With Birdeye, automatically respond to reviews using certain custom rules. To know more about creating auto-response templates, read this help article: How does Birdeye's review response template feature work?

SETTING UP AUTO-RESPONSE RULES (SINGLE LOCATION ACCOUNT)

 To set up auto-response rules, click on the 'Settings' tab on the left navigation rail, then click on 'Reviews,' and select 'Auto-reply rules.'

Now, on the new page, you have the ability to customize and add new rules. Here are elements you can customize:

ADDING A NEW RULE

To add a new rule, click on the '+ Add rule' button at the bottom left. If you add multiple rules, you can drag and drop rules to rearrange them based on priority. 

SETTING UP AUTO-RESPONSE RULES (MULTI-LOCATION ACCOUNTS)

Birdeye allows multi-location business owners to create location-based rules to manage auto responses efficiently. Both enterprise and location-level users can create these rules within the account. To set up auto-response rules, click on the 'Settings' tab, go to 'Reviews,' and click on 'Auto-reply.'

To create a new rule, click the ‘Add Rule’ button in the top right corner.

Start by using the pencil icon to give a name to the rule. Next, select the locations for which you want to create this rule.

Now, you have the ability to add conditions to the rule. 

You can customize a condition using the elements detailed below:

To add a new condition, click ‘Add condition’ at the bottom left. You also have the ability to edit and delete conditions and change the ranking of a condition within a rule by using the drag indicator on the right bar.

IMPORTANT:

While setting up ‘Auto-reply rules’ for ‘Yelp,’ it is mandatory to select at least two or more templates. This aligns with Yelp’s recommendation to not repeat the same reply for consecutive replies. Selecting multiple templates minimizes this. If one template is selected, an error message will appear, preventing you from saving the rule. It is a good practice to create and select multiple templates for each rule to have a diverse range of replies, even for similar reviews.

Once two or more templates are selected for given conditions, the user can proceed to create and save the auto-reply rule.

A newly created rule (with one or multiple conditions) would be visible on the auto-response rules page. All the rules created will have the ‘Rule Name’, ‘Location’ assignment details,’ ‘Last Updated’ and ‘Created by’ information buckets.

To view rule history, delete or disable a rule, hover over the three-dot icon next to the rule, and click on the ‘Actions’ drop-down menu. If you want to make edits to the rule, click on the ‘Edit’ button.

If you want to view rule history for all the rules added to your account, click on the ‘View rule history’ button on the top right corner. All edits with user information would be visible bucketed under the ‘Month’ view.

TIMING OF AUTO-RESPONSE

Responses to reviews are typically posted about an hour after the reviews are aggregated and made available on the Birdeye platform. This delay is useful as it ensures that the responses do not appear automated to the customers who wrote the reviews.

There may be some reviews for which automated responses may be posted while for others, users may submit manual customized responses. Users can identify the reviews where automated responses are posted easily as these responses will carry a  'Response auto-posted on <review site name>'  stamp below the review.