Review request wording that people actually reply to

There are pages offering fifty review request templates, which is fifty ways of writing the same message. If you copy one at random, it reads exactly like the one your customer received from somebody else last week, and that is a large part of why these get ignored.

Four things make a request work. Once you have those, writing your own takes ninety seconds and it sounds like you.

The four things

1. It arrives within a day or two

Requests sent within twenty-four to forty-eight hours get around five times more responses than requests sent a week later. The customer still remembers the job, still feels the relief, and has not moved on.

2. It is a text, not an email

SMS runs at roughly a ninety-eight percent open rate against email, and fifteen to twenty-five percent response against two to five. Businesses that text for reviews earn about fifty-eight percent more of them.

3. It names the specific job

This is the difference between a message that reads as automated and one that reads as a person. The hot water system, the ceiling in the back bedroom, the appointment on Tuesday. It also has a side benefit: a customer reminded of the specific job writes a review that mentions it, and a review that names the work is worth several that say great service.

4. It is short and asks for one thing

Under a hundred and sixty characters, one link, one action. Not a satisfaction survey with a review request attached. Not three platforms to choose from. If a second review site matters in your industry, ask for it in a separate message, later.

Three messages

Hi Sarah, Dan from Mill Road Plumbing.
Hope the hot water's behaving itself.
If you've got 30 seconds, a quick Google
review really helps us: [link]

Either way, thanks for having us.

Hi Tom, thanks for coming in today.
If you're happy with how it went, a
short Google review would mean a lot:
[link]

See you next time. - Priya

Hi Sarah, just following up on my last
message. No problem at all if you'd
rather not, and if anything wasn't
right please tell me directly.

[link]

One follow-up. Not two, and not weekly. A second reminder recovers a meaningful share of non-responses and a third turns a happy customer into an irritated one.

The pattern to avoid, which several template sets teach

A large number of the templates circulating start by asking how satisfied the customer was, and only send the review link to the ones who answered positively.

That is review gating, it is prohibited, and it is presented as good practice on pages currently ranking for this search. It puts the listing at risk, and it also produces the perfectly-rated profile that readers have learned to distrust.

The part that is not the wording

Most businesses that struggle with reviews do not have a wording problem, they have a habit problem. The message is written and then sent to eleven people over four months.

1. 01Attach it to a moment that already exists: the final invoice, the last appointment, the day after handover.
2. 02Give it to one person, or automate it, so it does not depend on somebody remembering.
3. 03Send the direct review link rather than instructions. Every extra step loses people.
4. 04Count how many go out each week. That is the number that predicts your review growth, not the wording, and it is the only lever you have on how many reviews you need to catch the businesses above you.

Whether you are short on reviews at all is a five minute check, and a twenty-minute audit of the businesses above you will tell you. The conversation that goes with the message, in person and without sounding desperate, is covered in how to ask for a review. If you are unsure where the line sits on gating, review gating is illegal sets it out in full.