the review you ask for at the door, not a week later by email.

There is one moment in every job when the customer wants to say thank you, and the review lives or dies on whether you ask right then.

Hi,

Every job has a moment where the customer is happiest. The leak stops. The lawn looks like a magazine. The car starts and the noise is gone. They are standing there, a little relieved, a little grateful, and they say something like "wow, thank you". That moment lasts about as long as it takes you to pack up the van.

Most businesses ask for the review a week later, by email, from an address the customer does not recognize, with a link that opens a page where they have to find the business and then find the button. By then the relief is gone, the lawn is just the lawn, and the email sits under a pile of others. The review never happens, and the owner concludes that customers do not leave reviews.

They do. You asked at the wrong time, in the wrong place, with too many steps.

Say you run a cleaning company. Your crew finishes a house, the owner walks through, and says the kitchen has never looked like this. That is the door. The person who did the work, the one the customer is looking at, says: "Glad you like it. Would you mind leaving a quick Google review? It really helps a small business. I can text you the link, it is one tap." Then they text the link while they are still standing in the doorway. The customer taps it in the car, or on the couch later that evening, while the feeling is still there.

Three things make this work. First, it is the person who did the job who asks, because the warm feeling is attached to that person, not to a company name in an inbox. Second, it happens in person, while the customer is still happy, and the link arrives by text within minutes. Third, the link is the one tap link Google gives every business inside its profile dashboard, the one that opens the review box directly. No searching, no scrolling, no finding the button. Copy it once and save it as a text on every phone your crew carries.

What if they say "sure, later"? One gentle reminder the next day, then stop. Chasing a review turns a happy customer into an annoyed one, and the review you get from an annoyed customer is not the one you wanted.

And what you never do: no discount for a review, no gift, no sending the unhappy ones to a private form first. Google forbids all of it and can remove the reviews or the whole profile. Ask everyone the same way with the same link, and let the reviews be what they are.

Put "ask for the review" on the same checklist as "collect the payment" and it stops being a thing someone was supposed to do. The whole routine, who asks, when, the script and the weekly check, is written out on my review system page. Take it and use it, whether or not you ever call me.

Talk soon,
Brandon

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