Capability template for marketing and content
Public guest review reply
Answer an online guest review without exposing the guest's stay. Hand over the review and the service actions you have confirmed, and get a short public reply plus separate private notes, each statement tied to its source. The guest relations manager checks and approves.
Add it to a workflow in the Fully Powered Planner, beside the teams and roles that will run it. Book a fit call
The outcome
A review goes up on a public site, and the person who answers it has a calm, short draft to work from. The public reply thanks the guest, acknowledges what the review actually says, and states only what the property has verifiably done. Next to it sit private notes for the team: what the review raised that nobody has answered yet, which confirmed actions were kept out of the public reply and why, and what the manager has to decide.
Every sentence in the draft points to its source: a line of the review, a confirmed action, or your own house guidance. Nothing about the stay is added. No dates, rooms, rates or booking details appear unless the review itself put them there, and the name of a staff member, another guest or a child is never repeated, even when the review gives it; it goes in the private notes instead. No refund, credit or upgrade is mentioned or hinted at. The manager decides what is posted, and the draft posts nothing.
Who starts the work, and when
The guest relations manager starts it when an online review needs a public answer, once per review. The duty manager and the department involved confirm what was done about the problem. The manager reads the draft against the review and the confirmed actions, checks accuracy and the guest's privacy, edits it and approves publication. Marketing sees the final wording if your guidance says so.
What they supply
- The review as posted: the site, the date, the rating, the name shown and the full text.
- A list of verified service actions, each with who confirmed it, when, and whether it may be mentioned in public.
- Your response guidance: voice, length, sign-off, the contact route to offer, and any words to avoid.
- Who should be told once a reply is posted.
What comes out
- What the review raised. Every point, numbered, with how the reply handles it.
- The public reply. Short, in your voice, within your length limit.
- Where each sentence comes from. Its source for every sentence in the reply.
- Private follow-up notes. Open points, confirmed actions kept out of public, decisions for the manager and who to tell.
- What was left out. The kinds of detail the draft deliberately did not use.
A good draft can be checked against the review and the action list in a minute, and a reader of the review sees nothing about the stay that they did not write themselves.
An invented example
Illustrative example with invented data. Hotel Q is an invented 40-room hotel, the guest is invented, and so are the people, the dates and every record below. First come the inputs the guest relations manager supplied, in full, then the draft the capability returned.
The inputs
REVIEW
Site: Review site P. Posted Sunday 8 November 2026. Rating: 3 of 5.
Name shown: TravellerR
"Lovely location and the breakfast was the best part of the stay. The
room was noisy on our first night because of building work outside, and
the lift was out of order on the day we left, which was hard with our
bags. The front desk did move us to a quieter room for the second night,
which we appreciated. Wish we had been warned about the building work
when booking."
VERIFIED SERVICE ACTIONS
Ref | Action | Confirmed by | Date confirmed | May be mentioned publicly
A1 | Front desk moved a guest to a quieter room on request | Duty manager | 2026-11-07 | yes
A2 | Passenger lift repaired and back in service | Maintenance lead | 2026-11-09 | yes
A3 | Reservations now add a note about known building work to pre-arrival messages | Reservations manager | 2026-11-09 | no
A4 | One night's room charge refunded to the reviewing guest's card | Finance | 2026-11-09 | no
RESPONSE GUIDANCE (RG-1, dated 1 October 2026)
Voice: warm, plain, first person for what I did, "we" for the hotel.
Greeting: "Hello" and the name shown on the review.
Length: at most 100 words including the sign-off.
No exclamation marks. No "unfortunately".
Contact route to offer: guest relations, through the contact page on our
website. Never an email address or a phone number.
Sign-off: Dana, Guest Relations Manager, Hotel Q
Manager: Dana. Tell after posting: duty manager, marketing.
PLATFORM LIMITS
None.
The output
PUBLIC GUEST REVIEW REPLY: Review site P, posted Sunday 8 November 2026, 3 of 5
Status: Draft for Dana. Not posted. Dana checks accuracy and the guest's privacy before approving.
Sources: the review; actions A1 to A4 as supplied; RG-1, dated 1 October 2026.
WHAT THE REVIEW RAISED
R1. Praise: the location and the breakfast. Thanked in the reply.
R2. Complaint: noise on the first night from building work outside. Acknowledged with an apology; no action listed.
R3. Complaint: the lift out of order on the day of departure. Acknowledged with an apology and answered by A2.
R4. Praise: the front desk moved the guest to a quieter room for the second night. Acknowledged, supported by A1.
R5. Wish: to have been warned about the building work at booking. Not answered in public: the only related action, A3, may not be mentioned publicly. See the private notes.
PUBLIC REPLY (97 words, limit 100)
Hello TravellerR, thank you for your review and for the kind words about our location and breakfast. I'm sorry the building work made your first night noisy and that the lift was out of order on the day you left. I'm glad our front desk could move you to a quieter room for the second night. The lift has since been repaired and is back in service. If you would like to talk with us about your stay, please contact our guest relations team through the contact page on our website.
Dana, Guest Relations Manager, Hotel Q
WHERE EACH SENTENCE COMES FROM
1. "Hello TravellerR, thank you for your review and for the kind words about our location and breakfast." Greeting and thanks from RG-1; R1.
2. "I'm sorry the building work made your first night noisy and that the lift was out of order on the day you left." R2, R3.
3. "I'm glad our front desk could move you to a quieter room for the second night." R4; A1.
4. "The lift has since been repaired and is back in service." A2, which may be mentioned publicly.
5. "If you would like to talk with us about your stay, please contact our guest relations team through the contact page on our website." Contact route from RG-1.
6. Sign-off: RG-1.
PRIVATE FOLLOW-UP NOTES (not for posting)
Open points: R5. The guest wishes they had been warned at booking. A3 is confirmed, but it is not marked for public mention. Dana decides whether the reply may say anything about it.
Confirmed actions kept out of the public reply: A3, not marked for public mention. A4, not marked for public mention; the reply offers and hints at no compensation.
Decisions for Dana: 1. Whether to mention A3 publicly. 2. Whether anything about A4 is said to the guest privately; this capability does not draft that message.
Claims in the review that conflict with a confirmed action: none.
Serious allegations: none.
Names to handle: none (no staff, guest or child is named; "TravellerR" is the name shown).
Tell after posting: duty manager, marketing.
LEFT OUT OF THE PUBLIC REPLY
Dates and length of stay, room details, the rate and any charge or refund, how the stay was booked, who travelled, staff names, and any action not marked for public mention. The only stay details in the reply are the ones the review states: the first night, the second night, the building work, the lift and the quieter room.
Draft for Dana's approval. Nothing has been posted, sent or recorded.
Where it fits
- Marketing and content, because a public reply is also read by people who have not yet booked, and it speaks for the property.
- Customer support and service, where the guest's own problem is followed up in private.
- Hospitality, for hotels, restaurants and venues that answer reviews on public sites.
- Established businesses, which already have house guidance and want every reply to follow it.
This capability stays apart from two neighbours. Customer reply drafting writes the private message to a guest, where details of the stay belong. Complaint and refund request handling applies your policy to a request for money back. This one writes only the public answer and the notes around it.
What has to change for your company
Write your response guidance down, even on one page: voice, length for each rating, sign-off, and the contact route you offer. Decide which kinds of action may ever be mentioned in public, and who confirms an action before it is listed as verified. Name the person who approves publication and who is told afterwards. Decide how reviews that allege harm, illness, theft, discrimination, a hazard, a hygiene breach or formal action are handled; the template pauses on them and passes them to a person. A review that disputes the facts of a confirmed action does not pause the draft: the reply stays silent on that point and both versions go to the manager in the private notes. Decide which review details the AI assistant may be shown on ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini. Your organization keeps control of what is said in its name.
What has been checked
Fully Powered AI wrote this capability template. It was editorially reviewed on 10 November 2026. It was tried on its invented example in Claude on 10 November 2026, and the record is published with it; that trial was not independent, because the assistant had seen the example's reply before drafting. It has not yet been tested in a client environment. It has not yet been tested as a packaged version in ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini.
Testing in your environment means running it on past reviews your manager has already answered, plus hard cases written in advance: a review that names a staff member, one that asks for compensation, one that contradicts a confirmed action, one that alleges something serious. The manager checks every sentence against its source before anything is posted. Pilot acceptance-test preparation builds that test set, and what we test before we call an AI workflow ready shows the record we keep.
The full capability template
Everything above is the outline. The complete capability template is the working version: the roles, the inputs, the procedure, the exceptions and stop conditions, the output format, the reviewer checklist, the acceptance tests, the instructions for an AI assistant and what to customize for your company. It comes with a download and the link to its folder in Fully Powered’s public repository.
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Next step
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