Review systems for plumbers
Ask while they are still grateful.
Every plumber means to ask for reviews. Almost nobody does it consistently, because the moment you are most likely to get one is the moment you are packing the van and thinking about the next job. A system fixes that. A reminder on your phone does not.
Thanks for having us out today. If we did a good job, would you mind leaving a quick review? Takes about 30 seconds.
Sent automatically, 4:44pmNo worries, just done it. Cheers for coming out so fast.
4:51pmIllustration. The point is the gap: minutes, not the three weeks it takes to remember on a Sunday.
How should a plumber collect Google reviews?
Send an automatic text the moment a job is signed off, with a direct link to your review form. Reply to every review, good and bad. Never offer an incentive and never screen customers before asking, because both break Google's rules and both are obvious to anybody reading.
Why timing decides it
Gratitude has a short half life.
The best moment to ask a customer for a review is the moment the hot water comes back on. They are relieved, you have just solved a genuine problem, and they feel like they owe you something. That feeling fades fast. By the following week the crisis is a memory and the review is a chore.
Which is why asking works when it is automatic and fails when it is manual. Not because plumbers are lazy, but because the exact moment worth catching is the moment you are busiest.
The other half is who gets asked. Sending the request to everybody including the job that went sideways is how you collect the bad ones too. The system should follow the work, so the ask goes out when the job is signed off and paid, and anything that did not go well gets a phone call from you instead.
Reviews are not just social proof sitting on a page. Volume, recency and wording all feed the map pack, the three businesses Google shows on the map, which is why this sits inside the SEO work rather than beside it. A plumber with 96 reviews and three from last week generally beats one with 200 that stopped in 2023.
What gets set up
Four parts, and then it runs itself.
Set up once, in the first month, then it keeps working without you thinking about it.
The ask, triggered by the job
A short text that goes out when the job is signed off, with a direct link straight to your review form. Not an email nobody opens, and not a QR code on an invoice. The fewer taps between reading the message and typing the review, the more you get.
Wording that sounds like you
Written to read like a plumber wrote it, not a marketing department. Short, specific to the job, no please take a moment to share your experience. People can tell, and the ones who can tell are the ones who do not bother.
Replies to every review, good and bad
Every review gets a reply. Not copy pasted thanks for your feedback five times in a row, which is worse than saying nothing. The replies are written for the next person reading them, who is trying to work out what you are like to deal with.
A plan for the bad one
You will get one eventually, and usually it is a job where something genuinely went wrong or a customer misunderstood the quote. There is a right way to answer in public that makes you look like somebody worth hiring, and several wrong ways that cost you more than the review did. We agree the approach before it happens rather than at 9pm on the night it lands.
What not to do
No incentives, no gating, no buying them.
Offering a discount for a review is against Google's rules and it shows in the wording of what you get back. So is review gating, where you screen people first and only send the happy ones to Google. Buying reviews outright is both against the rules and obvious to anybody reading them.
Included in every plan, from NZ$600 a month.
FAQs
Questions about reviews.
Mostly about the awkward ones, which is fair enough.
How many reviews do I actually need?
Enough to not look thin next to whoever is above you in the map pack, and then a steady trickle after that. There is no magic number, it is relative to your competition. Twenty is plenty in a small town and nowhere near enough in a city.
What if I get a bad one?
You reply calmly, in public, with the facts and without arguing, and you keep the steady flow going so it moves down the page. One fair criticism among a lot of recent good ones does very little damage. A bad review sitting on top of nothing for two years does plenty.
Can I ask my mates for reviews?
If you have actually done work for them, yes. A mate who has had a job done is a customer like anybody else and there is nothing to think about. Where it goes wrong is inventing the job. A review saying Dave did my kitchen when Dave has never seen their kitchen is a fake review and it reads like one. Somebody who genuinely rates you saying so in their own words is a different thing, the same as if they referred you to a neighbour. The practical rule is not to have ten land in the same week from accounts with no history, because that is the pattern that gets reviews filtered out.
Does this work with my job management software?
Usually. Most of the common trade job systems can fire something when a job is marked complete, and where they cannot, there is a simple manual trigger that still takes you one tap. Tell me what you use and I will tell you straight whether it connects.
Other services
The rest of what moves the needle.
Most plumbers need two or three of these, not all five. I will tell you which on the first call.
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Want to know how you compare locally?
Tell me your business name and town and I will tell you where your review count and rating sit against the plumbers you are competing with in the map pack.