Customer Support

How to respond to online reviews as Event Agency Founders

Customer SupportFor Event Agency Founders2 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

After a corporate gala or wedding weekend, reviews trickle in across Google, The Knot, WeddingWire, and Yelp — and you're fielding tear-down logistics, final vendor invoices, and the next client's site walk simultaneously. A negative review about a catering delay that wasn't even your fault sits unanswered for four days because you didn't see it. A glowing five-star post on Google gets no response at all. You know replied-to reviews convert better with future leads, but there's no system — just you, a browser tab graveyard, and the guilt of knowing you should have responded two weeks ago.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Customer SupportFor Event Agency Founders2 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

An inbox that surfaces every new review from Google, The Knot, WeddingWire, and Yelp in one place, prioritized by recency and sentiment, so nothing sits unanswered past 24 hours

Draft replies written in your agency's voice — acknowledging the specific event type, the reviewer's name, and the actual compliment or complaint — ready for you to approve and post with one click

A follow-up reminder system that flags any review you haven't responded to after 48 hours, so the backlog never builds again

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Email Agent

Data sources & config

Starch connects directly to Gmail (scheduled sync — messages refreshed on a schedule, read and send enabled) to catch incoming review alert emails from Google Business Profile, The Knot, WeddingWire, and Yelp. For platforms with public review pages, Starch automates the browser to check your business listings directly — no API needed. The Email Agent uses your Gmail send access to prepare outbound replies in draft form for your approval.

Prompts to copy

Monitor my Gmail inbox for new review notification emails from Google Business, The Knot, WeddingWire, and Yelp. When one arrives, extract the reviewer's name, star rating, event type if mentioned, and the review text. Triage it by urgency: 1-2 star reviews surface first, 3-star second, 4-5 star third. For each review, draft a reply in my voice — warm, specific to what they mentioned, never generic — and queue it for my approval before posting.

Every Monday morning, send me a digest of all unanswered review notifications from the past 7 days. Flag any that are 48+ hours old. For each one, include the draft reply you already prepared so I can approve and copy-paste it in under 2 minutes per review.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect your Gmail account — Starch syncs your messages on a schedule, including the review notification emails that come from Google Business Profile, The Knot, WeddingWire, and Yelp.

2 Open the Email Triage app (the Founder Inbox starter template) and tell Starch: 'Flag every email from Google Business, The Knot, WeddingWire, and Yelp as a Review Alert and surface them at the top of my inbox triage.' This creates a standing filter that runs every time your inbox syncs.

3 For each review alert, the Email Agent extracts the reviewer's name, star rating, platform, and review body — so you're reading a structured summary, not hunting through a notification email.

4 Tell Starch: 'Draft a reply for each review in my voice. If they mention a specific vendor problem, acknowledge the event logistics without throwing the vendor under the bus. If they're glowing, thank them by name and mention the event type.' Starch drafts; you approve.

5 For platforms where you don't get email alerts reliably — like Yelp or a niche venue-specific directory — set up a browser automation: 'Check my Yelp business page every Monday and Wednesday morning for new reviews I haven't responded to yet, and add them to my review queue.' Starch automates this through your browser, no Yelp API required.

6 Set a 48-hour follow-up rule: 'If a review draft has been sitting in my queue for more than 48 hours without me approving it, Slack me a reminder with the review text and the draft reply.' This is your safety net for busy event weekends.

7 Build a Google Sheet (connect it from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries it live) as your review log — event name, review date, platform, star rating, responded Y/N. Tell Starch: 'After I approve and send a reply, log this review to my Reviews Log sheet automatically.'

8 Once a month, ask Starch: 'Pull my review log from the last 30 days and summarize: average star rating by platform, how many reviews I responded to within 24 hours, and which event types generated the most reviews.' This becomes your reputation health report.

9 For your highest-value corporate clients, set up a personalized follow-up automation: 'Three days after an event closes in my CRM, send the primary contact a Gmail draft asking if they'd be willing to leave a Google review, and include a direct link.' Starch drafts and queues it; you decide whether to send.

10 If a review is a 1-star complaint that mentions a specific vendor, Starch flags it for priority handling and prepares a longer response draft with space for you to add event-specific context before posting — keeping your public reply professional while the real conversation happens offline.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

Post-event review backlog — Spring 2026 corporate season

Sample numbers from a real run

Google Business — 5-star (Meridian Financial gala, April 4)	0
The Knot — 4-star (Hendricks wedding, April 6, catering pacing complaint)	0
WeddingWire — 5-star (Patel-Chen rehearsal dinner, April 8)	0
Yelp — 2-star (anonymous, April 9, parking and signage complaint)	0
Google Business — 5-star (Meridian Financial gala follow-up from attendee, April 11)	0

You wrapped a four-event stretch in eight days and didn't open a review platform once. By April 12th, you had five reviews sitting unanswered — including a 2-star Yelp post about parking signage at a venue you'd flagged to the client beforehand. Starch had already pulled all five into your triage inbox, sorted by urgency (2-star first), and drafted replies for each. The Yelp response acknowledged the frustration, noted that parking logistics at that venue are managed by the venue coordinator, and offered your direct line for anyone who had a further issue — professional without being defensive. The two 5-star Google responses thanked reviewers by name and referenced the Meridian Financial event specifically. Total time to approve and post all five drafts: 14 minutes. Before Starch, that backlog would have sat until a slow Tuesday two weeks later — or never.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Review response rate within 48 hours (target: 100% of reviews responded to before the next event load-in)

Average star rating by platform, tracked monthly across Google, The Knot, WeddingWire, and Yelp

Number of new reviews generated per event (as a measure of post-event follow-up effectiveness)

Review-to-inquiry conversion: how many new leads mention finding you through reviews

Time-to-first-response on 1-2 star reviews (the ones that actually damage future bookings if left unanswered)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Manual browser tab rotation (Google, The Knot, WeddingWire, Yelp checked manually)

Free and requires no setup, but falls apart entirely during event execution weeks — which is exactly when reviews arrive and when you have zero time to check four separate platforms.

Birdeye or Podium (reputation management platforms)

Purpose-built for review aggregation and response, but priced for multi-location retail and restaurant chains — $300-500/month is hard to justify for a 2-person event agency, and neither connects to your actual operations stack the way Starch does.

HoneyBook or Dubsado post-event workflows

Both can trigger a review request email after an event closes, but neither monitors incoming reviews, drafts replies, or surfaces a backlog — you still need a separate system for the response side.

Zapier + Gmail + Google Sheets

Can route review notification emails into a tracking sheet, but writing and queuing the actual replies still happens manually — Zapier has no AI drafting, and building the zaps for four separate review platforms takes a full afternoon to set up correctly.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — founder inbox, email agent all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Can Starch actually post the reply directly to Google or The Knot, or do I still have to copy-paste it?

Starch prepares the draft and you approve it — for most review platforms, the final posting step is still a copy-paste because Google Business Profile, The Knot, and WeddingWire don't offer public reply APIs. What Starch eliminates is the part that actually takes the most time: finding the review, reading it, figuring out what to say, and writing something that doesn't sound robotic. The copy-paste takes 30 seconds. Starch automates the browser to navigate to the right review page so you're one click away from the reply field.

What if I'm in the middle of an event weekend and completely offline for 48 hours?

Starch keeps queuing. When you're back, your review inbox is sorted by urgency — 1-2 star reviews at the top, drafts already prepared. The 48-hour Slack reminder will fire when you're back online. You're not starting from scratch; you're approving a queue that built itself while you were running the event.

My agency voice is very specific — I don't want generic 'Thank you for your kind words!' responses. Can Starch match how I actually write?

Yes, and this is where the natural-language authoring matters. You tell Starch exactly what your voice sounds like: 'Replies should be warm but not effusive. Always use the reviewer's first name. Never use the phrase thank you for your kind words. If they mention a specific moment from the event, reference it. Keep replies under 100 words.' The more specific you are in the prompt, the more accurate the drafts. You can also paste in 3-4 of your best past replies as examples and tell Starch to match that tone.

Does Starch work with review platforms beyond Google, The Knot, WeddingWire, and Yelp?

If it sends you an email notification when a new review comes in, Starch catches it through your Gmail sync. If you want to proactively check a platform that doesn't send notifications — a venue-specific directory, a local wedding blog that aggregates reviews, a Facebook page — Starch can automate that through your browser. No API needed. Tell it which URL to check and how often.

Is my Gmail data stored in Starch?

Starch syncs your Gmail messages on a schedule to power the triage and drafting workflows. One honest note: the Gmail OAuth consent screen currently shows the underlying connector's name rather than Starch — that's on the roadmap to fix. Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today, so if your agency handles enterprise clients with strict data handling requirements, that's worth knowing before you connect your inbox.

I use HoneyBook to close out events — can Starch trigger the review request automatically when I mark a project complete there?

Connect HoneyBook from Starch's integration catalog — the agent queries it live when your automation runs. Tell Starch: 'When a project in HoneyBook is marked as Complete, wait 3 days, then draft a Gmail to the primary client contact asking for a Google review and include my direct review link.' Starch builds that automation from the description. The exact trigger depends on what HoneyBook exposes through the integration, but the pattern works with any CRM or project tool that's reachable from the catalog.