Why In-Person Review Requests Fail, and How to Automate Them With Review Harvest
By Clay Lawrence, Review Harvest · · 7 min video
The short version
Asking in person rarely produces a review, because a customer who says yes gets busy and forgets. Review Harvest automates the ask: it sends each customer a request with a personalized image, makes it easy to leave the review, and reminds them if they forget. Setup is four things: upload a photo, connect the software you run your business on (Jobber in this walkthrough), import your past customers, and start a review reactivation.
Do this, in order
- 1
Create your account and upload a photo of you or your technicians
After you log in, the first page lets you upload an image. Review Harvest puts each customer's name on that image and uses it to personalize every review request.
- 2
Open the Integrations tab and add the software you run your business on
Click Add integration and pick your software. The walkthrough uses Jobber.
- 3
Choose when the review request is sent
Pick the trigger: after a customer pays you, or after a job is closed. Confirm you have the required consent and connect the account. You are prompted to log in to Jobber, and then the two are connected.
- 4
Run a client import
Pull all your previous customers in from Jobber. These are the happy customers already sitting in your CRM who were never asked, or were only asked in person.
- 5
Start the review reactivation from Contacts
Go to Contacts. When asked whether you want to boost your business with review reactivation, click Start getting more reviews. Requests are dripped out over a couple of weeks, depending on the size of the list.
- 6
Adjust request scheduling and follow-ups if you want to
Under request scheduling, set how long to wait after a customer comes in from your integration. Follow-ups can be set anywhere from one to five. Three is the sweet spot.
- 7
Turn AI review responses on or off
Under Reviews, a toggle controls whether Review Harvest replies to your four and five star reviews for you in a personalized manner.
- 8
Add a review widget to your website
Choose the carousel, which visitors scroll through, or the pop-up, which shows a recent review every four or five seconds wherever the visitor is on your site.
Why doesn’t asking in person get you the review?
Because the customer says yes and then forgets. You finish the job, you ask, they tell you they will absolutely leave one, and you walk away thinking you got a review. A day goes by, then two, then three, and nothing appears. If that has happened once, it has probably happened a thousand times.
Unhappy customers do not need the reminder. An unhappy customer is 10 to 100 times more likely to leave a review than a happy one. The fix is to make it easy for the happy ones and to remind them when they forget.
Google says directly that high quality, positive reviews improve your visibility, so those forgotten reviews cost you ranking as well as reputation.
What does automating the request change?
It takes the remembering out of it, for you and for the customer. Review Harvest does three things: it requests reviews, it responds to reviews, and it repurposes reviews on your website.
The request carries a personalized image. Most review requests are a plain text or email that gives the customer no reason to look. This one shows a photo of you or your technician with the customer’s own name on it.
How do you set up Review Harvest?
It takes a couple of minutes and you do it once.
- Create your account and upload an image of you or your technicians.
- Go to the Integrations tab, click Add integration and choose the software you manage your business with. For Jobber, pick whether the request is sent after a customer pays or after a job is closed, confirm you have the required consent, and log in to Jobber when prompted.
- Run a client import to bring in your previous customers.
- Go to Contacts and click Start getting more reviews to begin the reactivation.
From there, new customers come in through the integration and get a request automatically.
What is review reactivation, and what does it produce?
It is a round of requests to the customers you have already served. The goal is for your Google Business Profile to accurately reflect all of your happy customers, including the ones who were only ever asked in person or by a text you remembered to send. The requests go out slowly, over a couple of weeks depending on the size of the list, so the reviews arrive at a natural pace.
Some results from businesses that did this:
- Martini Pet Services, a pet waste business in Pennsylvania, went from 47 reviews to 185 in 30 days after its customer list was reactivated.
- Arsenal Exterminating got 48 new five-star reviews in 7 days.
- Fox Brothers Home Services started with fewer than 10 reviews and now has over 91, after a setup call of about 15 minutes.
- One owner who used it from his first day in business went from zero to 300 reviews in a year and a half.
Which settings can you change afterward?
- Request scheduling. How long to wait before the request goes out after a customer comes in from your integration.
- Follow-ups. One to five. Three is the sweet spot.
- AI review responses. On or off. When on, your four and five star reviews get a personalized reply.
- Widgets. A carousel of your reviews, or a pop-up that shows a new review every four or five seconds so visitors see it no matter where they are on your site.
Common questions
Why don't customers leave a Google review when they say they will?
They mean it when they say it, and then they get busy and forget. If nothing makes the review easy to leave and nothing reminds them, a day, two days, three days go by and the review never shows up. An automated request with follow-ups fixes both problems.
How do I set up Review Harvest with Jobber?
Go to the Integrations tab, click Add integration and choose Jobber. Pick when the request should go out, either after a customer pays or after a job is closed, confirm you have the required consent, and connect the account by logging in to Jobber. Then run a client import to pull in your previous customers.
What is review reactivation?
It is asking the customers you have already served for a review. Review Harvest takes the previous customers from your CRM and sends them requests, dripped out over a couple of weeks depending on the size of the list. It is a good way to get a boost of reviews in the first three to four weeks.
How many times should you follow up on a review request?
Three. You can set anywhere from one to five follow-ups, and three is the sweet spot that gets the most reviews with the fewest bugged customers.
Do Google reviews help you rank higher?
Yes. Google states that high quality, positive reviews improve your visibility. When someone searches for your service you show up higher, and a profile full of reviews makes you look like the obvious choice.
