A simple, honest system for asking — and the rules around what you're actually allowed to offer someone for leaving one.
Short answer: ask right after the job's done, while the customer is visibly happy, and send a direct link straight to your review box rather than asking them to go find it themselves. Never offer money, a discount or a freebie in exchange for a review — it's against Google's policies and the reviews can simply be removed. Respond to every review you get, including the bad ones, calmly and specifically.
Reviews are the single most visible piece of social proof a local business has, and one of the biggest levers in whether it gets found at all — see our guide on local SEO basics for how much weight they carry in Google's own results. Getting more of them is less about persuasion and more about removing every excuse not to.
Timing matters more than wording. The best moment is the instant a customer says something positive — out loud, in a text, in an email — not weeks later when the job has faded from memory. If someone just told you the job was great, that is the moment to ask, not "at some point."
Every extra step between "yes, happy to" and an actual published review loses people. A repeatable system removes as many of those steps as possible:
Deliver the work, and notice when a customer says something positive.
In person or by text, while the goodwill is fresh — not a mass email weeks later.
A link straight to your review box, or a QR code on an invoice or card.
Thank them once it's posted, and reply to it — publicly, briefly, genuinely.
You can get your direct review link from your Google Business Profile dashboard (Home → "Get more reviews" → Share). Put it on invoices, receipts, a card handed over on the last visit, or a text sent the same day.
Google's rule, in plain terms: you may ask for a review. You may not offer anything — money, a discount, a free item, entry into a prize draw — in exchange for one, and you may not selectively ask only customers you expect to leave a good review while filtering out unhappy ones ("review gating"). Reviews collected either way can be removed, and repeated abuse can affect the whole listing.
The honest version of this — ask everyone, offer nothing, let the review be whatever it is — also happens to produce a more trustworthy set of reviews, which is worth more to a genuinely good business than a slightly higher star average would be.
Reply to reviews as a habit, not just the negative ones. A short, specific "thank you" on a good review costs nothing and shows the profile is actually managed. On a bad one:
Ask in person or by text, right after the job is finished and while the customer is visibly happy, and make it as easy as possible to actually do — a direct link straight to your review box, not a request to go search for your business first.
No — Google's policies prohibit offering money, discounts, freebies or any other incentive in exchange for a review, and reviews collected that way can be removed. You can ask for honest feedback; you cannot pay for a favourable one.
Yes, calmly and specifically, without getting defensive in public. A brief, professional reply to a bad review is often more persuasive to a future customer reading it than the review itself — it shows the business actually listens, and it's the only part of the exchange you control.