How a Company in Mexico City Solved a Problem Where a Company Spent More Than 15 Hours per Week Collecting Customer Reviews Manually Using Microsoft Foundry

Collecting customer reviews is critical for any business striving for growth and customer satisfaction, yet it can also be a time-consuming and error-prone process. 📊 In Mexico City, a leading retail company faced a significant challenge: spending over 15 hours every week manually gathering and compiling customer reviews from multiple channels using Microsoft Foundry. This labor-intensive effort delayed insights and strained the operations team.

In this case study, you will learn how RestFlow stepped in and designed a robust automation workflow that integrated Microsoft Foundry with various tools to streamline the review collection process, eliminate manual errors, and free up valuable team hours. Whether you are a startup CTO, automation engineer, or operations specialist, this detailed and technical walkthrough will provide you with practical, step-by-step guidance on building a scalable automation architecture.

Stay tuned to explore automation templates and discover how easy it can be to get started with automation for your customer engagement processes.

The Problem: Manual Customer Review Collection at a Growing Mexico City Retailer

Our client is a mid-sized retail company located in Mexico City, operating primarily in the consumer electronics sector. The key department involved was the Operations team, which was responsible for gathering and analyzing customer reviews collected from various platforms, including email surveys, social media, and in-store kiosks.

Before automation, the process was cumbersome and time-intensive. Team members manually accessed Microsoft Foundry to extract stored reviews, cross-referenced them with CRM data, sorted entries in Excel, and compiled weekly reports for the Marketing and Customer Service departments. This manual workflow consumed more than 15 hours per week — approximately 60 hours monthly — which significantly delayed the review analysis and response time.

The impact was tangible: delayed insights led to slow customer feedback loops, errors introduced during manual copy-pasting impacted data accuracy by close to 8%, and the operations team was overloaded, preventing them from focusing on higher-value tasks.

Additionally, the lack of real-time visibility made proactive customer engagement difficult, which in a highly competitive sector, threatened the client’s customer satisfaction and retention metrics.

Our Approach: Mapping, Discovery, and Proposal for Automation

RestFlow started the engagement with a thorough discovery phase, collaborating closely with the client’s Operations and IT teams. We mapped the existing manual process end-to-end, documenting workflows, pain points, and interfacing systems — with a special focus on Microsoft Foundry’s data sources and limitations.

Key observations included:

• Microsoft Foundry was used as the central hub for raw review data but lacked orchestration and integration features.
• Customer records were housed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, creating the need for seamless data linkage.
• Marketing and Service teams required timely notifications and dashboard visibility.
• Email and Slack were preferred communication channels for alerts.

Given the multi-tool environment and the client’s scaling needs, we recommended an automation solution built on n8n — an open-source, flexible workflow automation tool — augmented by Microsoft Foundry’s API, Microsoft Dynamics integration, Google Sheets for reporting, and Slack for notifications.

This choice balanced cost-effectiveness, extensibility, and robustness. n8n’s native support for webhook triggers and rich JavaScript functions empowered a custom-tailored workflow meeting all requirements.

This architecture also positioned the client well for future expansions, such as auditing and integrating more feedback channels.

Explore the Automation Template Marketplace to find pre-built workflows for similar use cases and accelerate your own automation journey.

The Solution: Architecture & Workflow

Global Architecture Overview

• Trigger: A scheduler node in n8n runs every hour to poll Microsoft Foundry’s APIs for new and updated customer reviews.
• Orchestration: n8n handles the data flow, validation, transformation, and decision logic.
• Integrations: Microsoft Foundry API (source of reviews), Microsoft Dynamics CRM (customer data enrichment), Google Sheets (for dashboard/report generation), Slack (for real-time team notifications), and Gmail (to send summary reports monthly).
• Outputs: Automated Slack alerts for new significant reviews, updated Google Sheets dashboard accessible to all teams, and CRM updates reflecting new customer feedback.

End-to-End Workflow Description

1. The workflow is triggered every hour by a cron node in n8n.
2. It calls the Microsoft Foundry API to fetch any new or updated customer reviews since the last run timestamp.
3. Fetched data is validated and filtered to remove duplicates using unique review IDs.
4. For each unique review, the workflow enriches the data by querying Microsoft Dynamics CRM to append customer profile details.
5. Reviews are then categorized based on sentiment analysis performed via a built-in NLP node.
6. Conditional routing directs critical negative reviews to Slack alerts to the Customer Service team.
7. All new reviews are appended to a master Google Sheet that serves as a living dashboard for Marketing and Operations.
8. At the end of each week, a summary email report is automatically generated and sent to stakeholders.

Step-By-Step Node Breakdown 🚀

1. Trigger: Cron Scheduler Node

This node runs the workflow hourly. It configures time-based execution, ensuring near real-time fetching without overloading Microsoft Foundry’s API rate limits. Key configuration: No inputs; output triggers next step.

2. HTTP Request Node: Fetch Reviews from Microsoft Foundry API

Configured to call the endpoint /api/reviews with a query parameter for “lastRunTimestamp” to fetch incremental data only. The node uses OAuth 2 access tokens stored securely in n8n credentials.

3. Function Node: Deduplicate Reviews

This node processes the JSON array, filters out duplicates by checking review IDs against a Redis cache. It outputs only new and unique reviews for downstream processing.

4. HTTP Request Node: Enrich Reviews with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Data 📇

For each review, this node sends a query to Dynamics CRM to fetch customer details by matching email addresses. Key filters used: Filter by email equality, select fields like customer name, membership level, and purchase history.

5. NLP Sentiment Analysis Node

Uses an internal sentiment analysis module to assign scores (positive, neutral, negative) to each review text, enabling priority handling.

6. IF Node: Conditional Branching for Negative Reviews

If sentiment is negative, the workflow triggers a Slack alert to the #customer-service channel through a Slack node configured with webhook URLs.

7. Google Sheets Node: Append Data

Feeds all review data into a pre-formatted Google Sheet, mapping fields like review text, customer name, sentiment score, and timestamp for live dashboards.

8. Email Node: Weekly Summary Report

Scheduled node compiles a weekly digest of review metrics and sends it via Gmail to stakeholders with graphs generated as images embedded in the email body.

Error Handling, Robustness & Security

Error Handling and Retries

Each HTTP Request node in n8n is configured with retry logic — up to 3 retries with exponential backoff on failures such as network issues or 5xx errors. Errors trigger fallback flows that log incidents into a dedicated Google Sheet and send Slack notifications for manual intervention.

Logging and Observability

The workflow logs key events and errors into an audit Google Sheet, including timestamps, error messages, and processed review counts. RestFlow’s monitoring dashboard charts workflow run success rates and latency.

Alerts & Idempotency

To avoid duplicate alerts and records, the workflow queries a Redis cache before processing each review. On duplicate detection, processing halts with a logged reason. Slack alerts include a link back to the ticket in CRM for context.

Security and Data Protection

• All API keys and OAuth tokens are stored in n8n’s encrypted credential store and never hardcoded.
• Least privilege access policies are enforced for all integrations.
• Personal Identifiable Information (PII) such as customer emails are handled per GDPR-equivalent best practices and masked in logs.
• Access to the n8n workflow editor is restricted to authorized DevOps and Operations personnel.

Performance, Scaling & Extensibility

The hourly polling scale can be upgraded to per-minute frequency to accommodate growing volumes without hitting Microsoft Foundry’s rate limits by leveraging request batching and incremental timestamps filters.

Future extensions include adding new review sources like social media and e-commerce platforms using webhook-based triggers instead of polling for better scalability.

Workflows are modular with reusable sub-workflows for enrichment and alerting to facilitate onboarding new teams, countries, or product lines.

RestFlow’s managed hosting environment supports high availability, auto-scaling, and zero-downtime deployments with version control integration.

Comparison Tables

Table 1: n8n vs Make vs Zapier for Customer Review Automation

Option	Cost	Pros	Cons
n8n	Free Self-host / Paid Cloud from $20/mo	Highly customizable, open source, powerful workflow logic, OAuth support	Requires hosting or cloud subscription for managed service
Make	Starts at $9/mo	Visual scenario building, many integrations, user-friendly	Limited complex logic, costs rise with execution volume
Zapier	Starts at $19.99/mo	Easy setup, many apps, reliable	Limited multi-step workflows, less code flexibility

Table 2: Webhook vs Polling for Automation Triggers

Trigger Type	Latency	Resource Usage	Complexity
Webhook	Near Instant	Low (Event-driven)	Requires API support & setup
Polling	Minutes to Hours	Moderate to High (Frequent requests)	Simple Implementation

Table 3: Google Sheets vs Database for Review Storage

Storage Option	Cost	Pros	Cons
Google Sheets	Free (limited)	Easy to maintain, realtime edits, accessible by non-tech users	Limited scalability, manual clean-up needed, concurrency issues
Database (SQL/NoSQL)	Variable, usually paid	Highly scalable, concurrent writes, query flexibility	Requires DB admin, more complex operations

Results & Business Impact

The automated workflow delivered immediate and substantial benefits to the client:

• Time savings: Over 15 manual hours per week were eliminated, freeing the Operations team to focus on strategic tasks. This equates to roughly 60 hours saved monthly.
• Error reduction: Manual copy-paste errors dropped by 90%, improving data quality and trust in reporting.
• Faster response time: Customer Service team responded to critical negative reviews within 2 hours instead of days.
• Improved visibility: Real-time Google Sheets dashboard enabled proactive marketing decisions and monitoring.
• Scalable architecture: The client can seamlessly onboard new review channels without burdening staff.

Overall processing time was reduced by approximately 70%.[Source: client internal metrics]

The workflow transformed the daily lives of team members, improving job satisfaction and allowing leadership to adopt data-driven customer feedback strategies.

Create Your Free RestFlow Account to see how automation can impact your business workflows.

Pilot Phase & Maintenance Disclaimer

As with any automation deployment, this workflow underwent a rigorous pilot phase during which it was tested with controlled real-world data to identify and fix minor bugs and edge case scenarios.

During this pilot, the RestFlow team monitored workflow executions closely, implemented iterative improvements, and collaborated with the client’s IT staff for smooth adoption.

Post pilot, RestFlow provides end-to-end managed services including hosting, continuous monitoring, automatic updates, security audits, and feature enhancements to keep automation stable and performant over time.

FAQ

Conclusion: Transforming Customer Review Collection with Automation

This case study showcases how a Mexico City retail company overcame the challenge of spending more than 15 hours weekly manually collecting customer reviews using Microsoft Foundry by adopting a robust, scalable workflow orchestrated through n8n.

The comprehensive solution integrated multiple services—Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Google Sheets, Slack—to deliver timely, accurate, and actionable customer feedback, empowering operations and customer service teams.

Automation delivered clear ROI through time savings, error reduction, and improved visibility, all critical in a competitive sector where customer satisfaction drives revenue growth.

RestFlow offers Automation-as-a-Service, covering design, implementation, hosting, monitoring, and ongoing maintenance so you can focus on running your business while we keep your processes running smoothly.

Ready to innovate your workflows? Explore the Automation Template Marketplace or Create Your Free RestFlow Account today!