Plenty of compliments, a handful of reviews
Customers thank the team on site. They send nice emails. They tell you on the phone that they will recommend you. And your Google Business Profile has a few reviews, some from years ago, while a competitor with worse work has hundreds.
Everyone agrees you should ask. The engineer means to mention it at the end of the job but forgets. The office means to send an email but it slips down the list. Occasionally someone remembers, sends a message with a link that goes to the wrong page, and the customer gives up.
Then there are the timing problems. A customer who is delighted on the day of the job is mildly positive a fortnight later and indifferent after a month. By the time a batch of review emails finally goes out, the moment has gone.
Why reviews do not happen
- Asking depends on a person remembering at the right moment, which they rarely do.
- When the request is sent, it is sent too late, after the good feeling has faded.
- The link is to your website or a generic Google search, not straight to the review box.
- Requests are generic and feel like marketing rather than a personal ask.
- Nobody knows who has already been asked, so some people are asked twice and most never.
What the missing reviews cost
Reviews influence both whether you appear in local search results and whether people choose you when you do. A thin, old review profile makes a good business look unproven next to competitors. Reviews also carry the words customers use, which is useful for your own marketing. Leaving them uncollected is a quiet disadvantage that compounds.
| Moment to ask | Where the trigger comes from |
|---|---|
| Job marked complete | Job management system or field app |
| Order delivered | Shopify, courier tracking or your order system |
| Invoice paid | Xero, QuickBooks or Stripe |
| Project sign-off | CRM deal stage or project tool |
How we build review requests
- We pick the right trigger for your business, such as job completion, delivery confirmation or invoice paid, from the system that records it.
- When the trigger fires, a short message goes out by text through Twilio or by email, signed by the person who did the work where possible.
- The link opens straight into the review form for your Google Business Profile, or the platform you prefer, such as Trustpilot.
- Every customer gets the same request. Google's policies do not allow filtering out likely unhappy customers before asking, so we do not build that. Instead, the message also gives a direct way to contact you if something was wrong.
- A single gentle reminder goes to those who have not reviewed, then the request stops.
- A log records who was asked and when, so nobody is asked twice.
- New reviews are pulled into a dashboard and posted to a team channel, and any low rating raises a task for someone to respond.
We can also draft suggested replies to reviews for a person to approve, so every review gets an answer without somebody writing each from scratch.
The message itself matters as much as the plumbing. We keep it short, personal and specific to the job or order, because a request that names the engineer and the work reads like a favour between people rather than a marketing email. You approve the wording before anything is switched on.
What changes
Reviews start arriving steadily because every customer is asked at the moment they are happiest, with one tap to leave a review. The team does not have to remember anything. When a customer does have a complaint, it reaches you directly and quickly, and a low public rating becomes a prompt to fix and respond rather than a surprise found weeks later.
Signs this applies to you
- Customers tell you they are happy, but your review count barely moves.
- Asking for reviews depends on someone remembering.
- Your review link goes somewhere other than the review form.
- You find out about bad reviews by chance.
- Competitors with more reviews outrank you in local search.