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Getting more reviews without pestering anyone

The gap between how many customers are happy and how many say so in public is enormous, and it is almost entirely a timing problem. Nobody sits down a week later and thinks about writing a review. They think about you for about an hour after you leave, and then they get on with their life.

Ask on the day

The moment is when the job is finished and the customer is pleased and standing in front of you. Not a fortnight later by email, which is when the memory has faded and the message reads as marketing. If a request goes out automatically when the job is completed, it lands in the right hour without anyone having to remember.

Make it one tap

Every step between wanting to help and helping loses most of the people. A direct link straight to the review box works; "search for us and leave a review" does not. Keep the message short, mention what the job was so it is obviously not a mailshot, and ask once.

Ask the person who is pleased

Not every customer, and not on a job that went badly. Blanket requests get low response rates and occasionally invite something you would rather not have. The engineer who was there knows perfectly well how it went — a job marked as one to ask about is better targeting than any rule.

Where the reviews should go

Depends on where your customers look, which is worth actually checking rather than assuming. For most domestic trade work in the UK that means the search listing first, and then whichever trade directory your area uses. Spreading requests thinly across five places leaves you looking quiet on all of them; pick two.

A bad review is a public reply

It reads worse to you than to anyone else. What people judge is the reply — measured, specific, no argument about the facts, an offer to sort it out. A firm with forty good reviews and one bad one that was answered well looks more trustworthy than a firm with forty and nothing else, because the second looks curated.

The steady drip beats the campaign

Twenty reviews in one week reads as a push. Two a week for a year reads as a busy firm doing good work, and it keeps the recent ones recent — which is what people actually look at. That only happens if the ask is part of finishing a job rather than a thing somebody decides to do.