Most businesses with no reviews are not doing bad work. They just never ask. Here is the version of asking that takes about ninety seconds a job.
Two businesses, same trade, same town, same standard of work. One has four reviews. One has two hundred.
The difference between them is almost never the work. It is that one of them asks and one of them does not.
We are a bit over 480 five star reviews now across Trustpilot and Google. Not because every job has been flawless, they have not, we have had weeks where things went wrong and we had to sort them out. It is because asking is part of finishing a job here, the same as sending the invoice.
Why good businesses end up with none
It is almost always one of these three, and the first one is by far the most common.
- It feels like begging. You did the work, they paid, asking for a favour on top feels cheeky. It is not. A pleased customer is usually happy to and would never think of it on their own.
- The moment passes. They said something lovely on the doorstep, you meant to follow it up, and by Thursday you are on the next job and it has gone.
- You made it a faff. If your ask is go to Google, find us, click reviews, sign in, then most people simply will not, no matter how happy they were.
Which reviews actually matter
Do not spread yourself over eight platforms. Two is plenty for most businesses.
Google first, always. It is the one attached to the map listing, so it feeds straight into whether you show up when somebody searches your trade near them. It is also the one people see without going looking for it.
Then pick one other that suits your trade. An independent review site, Checkatrade, Trustpilot, whatever your customers recognise. That second one gets checked when somebody is spending properly and wants a second opinion.
There is a newer reason to bother as well. AI answers lean on reviews heavily when somebody asks for a recommendation, because a pile of consistent public praise is one of the few things a machine can read about whether you are any good.
The ninety second habit
- 1Ask on the day, not a week later. The good feeling has a shelf life and it is shorter than you think.
- 2Ask the person who said something nice. Not everybody. The customer who told you they were made up is the one to ask, that day, while they mean it.
- 3Send the link, not the instruction. One message, one link, straight to the review box. Save it in your phone so it is a copy and paste job.
- 4Give them a prompt. If you could mention what we did and how it went, that is perfect. It saves people staring at an empty box wondering what to write. Never write it for them.
- 5Say thanks when it lands. Reply to every one, good or bad. It takes seconds and everybody reading later can see it.
That is the whole system. Nothing clever, no software needed to start. The only hard part is doing it on the jobs where you are busy, which is every job.
What to do about a bad one
You will get one eventually. Everybody does, and a page of nothing but perfect scores actually reads as fake to most people.
Reply calmly, in public, without arguing the toss. Say what happened, say what you did about it, and offer to sort it. Everybody reading that review is judging your reply far more than the complaint. A grown up answer to an unfair review does you more good than the review does harm.
What you never do is buy them. Fake reviews get spotted, they get pulled, and a listing that gets penalised is a genuinely expensive problem to unpick.
Where to start
Find the last three customers who said something kind and never got asked. Message them today. That is usually three reviews sat there waiting, and it costs you nothing but the asking.
Then make it part of finishing a job, so the next hundred look after themselves.
