We understand that time is money when running local businesses, and replying to reviews is a tedious task on a long list of other to-dos. But responding to reviews is critical to building brand trust and your online presence. As a result, GatherUp is excited to announce the release of SmartReply.
SmartReply is our newest feature on the GatherUp platform, designed to make your life easier and more efficient when managing customer feedback. SmartReply uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze reviews and automatically generate a customized response that:
- References product descriptions or summaries
- Identifies and matches the sentiment
- Creates an automated response that sounds human-like
2 Ways SmartReply Makes Your Life Easier and More Efficient
1. Save valuable time generating automated, personalized review responses
Reading reviews and writing out replies takes time. Automated review replies can save you hours on this activity – especially if you have numerous locations or brands you manage. With SmartReply, you can increase your or your team’s response times to resolve feedback before your clients or boss even see the review.
Not only are you saving time crafting or typing the review, but SmartReply also generates a unique response to each review. In the past, businesses would copy and paste a single templated reply to customer feedback – but customers can see through this strategy. As an alternative, we’ve provided hundreds of review reply templates, but even those require you to personalize them to some degree.
And whether you use a template or not, it can be hard to come up with review responses that aren’t canned. But personalizing the reply helps customers feel important.
SmartReply uses OpenAI technology that is human-sounding. For example, it will occasionally use the customer’s first name for more personalization or call out the praise or product or service mentioned.
Now with SmartReply, you can get personalized and automated review responses with one click.
Benefits & Limitations of AI for Automated Review Replies
Replying to reviews is a tedious but critically important task. You may dread the job of reading reviews and thinking of a reply — particularly if a review is a negative one. But it also takes time – time better spent analyzing your reviews for insights. As a result, one of the biggest benefits of automated review replies is the time saved – but there’s more to it than that.
2. Create a better, more consistent response
SmartReply can make you sound better. Automated review replies can start the writing process if writing is not your strong suit. Sometimes it’s faster and easier to write when you have something to react to first.
Additionally, lengthy or negative feedback can leave you feeling overwhelmed or unsure of how to respond. Automated replies do the hard part of starting the conversation, so you don’t have to question yourself or figure out the best way to reply.
SmartReply will also generate consistent responses. If you have multiple people responding to reviews, using SmartReply can help keep your voice cohesive.
Maintain Flexibility and Accuracy with Response Editing
SmartReply will undoubtedly make your life easier and more efficient. But sometimes, it’s necessary to create a more thoughtful and tailored response. Further, AI isn’t perfect and shouldn’t be used as a replacement for people, but as a productivity tool. As a result, any SmartReply response generated is always editable, and a reply will never be posted without your approval.
Every response generated can be reviewed to ensure accuracy before sending – like the example below:
The response above mentions the “designated parking lot.” However, if your restaurant’s parking situation has changed you could remove or edit that sentence quickly, like below.
Last, the SmartReply feature can be applied to those with certain user permissions. In other words, you’re in control of who can use it to reply. But we hope that you’ll find it so useful that everyone on your team is using it.
We’re excited to bring you this new feature and have released SmartReply into public BETA as of early February 2023. So if you’re ready to try out SmartReply it’s available now! If you’re new to GatherUp, request a demo to learn more.
*SmartReply is currently free while in BETA but is subject to pricing in the future.
