Review engine

Review Engine

Reviews are the prominence engine of local ranking and the trust engine of conversion: they feed the map pack (see local-seo-playbook) and they close the customer who is comparing three plumbers at 9 pm. The costly mistake this skill prevents is leaving reviews to chance - happy customers stay silent by default, angry ones self-select, so an unmanaged profile drifts toward a rating the business does not deserve. Run this after google-business-profile-optimizer has the profile itself in order.

Worked business throughout: Summit Plumbing, 4 techs, $450 average ticket, about 167 jobs a month at $75,000 monthly revenue.

Operating procedure

Step 1: Set the velocity target against the top competitor

Count the top map-pack competitor's total reviews and how many they gained in the last 90 days (check their newest review dates). Target: match or exceed their monthly velocity. Summit's top competitor adds about 10 reviews a month; Summit gets 3. Target: 12 a month. At 167 jobs a month, 12 reviews is a 7 percent review rate - very achievable, since a well-timed SMS ask converts around 10-20 percent of happy customers.

Step 2: Install the ask-at-peak-satisfaction rule

Ask at the moment satisfaction peaks: the tech has just fixed the problem, shown the customer the result, and the relief is fresh. For trades this is on-site at job completion or within the hour; for clinics and salons, at checkout or same evening. Every hour after peak, response rates fall. An ask three days later via email is why the old system produced 3 a month.

Step 3: Send the ask by SMS, primed by the tech

Text beats email roughly 5x for local review asks - it is opened in minutes and the review is one tap away. The tech primes it verbally at handoff, then the office (or automation) sends the SMS within the hour:

Tech, at handoff:
"Glad we could get that sorted. We're a small local shop, so Google
reviews genuinely decide whether people find us. You'll get a text from
us with a link - if you have 60 seconds, it'd mean a lot."

SMS, within 1 hour of job completion:
"Hi [FILL: first name], it's [FILL: tech name] from Summit Plumbing.
Thanks for having us out today! If you were happy with the work, would
you leave us a quick Google review? It takes about a minute and helps
our small team a lot: [FILL: review link]"

If no review after 3 days, one follow-up only:
"Hi [FILL: first name] - [FILL: tech name] from Summit Plumbing again.
No pressure at all, just a friendly nudge in case the review link got
buried: [FILL: review link]. Thanks either way!"

Use the direct review link from the profile (the short share URL). One nudge maximum; a third message is pestering and earns the opposite of a five-star.

Step 4: Respond to every review, positive ones included

Respond to five-star reviews within a week, two to three sentences, naming the service and city where natural ("Thanks, Maria - glad the water heater swap in Oak Hill went smoothly"). This is conversion copy for the next prospect reading the profile and reinforces relevance.

Step 5: Run the 1-3 star response procedure

The audience for a bad-review response is not the reviewer - it is the hundred prospects who will read the exchange later. The procedure:

1. Respond within 24 hours. Speed signals a business that cares; a week of silence reads as guilt.
2. Take it offline. Apologize for the experience (not necessarily fault), give a direct name and phone number, invite the conversation off the public page.
3. Never argue, never share job details publicly, never blame the customer - even when the review is unfair. Health businesses: never confirm the person was a patient (privacy law).
4. If resolved, ask once, politely, whether they would consider updating the review. Never make a refund conditional on editing it.

Word-for-word script:

"Hi [FILL: name], I'm [FILL: owner], the owner of Summit Plumbing. I'm
sorry your experience didn't meet the standard we aim for - that's on
us to fix. I'd like to make it right. Please call me directly at
[FILL: phone] or email [FILL: email] and I'll take care of it
personally."

Good/bad contrast on a real one-star ("Tech showed up 2 hours late and tracked mud through my hallway"):

BAD:  "We were late because of an emergency call, which we texted you
      about. Also our techs always wear boot covers, so the mud claim
      doesn't add up."
GOOD: "Hi Dan, I'm Alex, the owner. A 2-hour delay and a mess left
      behind is not how we operate, and I apologize. I'd like to make
      it right - please call me at (555) 014-2200 and I'll sort this
      out personally, including having the hallway cleaned."

The bad reply wins the argument and loses every reader. The good reply loses the argument and wins the next twenty customers.

Step 6: Track velocity monthly and feed the pack-mates

Log reviews gained per month against the target on one line of the KPI sheet. Review velocity is a ranking input local-seo-playbook depends on - if velocity is at target for 90 days and rankings still lag, the problem is relevance or citations, not prominence. And every five-star moment this engine detects is the referral trigger: hand those customers to local-referral-engine for the referral ask.

Inputs to elicit

Collect: current review count and rating, top competitor's count and 90-day velocity, jobs per month, how job completion is recorded (this triggers the SMS), who sends the ask (tech, office, or software), and the direct review link. Defaults: ask 100 percent of completed jobs, SMS within 1 hour, one nudge at day 3. If the competitor's velocity is estimated from review dates, label it an estimate.

Concrete thresholds

• Velocity target: at or above the top competitor's monthly rate; Summit's is 12 a month.
• Ask timing: within 1 hour of completion; response rate decays after peak.
• Expected conversion: 10-20 percent of asked customers; below 5 percent means the ask is mistimed or the link is broken.
• Negative reviews: respond within 24 hours, always.
• Rating floor: a profile below 4.0 loses the comparison by default - pause paid spend into a sub-4.0 profile and fix service delivery first (check the economics with local-unit-economics).

Deliverable

A one-page review operating system: the velocity target with the competitor benchmark, the tech handoff line, the SMS ask and nudge templates with fields filled for the business, the 24-hour negative-review procedure with the owner's script, and a monthly velocity log line.

Do NOT

• Do not buy or fabricate reviews, or review-gate (asking only pre-screened happy customers via a filter survey) - both violate policy and platforms remove the reviews, sometimes the profile.
• Do not offer discounts or payment for reviews; incentives for reviews are prohibited, and one screenshot can undo years of reputation. Incentivize referrals instead - that is local-referral-engine's lane.
• Do not argue publicly with a reviewer, even a lying one. The reply is for the readers.
• Do not send more than one nudge; pestering converts five-star intent into silence or worse.
• Do not batch asks weekly - the peak-satisfaction window is measured in hours, not days.

Quality bar

• Every completed job triggers exactly one ask and at most one nudge, with a named owner or automation for the send.
• The velocity target cites the actual competitor number, not a wish.
• Negative-review scripts contain a real name and direct contact, not "the management team."
• The monthly log distinguishes velocity (new reviews) from totals, because velocity is what ranking rewards.

Escalation and routing

Defamatory or fake reviews: flag through the profile, and consult a lawyer before responding to anything with legal exposure - this skill is not legal advice. Clinics and health practices must keep every response free of any patient-relationship confirmation. Route profile setup to google-business-profile-optimizer, ranking strategy to local-seo-playbook, the post-five-star referral ask to local-referral-engine, and whether review volume justifies its labor cost to local-unit-economics.