Ask a business owner how they get reviews and the honest answer is "when we remember". The businesses with 300 reviews at 4.8 stars remember every time, because a system remembers for them. This is the review-request automation we build into booking, job and order panels.
The problem
- Reviews are requested occasionally, by whoever thinks of it, to whoever seems happy.
- The request comes days later, when the experience has faded.
- There is no link, so the customer has to find you on Google themselves — most don't.
The solution
- Trigger: when a booking is marked "seated", a job "completed", an appointment "attended", or an order "delivered" in the admin panel.
- Timing: the same evening for restaurants and movers; the next day for clinics and salons; a week later for anything with a delivery period.
- Message: short, personal, from your own address, one direct link to your Google review form (the short "write a review" link from your Business Profile). Optionally a second link to Facebook or a portal you care about.
- One request per customer per visit, never repeated, with an unsubscribe.
- Tracking: requests sent, reviews received per week, so you can see the effect.
The rules
- Ask everyone. "Review gating" — asking only happy customers, or filtering unhappy ones to a private form first — breaches Google's policy and, in the US, the FTC's 2024 rule on reviews. Ask all; handle unhappy ones by replying well.
- No incentives for reviews. Discounts for a review are prohibited by Google and by most professional regulators.
- Health businesses in Australia may ask for reviews but must not republish them as testimonials — see our Australian healthcare guide.
The result
Consistently asked, roughly one customer in eight to twelve leaves a review. A restaurant seating 60 covers a night, a mover doing three jobs a day, a clinic seeing 25 patients — each reaches hundreds of reviews within a year on autopilot. Reviews are also the strongest single input to map-pack ranking, which is why this automation sits next to the local SEO checklist in everything we build. It is a few days of work on top of any admin panel.