How to get more customer reviews without the awkward ask
Before a stranger hires you, they read what other strangers said about you. That’s the whole game. Your qualifications matter, your van signage matters, but the deciding moment for most customers is a quick scroll through your reviews.
Which creates a problem for good, modest operators: the work is excellent, the reviews are nonexistent, and asking feels like begging. Here’s how to fix that without changing your personality.
Make the ask part of finishing the job
The best time to ask is when the customer is happiest, which is usually the moment the job is done and working. Not a week later, when the glow has faded and your text competes with everything else in their day.
So build it into your handover. Same as you’d pack up your tools, you send the review link. A simple script that works because it’s honest:
“Glad you’re happy with it. Reviews make a real difference for a small business like mine. If you’ve got two minutes, here’s the link.”
That’s it. No pleading. You’re not asking a favour so much as telling them the one thing that actually helps you, and most happy customers are pleased to know.
Make it a two-minute job for them
Every extra step loses people. Send a direct link to your review page rather than instructions to search for you. On a Soho’s listing, customers leave ratings and reviews right on your profile, where the next customer will read them. One link, one form, done.
Don’t buy, fake or filter
Fake reviews read fake, and readers are suspicious of a wall of five-star raves with no detail. A real review that mentions the actual job (“fixed our hot water on a Sunday, charged what he quoted”) is worth five generic ones. And if you get a rough review, answer it calmly and offer to make it right. Future customers read your reply more carefully than the complaint. A calm response to a cranky customer is some of the best marketing you’ll ever write.
Aim for a trickle, not a flood
You don’t need fifty reviews by Friday. One or two a month, every month, builds a profile that looks alive. Recency matters to readers: a review from last fortnight says you’re still doing good work, in a way that a review from 2023 can’t.
The habit compounds quietly. Ask every happy customer, make it easy, reply to everything. In a year you’ll have the review profile that makes you the safe choice in your suburb, which is the position every local business wants.
Give customers somewhere to say it
Your free Soho’s listing includes ratings and reviews, right where the next customer is looking.
