It would be great if you could just do an excellent job and positive reviews would appear, but it’s not that easy. New business owners often struggle with how to ask for reviews. Yet if you don’t ask for reviews, you’ll miss out on important customer feedback.

Brandon Griffin started Triangle Pro Painting as a side gig. Through stellar customer service and a defined process, his company now has a five-star rating with hundreds of positive reviews.

We asked Brandon for insights about why reviews are important, how to ask for a review, review software, and more. You can either keep reading or click on any of the links below to jump to the section that interests you:

Why Are Reviews Important?

Online reviews of your business provide the following benefits such as:

• Increased visibility: Most search engines use customer feedback as an indicator of how relevant your business is to customers’ needs.
• Building trust: 74% of customers use reviews to learn about products and businesses they’re not familiar with.
• Helping buyers make a decision: 45% of customers say they won’t buy from a business with no reviews.

Brandon told us:

In other words, reviews are a critical aspect of running a business. You should make asking for reviews one of the first things you consider while creating your business.

Case Study: Triangle Pro Painting

You can’t just ask someone to leave a five-star review. You have to earn it by focusing on great customer service in everything you do.

Brandon Griffin turned Triangle Pro Painting into a $4-million-per-year painting company by paying attention to customers. He told us:

Brandon’s team starts by going to each customer’s house and doing a walk-around to establish trust and find out what’s important to the customer. They write everything down, then provide a detailed quote before they leave.

Next, they have one of their teams do the painting. They make it a point to provide all the information they have to avoid miscommunications or gaps in expectations.

Once the contractor is done with the work, one of Brandon’s project managers does a review with the painting team to make sure they didn’t miss anything. Assuming everything is painted properly, they do a final walkthrough with the customer and verify they’re happy with the service.

After confirming that the customer is happy with the results, the project manager says:

Then their project manager sends a review link to the customer via text message or email depending on the customer’s preference.

Like Brandon’s insights on generating reviews? Check out our interview with him below:

How to Ask for a Review

Asking for a review is more complicated than just asking the customer for a positive review. You’ll want to:

1. Set up business profiles.
2. Choose review management software.
3. Create a review request template.
4. Pay employees extra to ask for reviews.
5. Provide great customer service.
6. Ask for a review in person.
7. Send a review request email.
8. Respond to reviews.
9. Share reviews on your web assets.

We’ll discuss each step to help you gain social proof and improve your business reputation.

Step #1. Set Up Business Profiles

The first step is to set up business profiles on the sites you’ll use to receive customer feedback. Some common places to ask for reviews include:

• Google Business Profile: A Google Business Profile is one of the best ways to get online reviews. In fact, 59% of people say they start the purchasing journey on Google.
• Social media: Many social media platforms have ways for customers to leave reviews. Requesting reviews from customers will help you spread the word with user-generated content.
• Review sites: Sites such as Yelp and Trustpilot can provide additional social proof by collecting customer feedback. They may also provide high-quality links to your website.

Consider which review sites are the most important to the success of your business. It can be challenging to handle multiple platforms at once. Brandon gave input on his preferred review platforms:

Some business owners start by building positive reviews on one site, then focusing on another until they have positive reviews on multiple review sites.

Step #2. Choose Reputation Management Software

There are many types of tools that help you ask for reviews and respond to them. These fall into three main categories:

• Reputation management software: Use this software to monitor social perception, pursue and monitor reviews, and analyze performance.
• Review management software: These tools allow you to manage online reviews from a single location. Some software may also allow you to ask for reviews and track your progress over time.
• Contractor software: Systems like Housecall Pro offer automated review requests as part of their job management software.

Brandon gave us input on the software he likes and other software you might consider to request more reviews:

Make sure to take some time to consider your options. The pricing on these apps ranges from around $15 monthly for each user to hundreds of dollars a month. Ask a business owner you respect to see what they use to get honest feedback.

Step #3. Create a Review Request Template

Once you’ve chosen the right software, you’ll want to prepare some templates to ask for reviews. You’ll probably want a different customer review template for each platform. Remember to tailor your message to email, text message, or whichever channel you’re using to request the review.

Step #4. Pay Employees Extra to Ask for Reviews

One of the strategies that successful business owners use to ask for reviews is paying employees extra when they get a five-star review. Brandon told us:

Step #5. Provide Great Customer Service

It’s important to remember that customer service is crucial to getting loyal customers. You can master how to ask for a review, but you probably won’t get positive feedback if customers aren’t happy with your service.

Joshua Brown, the owner of Brown’s Pressure Washing, explains:

To learn more about Joshua’s business model, check out our interview below:

Step #6. Ask for Reviews in Person

Make sure to ask the customer to leave a review after you complete the job and the customer has verified it’s complete. You might want to say something like:

Step #7. Send a Review Request Email

Some companies ask for a review shortly after leaving the job site. They provide a direct link to their review page by either text message or email. Their automation software will detect if the customer responds to the review request.

If a customer fails to respond, they send an email to encourage the customer to leave a review. Once again, they include a direct link to leave online reviews.

Step #8. Respond to Online Reviews

Regardless of whether you get positive or negative feedback, it’s important to quickly respond to an online review. It shows new and potential customers that you’re responsive even after you’ve completed a job. This can turn them into loyal customers.

For satisfied customers, you can respond with something as simple as:

For negative reviews, respond with something like this:

Whatever you do, don’t argue with or blame the customer. It will harm your online reputation when other consumers read those reviews online.

Step #9. Share Positive Reviews on Your Web Assets

One of the easiest ways to create social media content is to share when a happy customer leaves a review. Everyone loves seeing customer testimonials on social media.

Sometimes, a well-placed post can even bring new customers to your business page. Brandon explained:

Make Giving Customer Feedback Easy

Customers leave reviews every day, but it needs to be easy for them. When you request online reviews, it should follow a format similar to this:

• Text message or email review request: The customer receives your request for a review by text or email. There should be a short message thanking them for the chance to service their home and the link to leave a review.
• Review page (varies based on review site): The customer clicks on their desired star rating, then fills out details, and adds photos or videos if desired. If your software allows you to prefill the responses, I’d suggest doing so because then customers have to do less work.

When you do this right, it should take them less than a minute to provide a review. The review would appear similar to the picture below:

How to Ask for a Review in Person

You might not be comfortable asking for a review in person, but there are some things you can do to make it easier:

1. Wait until the customer expresses satisfaction with your service or product before you ask for a review.
2. Provide a QR code on invoices or receipts that leads customers to the review site.
3. Thank them for doing business with you.
4. Politely ask customers to leave reviews.

How to Ask Customers for Reviews on Your Website

There are a few things you can do to encourage reviews on a website:

• Use a review widget.
• Create a reviews page.
• Include a link to your Google Business Profile.

Use a Review Widget

A review widget adds Google reviews directly to your website so that visitors can see your reviews. This lets them know that reviews are important to you and makes it easy for potential customers to learn about your online reputation.

You can use a free widget from Review Widget or sign up for paid widgets to get more advanced features.

Create a Reviews Page

You can also create a review page. This page might include previous reviews, an explanation of how to leave a good review, and a form where customers can input their name and experience with your business.

One of the benefits of a reviews page is the ability to set default reviews. This way, customers don’t have to figure out how to write a great review on their own.

Include a Link to Your Google Business Profile

Another way to improve the likelihood of receiving Google reviews is to provide a map from your Google Business Profile on your website. This is most commonly done in the footer of a local business. To add the Google Business Profile map, follow the steps below:

1. Create a Google Business Profile.
2. Verify your Google business page.
3. Go to Google Maps.
4. Find your business.
5. Copy the embed link.
6. Add HTML to your website.

The code should look something like this:

<iframe src=”https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!redacted-for-protection-purposes” width=”600″ height=”450″ style=”border:0;” allowfullscreen=”” loading=”lazy” referrerpolicy=”no-referrer-when-downgrade”></iframe>

How to Get Customers to Leave Reviews After a Recent Purchase

When a customer buys a product from you, wait to send the request review email until after they’ve received the product and had time to use it. Before you ask for a review online, you’ll want to send the following emails:

• Thank you email
• Shipping email
• Delivery email

Give the customer a couple of days before sending them another email. This gives them time to use the product and develop an opinion.

How to Ask for a Review Via Email

You should follow the steps below to send a review request email:

1. Create a review request email template.
2. Get email automation software.
3. Obtain permission to email your customers.
4. Consider your timing.
5. Thank people who respond to review requests.
6. Remove unresponsive customers from your email list.

Create a Review Request Email Template

First, you’ll want to create an email to ask for reviews. Make sure to include the following elements:

• Title: Use a title that gets their attention.
• Personalized greeting: Greet the customer by name.
• Thanks: Show your appreciation for their business. Mention the service you provided.
• The importance of reviews: Let them know how much a good customer service review can help your business.
• Call to action: This can be as simple as asking them to click a link or use a button that says Write a Review.
• Links: Make sure to provide the link to the review platform.

Make sure to include design elements like your logo and use your brand colors if you create custom review request templates.

Get Email Automation Software

You’ll want email automation software to make it easy to send your email template asking for reviews. Customer relationship management platforms make it easy to ask for reviews via email. We recommend using HubSpot or ServiceTitan.

Get Permission to Email Your Customers

Before you ask for reviews, you’ll want to get permission to use their email for marketing purposes. Email providers measure your email open rate. If it’s too low, they’ll send your emails straight to the spam folder.

Here are some other best practices:

• Use opt-in email marketing.
• Send a confirmation email to get double confirmation.
• Make sure to respect unsubscribe requests.
• Don’t buy or sell email lists.

Consider Your Timing

When thinking about how to get reviews, do you consider the timing of when you’re asking for feedback? You should!

Send review requests when people are likely to be on their devices. The best times are first thing in the morning, lunch, and the end of the day in your time zone.

Thank People Who Respond to Review Requests

When you request a review, thank the customers who respond. Make sure to thank them using the same channel they used to submit the review. That way, you’re sticking with their preferred form of communication.

Remove Unresponsive Customers From Your Email List

When you ask customers for reviews and they don’t open your emails, use your software to track how many unopened emails you’ve sent. Once they surpass 10 in a row, you might want to remove them from your email list.

How to Ask for a Review on a Social Media Platform

Encourage customers to provide reviews on social media. Marcus Sharf, the founder of HYP Miami, explained more about how to ask for reviews:

You can also encourage happy customers to take a picture, then share their recent purchase to their favorite social media accounts and tag your business.

Avoid These Mistakes When You Seek More Reviews

Everyone loves glowing reviews, but there are some things you should never do if you want your business name to be synonymous with a great product or customer service.

1. Don’t create fake reviews.
2. Don’t ignore negative feedback.
3. Don’t spam customers.

Don’t Create Fake Reviews

Sites can identify whether someone is an actual customer or not. Don’t ask people to write fake reviews. Fake reviews might include having a friend leave a review without providing a service or paying people to make up a customer experience.

Paying people to write reviews can get you banned from some sites. Make sure to provide the product or service if you’re going to ask friends or family to write reviews.

It’s also a good idea to take before and after pictures if it’s a service. They can add them along with a positive comment.

Don’t Ignore Negative Feedback

When you ask for reviews, your customers won’t always be satisfied. Make sure you pay attention to review platforms to understand where there are problems in the customer journey.

Respond to the customer on the review platform, correct the scenario, and find out how to improve the customer experience in the future.

Don’t Spam Customers

It’s reasonable to ask for reviews, but people are busy. Be respectful of their time.

If the customer doesn’t respond after three to four requests, don’t ask for reviews again. They don’t want to leave a review, and if you keep pushing, you risk customer relationships and receiving a poor review.

Conclusion

We’ve discussed why reviews matter and how to request reviews. We’ve also shown you how easy it should be to prompt customers to leave a review and talked about how to ask for a review through multiple channels.

What inspires you to leave a review? Let us know in the comments below.