The Google Review Autoresponder watches your Google Business Profile and replies to every review in your brand's voice — auto-posting positive replies and routing negative ones to your team for a quick approval before they go live.

What it does

  • Checks for new reviews every 5 minutes
  • 4–5 star reviews: an AI-drafted reply is posted automatically
  • 1–3 star reviews: nothing posts without you — your team receives an email with the draft reply and a one-click form to edit and approve it
  • Unapproved drafts get a reminder email after 48 hours
  • Replies never repeat themselves — recent replies and overused words are automatically avoided, and robotic "AI tells" are stripped out
  • If anything breaks, errors are logged and escalate by email up your contact chain until someone marks them fixed
  • A customer editing an old review (for example, changing their rating) is treated as new activity and gets handled too

The auto-post/approval split is based on the star rating itself, never on AI judgment — a low rating can never accidentally auto-post.

What gets installed

Deploying this template creates three workflows and three data tables automatically:

  • Google Review Autoresponder - Manager — polls reviews, drafts replies, posts or queues them, and sends reminders
  • Google Review Autoresponder - Approval Form Handler — the edit-and-approve web form your team uses for 1–3★ reviews
  • Google Review Autoresponder - Error Escalation — logs failures and emails your escalation chain hourly until resolved
  • Data tables — Google Review - Pending Approval (approval queue), Google Review - Reply Log (posted-reply memory that prevents double replies), and Google Review - Errors (error state)

Before you start

  1. Connect your Google Business Profile in Zernio. In Zernio, create or pick a profile, click Connect, choose Google Business, and sign in with the Google account that manages your listing. Make a note of which profile it's connected under.
  2. Get your Zernio API key. Go to Zernio → Settings → API.
  3. Get an OpenRouter API key. This powers the AI writing — your Awesomate admin may be able to provision this for you.
  4. Set up email sending (optional at setup). You'll need an SMTP credential for approval, reminder, and error emails. For Gmail, enable 2-Step Verification, then create an App Password at myaccount.google.com/apppasswords — it's a 16-character password, and your normal Google password will not work. You can complete the whole setup without email and switch it on later; auto-posting works either way.

Step 1 — Deploy from the Template Library

  1. In the Awesomate Hub, open Template Library.
  2. Find Google Review Autoresponder, or redeem it directly with the token GOOGLE-REVIEW.
  3. Click Deploy.

The deploy engine automatically creates the three data tables, links the approval and error forms, connects the error handler to the other workflows, and fills in your business identity (name, description, and contact email) from your Business Identity profile.

Step 2 — Bind your credentials

The deploy wizard will ask you to bind the following credentials:

  • Zernio (lateApi) — on the four Zernio nodes in the Manager, and one in the Approval Form Handler
  • OpenRouter — on the AI model node
  • SMTP — on the email nodes (skip this for now if you're not ready)

Step 3 — Configure the workflows

Open each workflow and find the Workflow Config node — every setting lives there. Any value reading CONFIGURE ME needs your attention.

In the Manager

  • zernio_profile_id — the Zernio profile _id your Google Business is connected under (Zernio → profile → copy ID), or all to cover every non-default profile
  • auto_post_min_rating — 4 (default) means 4–5★ reviews auto-post. Use 5 for 5★-only auto-posting, or 6 to require approval on everything
  • review_lookback_days — 30 (default); old review backlogs are never touched
  • biz_name, biz_description, reply_style_notes, sign_off — usually auto-filled from your business profile; edit these if you want a different voice
  • example_replies — the biggest quality lever available. Replace the generic examples with one real positive and one real negative reply, written the way your business actually talks
  • email_from, approver_emails — the sender address and who receives approval requests (comma-separated for multiple people)
  • email_notifications_enabled — keep this false until SMTP is bound, then switch it to true

In Error Escalation

escalation_emails — an ordered, comma-separated chain. The first address gets the initial alert; if it's unresolved, it escalates to the next address every escalation_hours (default 24), wrapping back to the start of the list once it reaches the end.

Step 4 — Activate the workflows in order

Activation order matters — follow this sequence exactly:

  1. Activate Error Escalation first
  2. Activate the Approval Form Handler second
  3. Activate the Manager last

The Manager begins polling for reviews immediately after activation.

Step 5 — Verify it's working

  1. Open the Manager and click Execute workflow once, manually. In the execution view, confirm your Zernio profile and reviews were fetched successfully.
  2. If all your existing reviews are already answered, the run will simply end quietly — that's correct behaviour, not an error.
  3. When a 1–3★ review comes in, you'll receive an approval email. The link opens a pre-filled form showing the reviewer, rating, comment, and the AI's draft reply. Edit it if needed, then submit — the reply posts to Google and the queue updates automatically.

Day-to-day use

  • There's nothing to do for positive reviews — you'll get a "response posted automatically" notification if email is switched on
  • For negative reviews, click the email link, tweak the draft if you like, and submit. That form is the only way a 1–3★ reply can go live
  • Error emails include a "mark as fixed" link — click it once you've resolved the issue to stop the escalation chain

Troubleshooting and FAQ

  • A brand-new review isn't getting answered. Google and Zernio take roughly 30–60 minutes to sync a new review through. The next 5-minute poll after that sync will pick it up.
  • Someone re-reviewed us and it replied to their "old" review. Google keeps one review per customer, so a new review from the same person is actually an edit. The agent detects edits and replies to the current text.
  • Emails aren't sending. Check that email_notifications_enabled is set to true and that an SMTP credential is bound. Gmail requires an App Password, and email_from must match an address your SMTP account is permitted to send as.
  • Replies aren't in our voice. Update example_replies and reply_style_notes in the Manager's Workflow Config — the examples steer tone more than any other setting.
  • We want to pause it. Deactivate the Manager only. The approval form and error handling stay live to finish processing anything still in the queue.
  • Can we delete rows from Google Review - Reply Log? No — that table is the agent's memory of what it has already answered. Deleting rows can cause it to reply to the same review twice.