The Review Request That Fires Itself

Ask an inspector when they last requested a review and you will usually get an honest answer: when it occurred to them, which was a while ago, during a quiet week.

That is the whole problem. The request depends on remembering, remembering depends on capacity, and capacity disappears in exactly the busy periods that generate the most completed jobs worth reviewing.

Why reviews matter more here than elsewhere

Reviews carry unusual weight in this trade for three reasons that stack.

• The purchase is high-anxiety and infrequent, so buyers lean hard on other people's experience.
• Referring agents check reviews before adding somebody to a recommendation list, which makes reviews a business development asset rather than only a consumer one.
• Reputation is one of the eight categories on the Operating Score Card, and it is scored on volume, recency and distribution — not on average alone.

That third point catches people out. A five-star average across eleven reviews, the most recent from 2019, scores poorly. It reads as a business that was once good rather than one that is currently working.

Wiring it up

The trigger should be report delivery, not job completion and not a weekly sweep. Report delivery is the moment the client has the thing they paid for and the experience is complete.

1. Set the trigger on report delivery with a two to three day delay, so the client has read it.
2. Route to one platform per request. A message offering four options gets none of them.
3. Choose the platform by where you are thin, not by where you are strong. Google first in almost every case, because that is what the Score Card and the buyer both look at.
4. Write the ask in the same voice as the rest of the sequence, and make it short.
5. Set a rule for what happens when a review is left. Somebody replies, and that somebody is you.

A request that fires on its own survives a busy month. A request that depends on somebody remembering does not, and the busy months are exactly when you have the most to ask about.

The part people skip

Replying. An unanswered review, positive or negative, reads as a business that is not paying attention. A reply to a negative one, written calmly and without relitigating the inspection, does more for a prospect reading it six months later than the original complaint does against you.