Google Business Profile and AI agents
For a local business the listing is the first thing a customer sees and usually the only thing they read: opening hours, photos, reviews. It decides whether anyone walks in. Most owners set it up once and never open it again — the hours are wrong at Christmas, the photos are three years old, and the one star left in February still has no reply. An agent keeps it current and brings you the parts that need a person.
What an agent does with the listing
- Keeps the opening hours true — bank holidays and one-off changes included, before the day rather than after someone drove out to a closed door.
- Keeps the listing itself current: services, prices, address, phone, the description. The details come from you and are not guessed.
- Puts up fresh photos from your own shots, so the shopfront people see isn't three years old.
- Sees every review the day it lands and drafts a reply in your voice: the kind ones for your approval, the bad ones to you with the draft attached.
- Answers the questions people ask on the listing itself — parking, step-free access, whether you take cards — from what you allowed it to say.
Processes that run themselves
A playbook isn't a button — it's a process with a condition that starts it. These three get set up on a listing most often.
A review lands
A new review appears on the listing
- Work out what it is: thanks, a small gripe, or a complaint about the work
- For a kind one, draft a reply that names what the person actually mentioned — for your approval
- Leave a bad one unanswered: bring you the draft, the date of the visit and which location it was
- Flag a theme that keeps coming back from review to review and show it to you separately
A bank holiday or a change of hours is coming
A public holiday or a change to your hours is a week away
- Ask you what the hours are for those days instead of reusing last year's
- Set the special hours on the listing ahead of the date, not on the morning itself
- Post a short note on the listing for the people looking at it today
- Put the normal hours back afterwards and check they took
Someone asks a question on the listing
A question is asked on the listing itself
- Check whether the answer is among the things you allowed
- Answer from your own details — parking, access, payment, how a first visit goes
- Pass anything about a specific case, the price of a particular job, or a complaint to you unanswered
- If the question keeps repeating, propose putting the answer on the listing so people stop asking it
Where the agent stops
- A reply to a negative review is drafted and never published. It comes to you with the facts, and it goes out when you say so and not before.
- The agent does not dispute a review, report it, or try to have it taken down. That is your call — and a calm public reply is read by far more people than a removal would ever reach.
- It offers no refund, no discount and no compensation of its own accord. Money and gestures are your decision; the draft says you will be in touch, not what you will hand over.
- In a regulated trade the reply never confirms that the reviewer was a patient or a client, and never discusses their case — not even to set the record straight. That is a confidentiality breach rather than a defence, and a dental practice is where it bites first.
- Reviews traded for a discount or a freebie are out, and invented ones more so. Asking a happy customer for an honest review is fine; buying one is not, and the agent will not draft it.
FAQ
Will it reply to reviews on its own?
It always drafts; it only publishes after you. An automatic reply to a negative review is not something you can switch on at all. Once you have seen how it thanks someone for five stars, those can be approved in a batch — the critical ones always wait for you one at a time.
What does it do with a bad review?
Brings it to you the same day, with a draft reply and what is known: the date, the location, what the person described. It doesn't put a refund or a discount in the draft — that is yours to decide. The one star that has been sitting there since February goes on the same list: a late reply still gets read, and silence under a review gets read more closely still.
We're a clinic. Can it reply to a patient's review at all?
It can reply, but the reply doesn't confirm that the person was treated by you and doesn't touch their case. It stays general: regret about the experience, and a direct way to reach you. Arguing the treatment in public is a confidentiality breach even when the patient described it all first.
What's needed to connect it?
A verified profile in Google Business Profile and access you grant yourself. If the listing isn't claimed and verified yet, that step is yours: verification goes to the owner and the agent can't stand in for you. After that the setup is a conversation, and several locations run off one setup.
Where this shows up
Walkthroughs where the listing carries part of the process.
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