Run a review-reply service for local businesses with AI
Every local business collects reviews and almost none reply to them well. Offer owners a done-for-you service that drafts thoughtful, on-brand replies to their Google and Trustpilot reviews, saving them hours and showing every future customer a business that listens. A tested tool that runs a small AI model on your own PC comes with it, along with a reply playbook, pricing and the one line that keeps you the right side of UK law: you reply to genuine reviews only, and never write them.
- A small AI model on your PC: Run a ChatGPT-style AI on your own laptop sets up Ollama and a model in a few minutes, with no graphics card needed
- Python and uv to run the tool. Level 0 covers installing tools safely: Install anything from GitHub, safely
- The UK rules for invoicing, tax and data: Make it legal: tax, invoices and GDPR for your first clients
- The kit: the drafter, the reply playbook, the outreach scripts, and the kit overview. About 2 hours to read and build, then a few hours a week to find clients
The offer, and the hard line you never cross
Owners do not buy AI. They buy hours back and a public record that makes the next customer trust them. Understand the offer, and the one rule that keeps the whole service legal.
Here is the gap. A plumber, a cafe, a dentist and a driving instructor all collect reviews on Google and Trustpilot. A reply under each one does two jobs: it shows that customer they were heard, and it shows the hundreds of people reading reviews before they book that a real person stands behind the business. Yet most owners reply to none, or fire off a copy-paste "Thanks for your feedback" that helps nobody. They are busy, and writing a calm reply to an angry one-star at 9pm is the last thing they want to do. That is the job you are selling: thoughtful, on-brand replies to their real reviews, drafted for them to approve.
What the owner gets:
- Every new review answered within a day or two, in their own voice.
- Negative reviews handled calmly, which is what future customers read most closely.
- Their time back: you draft, they approve, nobody stares at a blank reply box.
- A profile that looks cared for, which quietly helps them stand out from competitors who reply to nothing.
CarefulThe hard line, and it never moves: you reply to genuine reviews only. You never write a review, never buy or incentivise one, and never ask a customer to leave or change one in exchange for anything. Writing or commissioning fake reviews is a banned practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, in force since 6 April 2025, and it can be fined at up to 10% of turnover. Step 4 covers this in full. The service is replies, as the business, to reviews real customers left. Everything else is out of scope.TipWho this suits. You are comfortable writing in someone else's voice, you keep a cool head reading a furious review, and you will hold the line on what the service does and does not do. The tech is a small tool you run once per batch. The value is judgement: knowing what to say to a one-star, what to leave out, and when something needs the owner, a solicitor or an insurer rather than a public reply.Good fits are businesses with a steady trickle of reviews and a reputation that matters locally: cafes and restaurants, trades, salons and barbers, garages, driving instructors, holiday lets, clinics and practices, estate agents. Poor fits are businesses with almost no reviews (nothing to reply to), and anything where a reply could stray into regulated advice (a reply from a medical or legal practice needs extra care about confidentiality, covered in step 4).
Where the work isA batch of replies takes minutes to draft and a careful read to approve. Your first client is most likely someone you already know or a business whose reviews you can see are being ignored. The selling is the slow part, which is why step 6 gives you a pitch that shows an owner real replies to their real reviews before you ask for anything.