How automations work

An automation is a rule: when this happens, do that. They’re what turns FeedbackRobot from something you check into something that runs.

Triggers and actions

Every automation has a trigger (what starts it) and one or more actions (what happens).

Common triggers:

• A new review arrives on a connected platform
• A review is below a rating threshold
• A survey response comes in with negative sentiment
• A customer completes a survey
• A customer is added or imported
• A period of time passes after an event

Common actions:

• Send a survey
• Send a reply
• Open a resolution
• Notify you or a teammate
• Add the customer to a response group
• Add a review to your feedback wall

Conditions

Between the trigger and the action you can add conditions — rules that must be true for the automation to continue. This is what stops a flow firing on everything.

“When a review arrives” is too broad. “When a review arrives and it’s under three stars and it’s from Google” is a rule you can actually trust.

Start with these three

If you set up nothing else:

1. Negative review → immediate alert. The single highest-value automation. You want to know about a one-star review within minutes, not at the end of the week.

2. Survey completed with negative sentiment → open a resolution. Catches the unhappy customer before they decide to post publicly. This is where the money is.

3. Positive survey response → ask for a public review. Someone who has just privately told you they’re delighted is your best candidate for a public review, and almost nobody asks them.

Keeping them from misfiring

Be specific with conditions. Broad triggers produce noise, and noisy automations get switched off.

Watch for overlap. Two automations that both reply to the same event will both reply. Check whether a new one duplicates an existing one.

Mind the timing. An automation that sends a survey immediately after another survey will annoy people. Space them.

Test before enabling. Run it against yourself first. It’s much cheaper to find a mistake in your own inbox.

Actions count against your allowance

Anything an automation does on your behalf counts as an action. A badly scoped automation can burn through your monthly allowance quickly — another reason to keep conditions tight.

→ Understanding actions and limits

Ready-made flows

We maintain a library of automation recipes for common situations by industry.

→ Browse the automation library