The Review You Never Got
A pest control owner I spoke with had done 340 jobs last year. He had 14 Google reviews. Not 14 new ones. 14 total.
His customers weren't unhappy. They just weren't saying anything publicly. Because nobody was asking them to.
When I asked what his review process looked like, he said his techs were supposed to mention it at the end of the job. Sometimes they did. Usually they didn't. There was no follow-up if they forgot. No system. Just a hope that satisfied customers would find their way to Google on their own.
They don't.
Here's the problem with relying on techs to ask in person. It's awkward. The job is done, the customer is ready to get on with their day, and the tech is trying to remember to mention a Google review while also loading the truck. Even when they do ask, the customer says "yeah for sure" and then never does it. The moment passes. Life gets in the way.
The ask needs to happen when the customer is most satisfied, and when they actually have time to act on it. That's not at the door. It's 30 to 60 minutes after the tech leaves.
A text message. One line. A direct link to your Google review page.
"Hi, it's [Company]. Hope the service today was helpful. If you have a minute, we'd appreciate a review: [link]"
That's it.
The conversion rate on a timed text like that is roughly 3 to 5 times higher than an in-person ask. The customer is back at their desk or on their couch. The job is fresh. Clicking a link takes 10 seconds.
The setup is not complicated. In ServiceM8, you can trigger a follow-up message off a job status change. Job moves to "Complete" and the text goes out automatically. No tech involvement. No remembering. It runs the same way every time whether the tech is having a great day or a bad one.
If you're not on ServiceM8, the same logic applies in any field service platform that supports status-based automations. The tool matters less than the timing and the trigger.
What you're building is not a review campaign. It's a review process. One that doesn't depend on anyone remembering.
That pest control owner set this up in an afternoon. He went from 14 reviews to 61 over the next four months. Same number of jobs. Same techs. Same customers.
The difference was the ask became automatic instead of optional.
If you're doing more than 10 jobs a week and you have fewer than 50 Google reviews, you're leaving reputation on the table. Not because your customers are unhappy. Because the ask isn't happening consistently.
One more thing worth saying here, because it connects to something I see in almost every trade business I look at.
Reviews are the top of a chain. A customer leaves a review, a new customer finds it, books a job, gets good service, and the cycle repeats. But that chain only works if you're also keeping existing customers from going quiet between jobs.
A quarterly pest control customer who hears from you once a year is a customer who might forget to rebook. A customer who gets a reminder, a check-in, or a seasonal heads-up renews without you having to chase them. That's a separate system from the review ask, but it's built on the same logic: consistent, automatic contact beats relying on the customer to remember you exist.
If your review count doesn't reflect the quality of your work, reply and tell me what your post-job follow-up looks like right now. I'll tell you what I'd change.
— Kevin Chan The Ops Shortcut by ChanAutomation www.chanautomation.com