What is this course about?
Review velocity and recency matter more than raw star count, and most small businesses monitor one platform and respond inconsistently. This course builds monitoring without a paid subscription, a response template that de-escalates, legally compliant review solicitation, and the loop that turns review themes into operational fixes.
Who is this course for?
- Owner-operators managing their own reputation
- Marketing and customer experience staff in small firms
- Multi-location operators
- Franchise managers
What do I need before starting?
- Claimed listings on your main review platforms
- No technical background required
What will I be able to do afterwards?
- Explain why velocity and recency beat raw star average
- Monitor every relevant platform without a paid subscription
- Respond to a negative review in a way that de-escalates
- Solicit reviews without violating FTC rules
- Turn recurring review themes into operational changes
What does each module cover?
Why do velocity and recency beat star count?
30 minHow review signals actually work, and why a 4.6 with recent reviews outperforms a stale 4.9.
Objectives
- Explain the signals that drive review-based ranking
- Assess your current velocity and recency
- Set realistic improvement targets
Topics
Activity. Assess your review velocity and recency against two local competitors.
How do you monitor everywhere without paying for it?
35 minCoverage across the platforms that matter for your business, assembled rather than subscribed.
Objectives
- Identify which platforms matter for your category
- Assemble monitoring coverage
- Set alerting that reaches you promptly
Topics
Activity. Set up monitoring across your top four platforms and verify alerts fire.
How do you respond to a negative review?
40 minThe response pattern that de-escalates, and the reflexes that make it worse.
Objectives
- Apply a response structure that de-escalates
- Avoid the defensive reflexes that escalate
- Move the conversation off the platform appropriately
Topics
Activity. Draft responses to five real negative reviews and have a colleague critique each.
How do you ask for reviews legally?
35 minWhat the FTC prohibits around incentives, gating, and review solicitation.
Objectives
- State what the FTC prohibits in review solicitation
- Design compliant solicitation
- Avoid review gating
Topics
Activity. Audit your current solicitation process against the FTC rules.
What do you do about fake negative reviews?
30 minDetecting reviews that are not from customers and pursuing removal realistically.
Objectives
- Detect likely fake reviews
- Follow platform removal processes
- Respond publicly when removal fails
Topics
Activity. Work a removal request through one platform's actual process.
How do review themes become operational fixes?
40 minThe loop most businesses skip — treating reviews as an operations signal rather than a marketing one.
Objectives
- Extract recurring themes across reviews
- Prioritize themes by frequency and severity
- Close the loop with an operational change
Topics
Activity. Extract themes from a year of reviews and identify the top operational fix.
How do you show reviews on your own site correctly?
30 minDisplaying reviews with structured data without misrepresenting them.
Objectives
- Implement review structured data correctly
- Display honestly, including negatives
- Avoid markup that misrepresents
Topics
Activity. Implement and validate review structured data on your site.
Building the monitor-and-respond workflow
40 minThe lab module: monitoring, drafted responses, and human approval before anything posts.
Objectives
- Build monitoring with drafted responses
- Require approval before any response posts
- Measure response time and coverage
Topics
Activity. Build the workflow and run it for two weeks, approving every response.
What is the capstone project?
Reputation workflow with an operational fix shipped
Build monitoring across every relevant platform with drafted responses under human approval, audit your solicitation for FTC compliance, and extract review themes into at least one shipped operational change.
Deliverable: A live workflow, a compliance-audited solicitation process, and one operational fix traced to review themes.
How are learners assessed?
- Solicitation audit with every FTC compliance gap remediated
- Response drafts critiqued for de-escalation
- At least one operational change traced to a review theme
What ships with the course?
Facilitator guide
Session-by-session running order, discussion prompts, and the questions that reliably derail a room.
Learner workbook
Exercises, checklists, and the templates each module's activity produces.
Hands-on lab environment
A sandboxed ibl.ai deployment so exercises run against real agents, not screenshots.
Assessment bank
Scenario questions and rubric criteria mapped to each stated learning outcome.
Source bibliography
Every primary regulation and standard cited on this page, linked and dated.
Which AI agents does this course use?
The hands-on modules run against agents already deployable on the ibl.ai platform for small business.
Where does the course material come from?
Every module is grounded in primary sources — the regulation, standard, or research itself, not a summary of it. Each was resolved at authoring time.
- Business guidance
Federal Trade Commission
The endorsement and testimonial rules governing review solicitation.
- U.S. Small Business Administration
SBA
Customer experience and reputation guidance.
- Course structured data
Google Search Central
Structured data implementation reference for Module 7.
- California Consumer Privacy Act
California Attorney General
Privacy obligations when handling customer contact for review requests.
Delivery notes
Binding guidance for anyone preparing and delivering this course.
- Module 4 has real enforcement risk. The FTC has acted against review gating and incentivized reviews, and the course must be specific about what is prohibited rather than gesturing at best practice.
- The approval gate in Module 8 is non-negotiable. An auto-posted response to a negative review is a public risk no small business should take.
- Module 6 is where this course earns its place. Reputation courses stop at responding; the operational loop is what actually moves the rating.
- Be realistic in Module 5 about removal success rates, which are low. Overpromising here produces frustration and undermines the rest.
- Coordinate with SB-2 — support quality drives reviews, and the two courses should share the theme extraction.
Why run AI training on a platform you own?
You own the course, not a licence to it
Course content, learner data, and the platform run inside your perimeter — you own all the code and the data.
Model-agnostic delivery
Run the course's AI components on any LLM — Claude, GPT, Llama, Gemini, Command — and switch anytime.
No per-seat training licences
Usage-based or self-hosted, so cost tracks actual use rather than headcount.
Deploy anywhere
Cloud, private VPC, on-premise, or fully air-gapped — including for cohorts that cannot use public AI tools.
Frequently asked questions
What does the Reviews and Reputation Management with AI course cover?
Review velocity and recency matter more than raw star count, and most small businesses monitor one platform and respond inconsistently. This course builds monitoring without a paid subscription, a response template that de-escalates, legally compliant review solicitation, and the loop that turns review themes into operational fixes. It runs 3.5 hours across 8 modules across 8 modules, at foundational level, and closes with a capstone: Reputation workflow with an operational fix shipped.
Who should take Reviews and Reputation Management with AI?
It is written for Owner-operators managing their own reputation, Marketing and customer experience staff in small firms, Multi-location operators, Franchise managers. Prerequisites: Claimed listings on your main review platforms; No technical background required.
Can we run this course on our own infrastructure?
Yes. ibl.ai is model-agnostic and deploy-anywhere — cloud, private VPC, on-premise, or fully air-gapped — and you own all the code and the data. Cohort data, submissions, and any material learners upload stay inside your perimeter, which matters for small business teams that cannot send work to a public AI tool.
How do we get access to Reviews and Reputation Management with AI?
Request access and we will set it up for your cohort — hosted by ibl.ai, or running against your own deployment. Tell us the group size and timing you need, and whether it should run inside your own perimeter.
How much does AI training for small business cost on ibl.ai?
There is no per-seat pricing — you pay for usage or self-host and pay only for the infrastructure, so a 5,000-person rollout does not cost 5,000 licences. 1.6M+ users across 400+ organizations run the platform this way, including NVIDIA, MIT, and Syracuse University.