Zap → Trigger: Google Business Profile — "New Review" → sign in with the Google account that manages your listing → pick your location → Test trigger (it should pull in your most recent review). Leave this Zap unfinished for now; Step 4 adds the AI and delivery steps. Yelp (manual): Yelp for Business → Account Settings → Notifications → turn on email alerts for new reviews. Create a Google Form called "Yelp review paste" with three fields: reviewer first name, star rating, review text. When a Yelp alert arrives, open the review, paste it into the form, submit. That form submission becomes the trigger for a second, identical Zap in Step 4 (Trigger: Google Forms — "New Form Response"). Budget 30 seconds per Yelp review — for most cafes that is a couple of minutes a week. One sheet for both: create a Google Sheet called "Review log" with columns: date, platform, reviewer, stars, review text, draft reply, flag, posted (y/n). Both Zaps will write to it.
Data you need
You'll need owner/manager access to your Google Business Profile and your Yelp for Business account, a Google account for the form and sheet, and a Zapier account.
Agent Pack
Unlock the Coffee Shop Agent Pack.
One payment unlocks all 3 blueprints in this pack — build steps, the complete system prompt, guardrails, a test checklist, and the maintenance routine — for $29.
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