In online reputation management, customer reviews play a crucial role in shaping your local business’s image and attracting, influencing, and converting potential customers. 

But not all reviews work the same way or contribute the same type of value.

To understand how customer reviews impact your business, it’s important to know the difference between first-party and third-party reviews and the distinct benefits each provides. Aiming for a mix of first-party and third-party reviews can help drive business success. 

Here’s a closer look.

What are first-party reviews?

First-party reviews are given by your customers directly to your business — for example, on your website — and are generally written content but can also include a rating. Customers who write first-party reviews tend to provide more detail and insight into their experience with your business than you get with generic customer feedback or testimonials. 

First-party reviews are also entirely owned by your business. One of the key advantages to owning first-party reviews is that you can apply schema markup to them, which ensures that when these reviews are displayed on your website, they’re indexed by Google and other search engines as relevant, user-generated content. And because search engines value this type of content, first-party reviews — especially new ones — can improve SEO for your business since they help your website become more visible in search results.  

Whether you specifically request first-party or third-party reviews, you can increase your business’s review volume and gain valuable perspective into how well your business meets customer needs. Because of their detail, though, first-party customer reviews are especially beneficial in providing a roadmap for improving your business and learning what actions are necessary to increase customer satisfaction. 

The detail also helps with conversions. When a potential customer who needs more convincing lands on your site and reads your first-party reviews, they can get additional information they need to make a more informed decision about your business. 

Overall, the kind of validation you get from first-party reviews is a powerful tool in attracting and converting new customers.

Quick summary: 

First-party reviews are given directly to you by customers. You own these reviews.

First-party reviews benefit your business by:

• Improving SEO through schema markup added to these reviews
• Giving you a detailed understanding of how to improve your business
• Helping you increase conversions

What are third-party reviews?

Third-party reviews differ from first-party reviews in that customers leave these reviews — which include both written content and ratings — on sites like Google and TripAdvisor or industry-specific review sites like Healthgrades, Capterra, Avvo, and many others.

Third-party reviews are not owned by your business, but belong instead to the individual review site where they’re posted. While you can display third-party reviews on your website — with proper attribution — you can’t mark them up with schema, so they won’t contribute to your SEO efforts in the way that first-party reviews do. 

But this doesn’t mean third-party reviews aren’t as valuable as first-party reviews. In fact, they stand in their own right as important contributors to your overall online reputation. You can think of third-party reviews as providing valuable social proof that validates the legitimacy of your business — i.e., real opinions from real customers who have purchased real products and services from your business. And the more variety of third-party reviews you have, the better — as this shows potential customers that you understand where they’re getting information and want to make sure you have a presence on those platforms. 

These reviews are often seen as fairer and more impartial than first-party reviews because they’re hosted on independent platforms. For potential customers who are looking for unbiased opinions about your particular business or want to understand how the competition stacks up within your business category, they frequently turn to third-party reviews to help them make a purchase decision.

It’s also important to note that growing a body of positive, third-party reviews on Google can increase your star rating, as your rating is calculated by averaging all your reviews that appear on the platform.

Quick summary:

Third-party reviews are given by your customers on Google and independent review sites. The sites own these reviews.

Third-party reviews benefit your business by:

• Providing valuable social proof 
• Reaching your target customers on the sites where they’re getting information
• Providing unbiased opinions potential customers are looking for
• Helping to increase your Google rating

Leveraging first-party and third-party reviews for the best results

If your goal is to run a comprehensive reputation management strategy, your best course of action is to request and showcase both first-party and third-party reviews from your customers, since together these reviews will help create a well-rounded image of your business. 

By seeking both types of reviews, you not only increase your total number of reviews, you also provide the legitimacy and social proof potential customers are looking for when searching online for businesses like yours. 

Both types of reviews also provide critical, actionable insights into your overall business performance, allowing you to capture and understand customer feedback from multiple angles and perspectives so you know what’s working and what you need to fix or change. This makes your business a stronger competitor, keenly tuned into what satisfies your customers and how to offer the best customer experience you can.

No matter your type of business or industry, leveraging both first-party reviews and third-party reviews enables you to build a robust online presence that not only attracts and converts new customers, but also retains the customers you already have through continual business improvement. The combination of these reviews fuels reputation management, SEO, and overall business growth. 

To learn how GatherUp’s reputation management platform with a lineup of review gathering and monitoring features can help your local business or agency, sign up for a free trial today. 

On August 14, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) banned fake consumer reviews and testimonials, launching a significant new effort to address deceptive online marketing practices. 

The FTC had previously discouraged such practices, but the new rule now strengthens FTC enforcement and prohibits businesses from:

• Fake or False Consumer Reviews, Consumer Testimonials, and  Celebrity Testimonials: Creating, buying, selling, disseminating, or encouraging fake reviews — including AI-generated reviews. 
• Insider Reviews and Consumer Testimonials: Not disclosing reviews by business insiders — such as employees, managers, or agents.
• Company-Controlled Review Websites: Misrepresenting that a site it owns or controls offers independent reviews or opinions.
• Review Suppression: Suppressing negative reviews or using threats or intimidation to remove such reviews. 
• Buying Positive or Negative Reviews: Offering incentives or payment for sentiment-specific reviews, such as positive reviews only.
• Misuse of Fake Social Media Indicators: Selling or buying fake social media influence, such as bot-generated followers or views.

With the new rule in place, local businesses will need to take strong measures to ensure that all customer reviews are genuine and properly disclosed, and to shore up other review practices and policies. If a business violates the new FTC rule by engaging in fake review practices, it could face civil penalties and other legal consequences, potentially impacting its finances and reputation. 

Read on for a summary of the rule’s implications and how the rule impacts your local business’s review strategy. We’ll also outline the steps you can take now to ensure compliance and tighten up your review practices. 

What the new FTC rule emphasizes 

1. Authenticity, trust, and transparency

Since many local businesses rely heavily on their online reputation to attract customers, this rule emphasizes the importance of maintaining a trustworthy, transparent online presence. Fake reviews not only harm your business reputation, they’re now a financial and legal liability.

More than ever, you need to ensure all reviews and testimonials you receive come from genuine, verified customers. Don’t attempt to fabricate reviews or purchase fake reviews — including AI-generated reviews. You must also ensure you don’t incentivize customers to leave only favorable reviews. 

At the same time, you can’t suppress negative reviews or falsely indicate that the positive reviews on your website, for example, represent all reviews if you have actively suppressed or removed negative reviews or ratings.

2. Disclosure of insider reviews

Fake reviews aren’t the only ones to avoid. Reviews from biased sources can also be misleading.

This must be disclosed if an employee or anyone with a vested interest in your business leaves a review. Not disclosing it is misleading to customers and could be considered a violation of the FTC rule.

3. FTC enforcement

Since the FTC can now seek civil penalties under this rule, you must be extra careful when monitoring and managing your online reviews, as just a single infraction could be costly.

Steps to avoid fake reviews and other review issues

While the new FTC rule may feel daunting, you can take actions to help ensure you’re in compliance — even if your review practices haven’t been as buttoned up as they should be. 

It can be especially challenging for small businesses with limited staff and resources to stay on top of customer reviews and know at all times what’s being said, who’s saying it, and where. Even if you use a reputation management platform to monitor reviews and automate some of your processes, the volume and velocity of reviews can still feel overwhelming when you factor in all your other business responsibilities.

However, taking the proper steps now to clean up your house, so to speak, will help you move forward with confidence, knowing that your review strategy is built on transparency and solid legal ground.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Audit your existing reviews 

If you use a reputation management platform, do a thorough audit of all your existing reviews to identify any fake reviews or potentially misleading reviews, and then promptly remove the ones that don’t meet the FTC’s standards. Even if you previously solicited fake reviews, the important point is that you remove them now.

Remember: this does NOT mean removing negative reviews or reviews you don’t like — since this can also violate the FTC rule. Only remove a negative review if it’s clear that the review is fake — e.g., potentially written by someone trying to smear your business who isn’t a customer at all — or that it’s an AI-generated review.

2. Educate employees

Ensure your employees understand how harmful fake reviews are to your business reputation and stress the importance of review and testimonial transparency. If you handle review management in-house, educate employees specifically in charge of review-related tasks on the new FTC rule. 

Also, make it clear that if any employee is tempted to leave a review about your business, products, or services, they must properly disclose their connection with the business. You may even discourage or prohibit this practice altogether to minimize the risk that someone may fail to disclose properly. 

3. Update your review policies

On that note, it’s also a good time to update your review policies. Ensure your review policies clearly outline to customers the acceptable legal practices for leaving and publicizing reviews that your business follows. Clearly state that fake reviews and AI-generated reviews will not be tolerated and how such reviews will be handled if they are discovered. 

If you offer incentives for reviews, explain under what circumstances you may do so and make sure that these incentives do not violate the FTC rule — meaning that you do not pay for, reward, or otherwise encourage customers to leave only favorable reviews. 

4. Monitor regularly 

Staying compliant with a new regulation requires vigilance and monitoring. Set up alerts whenever you receive a new review. Also, implement regular check-ins of your review systems and processes to ensure that no fake reviews are slipping through and that nothing else about the rule is being overlooked or violated. 

Then, stay alert to any future changes to the FTC’s rules or general guidelines for consumer reviews and online marketing practices. Your business will be better for it since the relationships you grow and maintain with your customers will be earned and built on trust.

What a legitimate review strategy looks like

If you’re new to review management or know that you need to overhaul your current review strategy in light of the new rule, here’s what a legitimate strategy can look like:

1. Ask customers for honest reviews and feedback

It’s easy to ask satisfied customers for reviews since you know they will likely be positive. But the goal is to get honest feedback — so when you request reviews, say it just like that. You don’t need fake or AI-generated reviews to create a false image of your business.

Since review volume matters to ratings, implement a review generation process that enables you to continually send out review requests. That way, you can generate new, legitimate reviews and build up a body of quality reviews over time, which will help increase your ratings, too.

2. Flag fake reviews right away

There are multiple ways to help you identify fake reviews — including review content that provides no real details, words or phrases that seem off, a user image that’s a stock photo, etc. 

If you suspect you’re getting fake or malicious reviews, don’t wait to address the problem. Contact the platform and follow its guidelines for reporting and removal. For example, Google will remove reviews from Google Business Profiles if they fall within the platform’s restricted or prohibited content.

3. Respond to all reviews

Customers want to know they’re being heard. No matter what type of review you get — positive, negative, or neutral — respond to each one. This shows customers you’re paying attention, care about their experiences, and are willing to address issues.

Review responses have the bonus of inspiring more reviews. When other people see you engaging with customer reviews, they want to be part of it too — and could be moved to leave their own reviews.

4. Focus on the customer experience

Real reviews do what fake reviews can’t: they help you make your business as good as possible. If you’re doing a great job, your reviews will reflect it. If there are things you need to fix or change, your reviews will reveal this.

Use the feedback to determine how you can improve the customer experience. Your reviews will naturally and authentically veer to the positive side, which will help you attract and convert more customers.

Prioritize what’s genuine and follow the rules

The new FTC rule is a reminder that trust and transparency are critical in today’s digital marketplace and that fake reviews have no place there. 

When you prioritize genuine customer feedback and FTC compliance for your local business, you can minimize financial, legal, and reputational risks and know that you’re acquiring new customers based on your business’s actual merits—not manipulation and fabrication.

To learn more about GatherUp’s reputation management platform and review tools, sign up for a free trial today.

When you operate a medical or dental practice, hospital, medical spa, or any other healthcare clinic — or support one as a marketing agency — you understand the importance of adhering to HIPAA regulations and keeping patient information private. But one area where healthcare providers need to be especially careful is when responding to patient reviews. 

Customer reviews are critical to business success these days, regardless of the industry, and they can show up anywhere — on third-party review sites, Google, in social media posts, even on the business’s website. 

Although it’s a best practice to respond publicly to every review that comes in — not to mention good for your brand — businesses in the healthcare space have a few more rules to follow and more at stake. Bottom line: the personalized, detailed responses that are recommended and even expected for other industries need to be avoided in healthcare and won’t work for HIPAA-compliant review responses.

In this article, we’ll cover what the rules are, the consequences of not following them, and give examples of HIPAA-compliant review responses and non-compliant responses. You can use this information to confidently move forward with your review strategy at your practice or clinic, or for the healthcare clients you support.

What are the rules for HIPAA-compliant review responses?

Because HIPAA is first and foremost concerned with patient privacy, a HIPAA-compliant review response has to be the same — whether the review is positive, negative, or neutral. 

Though you can’t control what a patient might include in their review, you do have to control what you include in your response, and that means leaving out any protected health information (PHI) or other identifying information. Here’s a summary list of PHI covered under HIPAA that you cannot post publicly in a review response:

• Personal identifiers such as name, address, age, gender, and Social Security Number
• Electronic identifiers such as telephone, fax number, email, and website URLs
• Biometric identifiers such as fingerprints and full-face photos
• Medical record numbers, account numbers, insurance claims, and eligibility approvals
• Diagnoses, medical conditions, medical advice, treatment plans, dates of diagnoses or treatment, and payment for treatment
• Names of doctors, nurses, or other medical personnel who may have assisted the patient

The main rule of thumb to follow is this: In their review, even if the patient discloses or mentions their own name, condition, diagnosis, treatment, a specific doctor they saw, any medical advice they were given, or the fact that they are a patient at your clinic or hospital, you cannot respond publicly to those details without breaching confidentiality. Instead, to ensure a HIPAA-compliant review response, you need to keep it as generic as possible and include a disclaimer about your inability to comment on specific details due to privacy regulations (we’ll show you what that looks like in the examples later on). 

Sometimes reviews can be confusing, though. In the interest of nurturing patient relationships — especially one that may have soured from a poor experience — you want to be able to respond appropriately and empathetically without crossing a line, yet you may not always understand where that line is. When in doubt, it’s always a good idea to consult with legal counsel about how to create and maintain HIPAA-compliant review responses.

What happens if you don’t follow the rules?

To review: If you include anything in your review response that identifies the patient or their condition, treatment, or doctor, you’re violating their patient privacy — regardless of how forthcoming the patient might have been about those details themselves.

HIPAA violations can have serious financial penalties — even if the violations are completely unintentional. Whether accidental or not, violations can cost you anywhere from $100 to $50,000 in fines, per violation. If you rack up several violations in a year, it can get very expensive. 

In addition to running afoul of HIPAA, you can also become the target of patient lawsuits if reviewers feel you violated their privacy in some way, which can bring additional financial harm to your practice or clinic. That’s why it’s better to be clear upfront about the risks to patient privacy in public forums and how to avoid them, then to find out after the fact.

However, don’t let these discussions turn you off from responding to patient reviews. There are definitely ways you can write HIPAA-compliant review responses that keep patient privacy intact while enabling you to engage productively with the reviewer and earn or strengthen their loyalty.  

4 steps for handling patient reviews

Before we get into specific HIPAA-compliant review response examples, here’s a step-by-step guideline you can follow every time you get a patient review:

1. Think it through before responding

Before writing or posting anything, pause a moment and decide:

• Did the reviewer include any PHI in their review that has to be avoided in the response?
• Is the review positive — in which case a simple “thank you” is fine?
• Is the review negative — in which case a more thorough interaction with the reviewer may be necessary?
• If the review is negative, do you fully understand the reviewer’s experience or complaint, and if not, what questions do you need to ask to understand it better?

Sometimes when you get busy, the impulse is to check off the boxes quickly — patient review comes in, review response goes out, move on to the next item on your list. But it’s better to take some time first so you know what you’re dealing with and can craft a thoughtful, appropriate, HIPAA-compliant review response.

2. Thank the reviewer

Whether the review is positive or negative, always thank the reviewer for their feedback. This shows them that you’re paying attention, care about what they have to say, and sincerely want to improve if there is an issue. 

You can work a “thank you” into any kind of response you give without violating HIPAA. In fact, sometimes it may be the only thing to say publicly, as we’ll talk about next.

3. Take the conversation offline, if necessary

Let’s be honest: negative reviews can be unpleasant. And because healthcare businesses have to be extra cautious about how they respond, it’s very likely that you can’t address the details that are included in the reviewer’s complaint, unless you want to risk a response that violates HIPAA. Nor is it a good idea to get into a back-and-forth with a disgruntled reviewer in a public, online setting.

This can understandably feel uncomfortable, though, since you want to be respectful to the reviewer and adequately address their concerns. At the same time, you need to be aware that there could be potential patients watching how you handle the review.

In keeping with HIPAA-compliant review responses, when a review is negative, the best way to respond is to thank the reviewer for their feedback — as noted above — and let them know that due to privacy regulations, you can’t discuss specific details. Then, invite the reviewer to discuss their comments with you further on a phone call. That way the reviewer isn’t being ignored, and you can get the information you need to better understand the situation and come up with a resolution.

4. Turn patient feedback into action

Positive and negative feedback both point somewhere — to things that are going well that you should do more of, or things that aren’t working and need to be fixed.

Feedback is always valuable, so take the information the reviewer is giving you and turn it into action. It helps to use a software platform that can analyze patient sentiment and deliver easy-to-understand insights you can use to make effective changes that ensure a better patient experience — and get more positive reviews to boot.

Examples of non-compliant and HIPAA-compliant review responses

Now that we’ve talked about the basic steps for handling patient reviews, here are some examples of review responses and what makes them HIPAA-compliant or not. Feel free to borrow and rework the HIPAA-compliant examples to use in your own practice, clinic, or hospital.

Doctor’s / dentist’s office:

Positive review: “My name is Jan and I recently had my yearly check-up with Dr. Jones at your office. I just want to say how great Dr. Jones and the rest of your staff were. They were prompt and helpful, and I really appreciated it.”

• Non-compliant response: “Thank you, Jan! We’re so glad to hear from our patients when they have a great experience with Dr. Jones and our staff.”
• Why it’s non-compliant: The response mentions the patient’s name, the doctor’s name, and acknowledges that the reviewer is a patient.
• HIPAA-compliant review response: “Thank you! We strive to be prompt and helpful, and we really appreciate your feedback.”

Negative review: “I was just at your clinic for a teeth-cleaning and I was so disappointed. Dr. Cook was 20 minutes late, the person who checked me in was rude, and I got billed twice for the service. I’m seriously thinking about not coming back.”

• Non-compliant response: “I’m so sorry to hear that you didn’t have a great experience and that we incorrectly processed your billing. I will also address your concerns with Dr. Cook and our front-desk personnel so we can do a better job going forward. Please consider returning as our valued patient and enjoy 10% off the next teeth-cleaning you book with us.”
• Why it’s non-compliant: The response mentions treatment, billing, the doctor’s name, and acknowledges that the reviewer is a patient.
• HIPAA-complaint review response: “Thank you for this valuable feedback. Due to privacy regulations, I can’t discuss specific details. However, please call [phone number] and ask to speak with our office manager, who will be able to discuss your concerns.”

Hospital:

Positive review: “My nephew Brad was admitted to the ER after a car accident, and we couldn’t have had a better experience during such a stressful time. The ER doctors and nurses were so kind and worked hard to stabilize him and treat his broken leg. We felt well taken care of the entire time. For anyone who has to unfortunately end up in the ER, [hospital name] is the place to be.”

• Non-compliant review response: “We’re so glad to hear that you had a positive experience with our ER staff as they treated your nephew Brad’s broken leg. We want to extend our wishes for a speedy recovery.”
• Why it’s non-compliant: The response mentions a medical condition and acknowledges the reviewer’s nephew was a patient.
• HIPAA-compliant review response: “Thank you for your positive feedback. We take great pride in having a well-run, well-staffed emergency room to help care for the community.”

Negative review: “Whatever you do, don’t schedule surgery at [hospital name]. I had gastrointestinal surgery there about three weeks ago, and it was an awful experience. Everyone I encountered was too busy to talk to me about the procedure, I didn’t know what to expect, and when it was done, I was left alone in the recovery room for way longer than I was told. It’s clear the staff doesn’t care at all about the patients.”

• Non-compliant review response: “Thank you for letting us know about your patient experience. I’m so sorry it was disappointing. We work hard to provide a high level of patient care, but it looks like we didn’t meet our own standards this time. Would you mind disclosing how long you were in the recovery room, so we can look into this further?”
• Why it’s non-compliant: The response acknowledges the reviewer was a patient, mentions an aspect of the medical treatment (recovery), and publicly asks for more details about the recovery experience.
• HIPAA-compliant review response: “Thank you for your comments. We take all feedback very seriously. Due to privacy regulations, we’re unable to discuss specific details. However, please call the hospital administrator at [phone number] as they will be able to further address your comments.”

Medical spa:

Positive review: “I’m a 34-year-old who had lip injections two days ago for the first time. They were done by Kelly. I have to say she was amazing — so professional — and she gave me tons of good advice afterward. I highly recommend her and [med spa name] for anyone looking for the same service.”

• Non-compliant review response: “This is great to hear! We love our first-time customers. Thanks for letting us know about your positive experience with Kelly and our lip injection service. We hope to see you back here soon.”
• Why it’s non-compliant: The response mentions a particular staff member and treatment, and acknowledges the reviewer is a customer/patient.
• HIPAA-compliant review response: “Thank you for your great feedback. We put a lot of effort into providing positive experiences for anyone who visits.”

Negative review: “Don’t bother going to [med spa name]. I had a laser treatment on June 4 and couldn’t leave my house for a week after. I had a weird reaction to it as soon as I got home and freaked out about it, but I couldn’t get anyone to call me back! Terrible customer service. Not worth the time or money.”

• Non-compliant review response: “Thanks for letting us know about this upsetting experience you had with our laser treatment. We pride ourselves on our customer service and I’m sorry no one called you back. Could you let us know when you called and if you asked to speak to anyone in particular? Our phone system may have been down on June 4.”
• Why it’s non-compliant: The review mentions treatment, the date of treatment, and acknowledges the reviewer was a patient/customer.
• HIPAA-compliant review response: “Thank you for your feedback. Due to privacy considerations, we can’t discuss any details here, but if you’re willing to call the clinic director at [phone number], they’ll be happy to chat with you further.”

An important tip regarding AI-generated review responses

Many review management platforms utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to generate and automate review responses. This is a great feature to have as it can save tons of time and relieve the creative burden, especially for businesses with a small team juggling multiple responsibilities or agencies that are handling review management for multiple clients.

However, when it comes to AI, HIPAA-compliant review responses definitely require human attention. If you do rely on AI to write responses to patient reviews — even in a partial capacity, such as just for positive reviews — you still need to have someone who can carefully look over and, if necessary, ruthlessly edit those responses before they are posted publicly. That way, you can be sure to remove any PHI or other identifying information that could potentially violate HIPAA.

Even as generative AI tools continue to improve in ability and output, there is still an important role for humans when it comes to responding to reviews in the healthcare space. HIPAA is too critical to leave entirely to AI at this time. You’ll thank yourself for taking the extra step of running review responses past a human first before posting.

HIPAA doesn’t have to be an obstacle

Remember, you don’t have to fear patient review responses. Follow the guidelines here for HIPAA-compliant review responses, and engage legal counsel for additional questions you have or for help in responding if you’re uncertain about something.

You can successfully use reviews and review responses to engage with your patients, deepen their loyalty, and maintain a positive image of your healthcare brand. 

To learn about GatherUp’s comprehensive reputation management platform with review response capabilities, schedule a demo today.

Responding to customer reviews is a business best practice, but it’s also time-consuming and all too easy to let it slip. Someone has to monitor the reviews that come in and respond appropriately to the context and sentiment of each one. If your business or agency has limited resources, review replies are an added cost and responsibility for already-busy teams and individual staff members.

That’s where the use of AI review responses is a smart move. AI-generated responses are fast and easy to create. They can also be personalized to match the sentiment of the review and include specific details that are mentioned. In many ways, AI review responses are a more appealing choice for some businesses, or agencies that represent business clients, than using templated responses.

In this how-to guide for AI review responses for small businesses and agencies, we’ll take a closer look at the benefits of using generative AI, how to fit an AI tool into your review management workflow, and how to use it responsibly. We’ll also answer the all-important question: can AI be used to respond to Google reviews?

Benefits of using AI review responses

Generative AI is a tool, like many others, that can be put to excellent use in a business setting — if it’s approached in the right way. 

The benefits of using AI review responses include:

• Creativity: It can be frustrating to have to sit down and write a review response when you just don’t know what to say. Not everyone is a writer — and for many, it can be downright stressful. Getting response suggestions from AI removes the creative burden and can make the review response process much less tense.
• Efficiency: Review management is undoubtedly a critical part of doing business these days, but it also takes time and commitment. Enlisting AI to respond to reviews is an efficient way to handle an important task, while also freeing up you or your team to redirect your time to other valuable activities.
• Scalability: As your business receives reviews, it’s easy to get behind on responses. But delayed responses or failing to respond at all ends up hurting your brand. AI review responses help your team stay on top of review management and scale it effectively as the number of reviews grows or accelerates.
• Personalization: Instead of churning out impersonal, robotic-sounding text, AI review responses actually work in the opposite way. Reputation management platforms with built-in AI capabilities can identify the reviewer’s name and other details from the feedback — such as specific products or services — and match the sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral). The responses are human-sounding and personalized, helping customers feel seen and heard.
• Cost-effectiveness: The upfront investment in a reputation management platform with AI might seem like a risk. But because AI review responses generally don’t require a lot of human oversight (with a few exceptions, which we’ll discuss below), business resources and salaries can be better spent in areas such as business growth, improving the customer experience, and product or service innovation. In effect, the efficiency and productivity of AI and automation pay for themselves many times over.

Can AI be used to respond to Google reviews?

The answer is yes. But first, here’s a little more context:

Google reviews show up in your Google Business Profile and are also searchable on Google Maps. Local businesses tend to place a lot of importance on Google reviews because they’re so prominent when potential customers search online for a particular business, category, or location. That means responses to Google reviews are also important, since potential customers can see those too.

Two big points of caution, though: 

• Google warns against using AI-generated content to manipulate search rankings as it violates their spam policies. However you generate the response — whether you use AI, a human, or a combination of both — you need to make sure it reads naturally and is relevant to the review, so you can avoid tripping Google’s spam filters. 
• If you operate a healthcare or medical business that serves patients, don’t rely on AI review responses as you could get yourself into hot water with HIPAA. More on that later when we talk about how to use AI responsibly.

You can use the generative AI tool of your choice to create the AI review response. Remember, the quality of what generative AI produces can vary widely. Some tools and models are going to be better than others, and the quality of the output also depends on the prompts, rules, and customizations you use. 

With both your brand image and Google’s policies around AI-generated content to keep in mind, you always want to proofread to ensure the response reads the way you want it to and includes any pertinent details that are helpful for the reviewer as well as your audience in general.

Once you have the review response ready to go, just copy it and follow Google’s step-by-step instructions for responding to a Google review:

1. Open Google Maps and enter your business name
2. From your business profile, click “Search” or hit “Enter”
3. Scroll to “Reviews” and click “Reply”
4. Paste the text of the AI review response you generated and submit it

You can follow this process for any Google review. 

How to fit AI review responses into your workflows

There are a few different ways to use AI review responses — and they’re dependent on the types of reviews you get as well as your particular business or agency needs.

If you get a lot of positive reviews

Engaging with happy customers who take the time to leave a positive review is a great way to strengthen the connection you already have with them. Most positive reviews don’t require a lot in the way of a response — just a simple  “thank you” is all they really need. 

Having said that, don’t assume that because you can get away with a simple response, you may as well just skip over responding at all. This might feel tempting, especially if you have a lot of reviews coming in and not a lot of time to spend on them. But it’s not a good look for your brand to ignore positive reviews — and you could end up disappointing otherwise loyal customers who expect some kind of acknowledgment. 

AI review response workflow for positive reviews: 

1. Use an AI tool that automatically replies to any positive review that comes in. 
2. The AI can generate an authentic, human-sounding response that’s personalized to the reviewer and doesn’t require much oversight from a human. 

If you get occasional negative reviews

It’s pretty uncomfortable when you have an upset customer venting online about a negative experience with your business. You know you need to engage with the feedback, but you don’t want to inadvertently make a bad situation worse by saying the wrong thing.

Responses to negative reviews require a bit more time and thought than positive reviews. You need to understand the specifics of the complaint and make sure you can adequately address the customer’s concerns. The response itself also needs to convey empathy and avoid defensiveness. That’s where it’s helpful to have the efficiency of generative AI while still retaining some control over the actual response to ensure that you’re handling the negative feedback appropriately. 

AI review response workflow for negative reviews: 

1. Use an AI tool to generate tailored responses to negative reviews. 
2. The AI can come up with a suggested response, then notify a human user so they can look over and approve it before posting. 
3. When it’s ready to go, the user can post the AI review response with a single click. 
4. Importantly, a human is still involved, but the initial legwork of crafting the response is taken care of by the AI.

If you’re fully sold on an AI-assisted review strategy

When the flow of reviews starts building in velocity and volume, it can be a strain on your resources to try to keep up with them. Every review is different, which means every response needs to be different too. In the midst of a busy day or week, review responses can quickly become a dreaded time suck.

If this sounds like your business or agency, you need an all-encompassing, automated workflow to respond to any review — positive, negative, or neutral — and save your team significant time and effort. Humans can still be involved in the review response process to ensure what’s being generated is accurate and appropriate, but they don’t have to spend enormous amounts of time manually creating, editing, and posting responses.

AI review response workflow for a robust review strategy:

1. Use an advanced AI tool that can analyze review sentiment and craft a customized, human-sounding response that references the details of the review.
2. Human users always have the option to fully edit any AI review response.
3. Customers get timely, personalized responses that make them feel seen and appreciated. 

How to use AI responsibly

Last but not least, we need to talk about AI review responses in terms of the responsibility you have to your customers and to your own business reputation. 

As the use of generative AI continues to proliferate, and more businesses rely on it for various aspects of customer engagement, communication, and workflow automation, it’s important to take a step back and set some clear usage boundaries. 

Here are some important do’s and don’ts for using AI review responses:

DO:

• Use it to respond quickly and easily to positive reviews.
• Use it thoughtfully when responding to neutral or negative reviews.
• Use a reputation management platform with AI-generated response functionality. A good platform worth its salt will also be built with high security standards, follow AI best practices, and provide routine updates that continually improve upon AI capabilities.
• Use human oversight and edit responses whenever necessary — recognizing that, other than for positive review responses, AI is not yet a set-it-and-forget-it type of tool.
• Be transparent with your customers about your use of AI.

DON’T:

• Use it for patient review responses if you operate in the healthcare industry, as you could very easily violate HIPAA and patient privacy regulations. Generative AI isn’t appropriate yet for patient and healthcare reviews — not without heavy editing. If you decide to use it in a limited capacity for patient reviews, be sure to involve a human who can ensure HIPAA compliance by completely removing any protected health information (PHI) from the AI review response before posting publicly.
• Use it to collect customer information without their knowledge or consent.

Another important thing you can do is to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in generative AI. Use cases and ethics around AI will continue to evolve, sometimes at breakneck speed. And while you don’t have to be aware of every single zig or zag as it happens, having some general idea of how AI is changing and the impact it can have on your customers, clients, or overall business just makes good sense. That way you can adapt your AI policies and communications appropriately, and minimize risks to your brand.

Getting the most out of your review strategy with generative AI

Whether you’re totally on board with AI review responses, or hesitant to try it, the reality is that more businesses and agencies are shifting their review response workflows to AI and automation to save time and costs. As long as customer reviews play an outsized role in new customer acquisition, using efficient, effective strategies to manage reviews and review responses will be necessary.

A few final tips and reminders:

• Start slow. Try AI for positive review responses first, then add it to your other review workflows when you’re comfortable with how it works and the results you get.
• Keep it “real.” Remember that Google is on the alert for spammy-sounding content, so make sure what you’re creating with the AI tool not only passes their test but your customers’ too. The goal is always to generate content that’s useful, relevant, and people-focused.
• Use it wisely. AI review responses can feel like a relief with the amount of time and burden it can lift from your shoulders. But it still needs human oversight — along with a healthy respect for what AI can do well right now, and what it can’t.
• Choose the right tool. For the best and broadest capabilities, find a reputation management platform with built-in AI that allows you to use AI review responses for a variety of scenarios, so you can scale it up or down as needed depending on the amount and type of reviews you get.

To learn more about GatherUp’s comprehensive reputation management platform with built-in AI review responses, schedule a demo today.

Client acquisition is far and away the biggest challenge agencies face. Selling reputation management services is a way to bring in more small business clients, but it can be difficult to know how to grow and nurture the service — especially when technology is involved. 

Not every small business has a comfort level with transitioning business or customer data to a technology platform and managing it there, nor do they have a background in marketing to be able to immediately see why it’s a good idea. If you run an agency, it’s your team’s job to make the case for reputation management, but to do it successfully, you need effective strategies to grow, nurture, and retain those customers. 

This topic was recently discussed in-depth on a GatherUp webinar. Here’s a detailed recap of that discussion.

Building a solid foundation 

Last year, we surveyed marketing agencies to find out what their biggest challenges are. As we mentioned above, over half (56%) of agencies said getting new customers was the toughest hurdle, followed by managing client expectations (36%). 

Juxtapose this with the small businesses we also surveyed, in which we asked them which activities they have an agency manage for them. Thirty-two percent said SEO, 29% said web design and management, and 21% said digital advertising. Lower in the list was review and reputation management at 14%.

And here’s where the opportunity lies.

As popular as they are, when you manage SEO and web design for clients, it’s difficult to show instant value. It can take months of manually tracking and managing these functions before you can point to some successes. 

But if you start with a simple review management offering, you can achieve relatively quick wins, especially when you combine it with SMS/loyalty marketing to capture reviews from satisfied customers and marketing automation to make it faster and easier. 

Right out of the gate, offering review management helps address those challenges we mentioned above. First, it opens the door to new clients that need help with reviews and don’t have the resources to manage them in-house. Second, by taking a really simple approach to it, you can better manage client expectations. 

Whether your business clients have zero reviews or some reviews, you can greatly enhance and ramp up their review efforts by automating the process.

Of course, automation means technology. And any transition to a technology solution has to be handled thoughtfully. For example, in a healthcare setting in which patient data requires extraordinary care, clinics often fear their data and functionality could get lost. Knowing how to smoothly and carefully onboard and support clients with a reputation management platform is key, which we’ll talk about in greater detail below.

Acquisition strategies

It’s common knowledge in the business world that it costs significantly more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. If you’re constantly having to acquire new customers, you’re spending more and more money to do so. 

To connect the dots with reputation management, it’s clear that small businesses need a solid review strategy. Ninety-six percent of U.S. consumers read reviews, and 66% say that online reviews make them trust a brand. In the healthcare space alone, 75% of consumers look online first to find out about a doctor, dentist, or medical care.

But the trouble is, when clients come to you for review help but don’t have a lot of experience with what they’re asking you to do for them, and they don’t see value right away, you could end up losing them. This means you have to start the (expensive) acquisition process all over again. 

Here are some strategies you can use to ensure more successful acquisition:

1. Define automation

The first step is helping your clients understand marketing automation in the first place. 

Most small businesses aren’t marketers by trade. They need a lot of help understanding these concepts upfront. They may vaguely realize they need consistent reviews coming in with consistent replies going out — and that it can be done through automation. Maybe someone in the business heard from a colleague about automation, or it was talked about at a conference they went to. 

As a result, they want “automation” as the endpoint but don’t necessarily know how to get there or what it looks like in practice. That’s where you can provide the education.

2. Explain the benefits

The second step is helping clients understand the benefits of automation. 

Automation doesn’t just streamline the review process. It also produces a wealth of data that can help you and your clients understand trends, uncover keywords to improve your clients’ online presence, and create more impactful marketing materials and promotions for them. Data from consistent customer feedback is equally important — especially the negative feedback — as it helps your clients make business improvements and learn how they can better take care of their customers.

Automation can also fill in some major gaps in the review process. A recent Moz study showed that 86% of consumers write at least some reviews, but 39% of review writers haven’t received a request in the past five years. Crucially, automating the review request process can fill in those gaps and make reputation management that much more effective.

3. Put internal structures in place

As you acquire more reputation management clients, you need the internal structures in place to manage them. 

That means making some predictions about the level of staff you’ll need. For example, you could set a threshold for the number of clients per staff member so you can anticipate the need for new staff as your client base grows. You can also map out both the onboarding process and the initial wins you expect to deliver to your clients. You can do this by breaking down — task by task — what you need to do for each client to determine how many hours it’ll take, per client, to set them up on the technology, as well as which tasks you’ve typically done manually in the past that you can then automate to save time.

Bottom line: it’s about making sure you have the staff, tools, and time in place to get the client to initial value in the most cost-effective way.

Activation and onboarding best practices

Onboarding is the bridge from sales to realized value. You might sell a lot, but if you have a poor onboarding experience with spotty communication or unrealistic timing, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve sold.

To be a partner in your client’s success, you need to do the following:

1. Create a roadmap for onboarding

Determine what you need to do — start to finish — to successfully activate and onboard a new client. This includes: 

• Training protocols — before going live and after
• The go-live date, with everyone on the same page
• Q&A sessions and check-in calls to solve problems and pain points along the way
• Communication at every step, with the right experts in place to answer specific questions and direct the process

The overall goal is to be proactive and to get ahead of any potential frustrations or minor annoyances before they turn into far bigger problems down the road.

Something like a minimum competency test or quiz can be helpful as well to ensure all users know how to perform basic functions in the platform. Think of it like this: if entry-level users don’t get it, no one else will either. (This is just as important for internal staff within your agency, too, since they also need to be familiar with the technology.) 

And remember that you don’t have to onboard the whole product in one sitting. Doing it in pieces or segments is easier and much less overwhelming. Find out what the initial two or three goals are that your clients want to address or learn how to do first, take care of those, and then slowly and steadily get them up to speed on the other goals or functions.

2. Celebrate successes along the way

Once value is achieved, celebrate it with your clients. “You have 10 new reviews.” Or “You now have more 5-star ratings.” Or “Your rating moved from 4 to 4.5.” Sending milestone emails in the early days, post-onboarding, can really start to show value to your clients.

At the same time, you can direct your clients how to aim higher and set more goals. “You sent out 100 review requests. We know that’ll convert into 3 new reviews. Now, let’s get 100 total reviews.” Your encouragement and goal-setting keeps everything moving forward and reinforces the value of reputation management.

Post-onboarding is also a good time to ensure features are used properly and to their best advantage to achieve even more success and avoid dips in review performance.

3. Align expectations

When clients come to you, it’s because they have a need. They want to increase business, get more repeat customers, and earn more reviews — whatever the case may be. As such, they need guidance about how to get there — which also means aligning their expectations. 

With clients up and running on the system, help translate a broad goal they have into an aggressive but realistic, reputation-specific goal — such as increasing volume and average rating. Then outline the key, day-to-day actions they can take in the system to start seeing results. 

It’s also helpful to look beyond the initial offering and make it clear to your clients how reviews, SEO, and keywords all work together, how each builds upon each other to increase business success. In effect, show them how reputation management ladders up to larger business goals. 

It’s also important to keep looking for ways to bring more value. When we surveyed small businesses and agencies, we found a gap between what agencies are doing vs. what the businesses are doing themselves. Many businesses are doing a lot of the social media work and review analysis on their own — rather than agencies doing it for them. These are typically tedious, time-consuming tasks that agencies could take over to increase the value clients get from the service.

Retention strategies for long-term success

Finally, keeping your reputation management clients engaged is the key to long-term success and retention. Here are some ideas for reaching out to clients on a regular basis, gauging their success with the platform, and maintaining contact:

1. Implement a feature series

This can involve creating and sending out a short explainer video that walks users through a key feature, workflow, or even a niche feature or workflow to help them use the platform more effectively. 

Building a video series also opens up lines of communication and helps solicit ideas from your clients about what they consistently need help with or areas where they could use more information. Having a solid library of videos can also help with onboarding and supplement training calls.

2. Continually discover and solve problems 

Sometimes a client’s initial problem gets solved only for a new one to crop up in its place. Data from the platform will often show an end customer issue before the customer even reaches out. At the same time, turnover or hiring within the business can raise new problems or expose the need to solve those problems from different perspectives. 

Successful retention requires constant iteration. It means looking at the data to discover new problems and new solutions, training support and customer success teams on new features, pairing new features with problems to solve, and making it easy for them to adopt the new features. 

3. Create regular touchpoints

Social media, e-newsletters, a podcast, webinars — whatever channels you use to engage with clients become valuable sources for clients to easily pop up in the moment and ask a question they really need an answer to. It’s important to be willing and able to listen and collect feedback wherever possible and through any means. 

4. Provide metrics

One of the best ways to retain clients is to give them tangible, granular metrics that provide insight and show value. These can include review volume and rating, numbers of customers or patients getting a review request, response rates, sentiment, and specific areas of focus or new products/services.

Final takeaways

Finally, as you scale reputation management, keep these tips and tidbits in mind:

• Implement clear processes
• Work from the perspective that onboarding is never done
• Maintain regular communication with clients
• Use every touchpoint as an opportunity to solve a problem
• Don’t underestimate the value of simple
• Challenge yourself to see how quickly and efficiently you can show value to your clients

To learn more, download the Review Management for Agencies eGuide.