Get your review link
In your Google Business Profile, open your reviews and choose the option to get more reviews. Google gives you a short link, and a QR code, that opens your review form directly. That link is the whole tool: a customer who has to search for you first mostly will not bother.
When and how to ask
- The same day the job is finished, while they are pleased and it is fresh.
- By text, with the link, from you, not from "the team".
- Every customer, not just the ones you think will be kind.
Thanks for having us in today, Sarah. If you've got a minute, a Google review helps a small firm like ours more than you'd think: [your link]. Ruth.
What Google and UK law do not allow
- Offering anything for a review: a discount, money or a freebie.
- Asking only happy customers, or sending unhappy ones somewhere private instead of to the review form. That is called review gating.
- Telling people what to write, or posting reviews that are not from real customers.
Google can remove the reviews, block new ones for a time, or show a warning on your profile. In the UK the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 also bans fake reviews and hiding genuine negative ones.
Slate's review requests follow this: every customer is shown every review site, whatever they rated. A customer who is unhappy is also offered a way to tell you first, as well as, never instead of, the review sites.
When you get a bad one
Reply, calmly and briefly, in public: thank them, say what you will do, and offer to sort it out. People reading your reviews judge you by the reply more than the complaint. Never argue, and never post a review of your own.
Straight answers
- Can I give a discount for a review?
- No. Google bans any reward for a review, and so does UK law where the reward is hidden.
- Can I ask only my happy customers?
- No. Asking selectively, or steering unhappy customers away from the review form, is review gating, and Google bans it.
- How many reviews do I need?
- More than the firms you compete with on the same search, and recent ones. A steady trickle beats a burst.
Sources
Slate OS gives you an office line that rings your mobile and texts back every call you miss, within seconds, in your business name. Quotes, invoices and chasing happen from your phone.