How to Get Google Reviews After Every Job

← All articles

By Brandon Aubey

In short: Most home service businesses do good work and get almost no Google reviews. Here is the fix, the text to send, and what to do about fake ones.

A lot of home service businesses do great work and have almost no reviews. We see it all the time. A company serves 300 customers a year and has six reviews to show for it. That is not a quality problem. It is an asking problem.

The real reason you have six reviews

Owners tell me they ask for reviews. Then I ask again. The honest answer is usually “sometimes.” Sometimes is not a system.

Even when you ask, maybe one in five people will leave a review. So if you ask half the time, you get one in ten. If you ask when you remember, you get six a year.

The fix is simple. Ask 100 percent of the time. Not most of the time. Every job.

Pick one person and make it their job

Who is best at asking? Not the owner. Not whoever is free. The person customers like the most.

Pick that person. Make reviews part of their job. Give them a process they can run on every job, then check if it works. If it does, keep it. If it does not, change the process, not the goal.

Most owners skip this because it feels hard. I think it is one of the most important things you can do. And it is free.

Set a number so you can see the work

Here is a quick exercise. How many jobs did you do last year? Say it was 360. That is about one a day.

Now set a goal of one review for every five jobs. That is 72 reviews a year. You will not hit that by asking every two weeks. You will only hit it by asking after every single job.

Do not get discouraged when four out of five say no. The one in five is the whole point.

Send it right after the job

The timing matters more than the wording. Ask while the job is fresh. Same day if you can.

In person works. A text works. An email works. If you have to automate it, automate it. I leave reviews from automated emails all the time, because the tech was nice. Just make sure it goes out right after the job, every time.

The exact text to send

Here is the one that works best for us. It is built around the tech, not the business. People do not care about a company. They care about the person who showed up.

1. Open your Google Business Profile. That is your free listing on Google Maps.
2. Click “Ask for reviews” and copy the link.
3. Open your CRM, which is just your customer list, and find your recent jobs.
4. Send something like this: “Hey Rob, it’s Brandon here. Steven told me how great you were to work with. It would mean a lot to him if you left us a review. Thanks.” Then paste the link.

One warning. Do not ask the customer to name your tech in the review. Google does not like that anymore. Frame the ask around the tech, but let the customer write what they want.

Honesty also works better than people think. Try this: “We do not get many reviews, but we do good work. Can you help us out?” I would say yes to that.

Have your crews ask on every job

Do this first if nothing else. Build a process where your crews ask for a review before they leave. It costs nothing. People leave reviews for the tech who fixed their AC in July. They do not leave them for a faceless company.

A lot of owners are scared of a one-star review. I get it. The answer is to do a good job. If you do good work, asking everyone is not a risk.

How many reviews do you actually need?

There is no official number. Here is what the data says.

• One study found the median to rank in a small town was 30 reviews.
• In a big city it was 96.
• Roofers needed about 13. HVAC needed about 25.
• Another study looked at the map pack, the top three map results on Google. Businesses moved up after going from 3 reviews to 16. Nothing else changed.

So it is lower than you think. And honestly, the total count is never the deciding factor. There is a lot more going on with how Google ranks you. If you worry about reviews, worry about how often you get new ones. Google cares about this month, not two years ago.

What to do about a fake one-star review

It happens. Often it is someone you never served, or a competitor. Here is what to do.

1. Do not reply to it. A reply tells Google they were a real customer. I almost never see a review get removed after the owner replied.
2. Check your records. Were they ever a customer? If not, report the review from your Google Business Profile.
3. Give it a couple of weeks. Sometimes it just goes away.
4. If you get hit with several at once, report them all together. Google tends to catch those.

That is really it. Ask every time, send it fast, and frame it around your tech. Reviews are a big part of local SEO, which means showing up on Google Maps. Want help turning reviews into rankings? Look at our Local SEO services or book a strategy call.

We can do this for you

You can do everything above yourself. Most owners do not have the hours. Dead River Management builds and runs it for home service businesses. We work in El Paso and across the country. You keep running jobs. We handle the review system and local search work. You judge us on booked jobs, not reports. See Local SEO services, read about the Demand Flow guarantee, or book a strategy call.

Questions