A review page with a wall of five-star ratings and zero responses tells a customer one thing: nobody's home. Replying is the cheapest reputation work there is — it signals you're paying attention, and Google's local algorithm quietly favors businesses that engage. The reason it doesn't happen isn't that owners don't care; it's that writing fifteen sincere, non-robotic replies is genuinely tedious. That's the exact tedium AI is good at removing — as long as you keep your hand on the voice.

  1. Once a week, open your Google Business Profile (or your reviews dashboard) and copy this week's new reviews — just the text and the star rating. Five at a time or twenty, it doesn't matter.
  2. Open Claude or ChatGPT and paste the prompt above, filling in the two or three sentences about your business. If you have a past reply you liked, paste it in — nothing teaches your voice faster than one real example.
  3. Read every draft before it goes anywhere. This is the non-negotiable step. AI gets the structure right; you get the soul right. Fix the one phrase that doesn't sound like you, add the detail only you'd know (“tell Maria she says hi”).
  4. Paste each approved reply back into Google. Two minutes.
  5. For anything the prompt flagged — a suspected fake, a threat, a review that names an employee in an ugly way — handle it yourself or with whoever advises you. AI drafts the easy 90%; the tricky 10% is still your call.

Make it the same fifteen minutes every week — Friday after the lunch rush, say — and your review page goes from abandoned to attentive without ever becoming a chore. It pairs well with having Claude read your P&L; more on the small business shelf.