How to get more Google reviews as a contractor
Ask every customer by text on the day the job is finished, send a few reminders, and reply to every review you get. Do not filter who you ask. A hauling company we work with went from 2 Google reviews to 46 in four months this way.
Ask on the day the job is done
The customer is happiest while they are standing in front of the finished work. A week later they have moved on, and a month later they have forgotten your crew's names. Ask before you pull out of the driveway.
Ask by text with a direct link
Nobody is going to search for your business, find the profile and hunt for the review button. Send a text with a link that opens the review box. Google gives every Business Profile a review link and a QR code for this, and its own help page tells businesses to use them.
Send reminders
People who say "sure, I'll leave you one" mean it and then forget. A reminder a few days later picks up a lot of them, and another one after that picks up more. Stop once they leave the review.
On our system you type in the customer's name and number after the job, and the reminders go out without you thinking about it again.
Reply to every review
Thank the good ones by name and mention the job. Answer the bad ones calmly and say what you did to make it right. The next customer reads your replies to see how you treat people when something goes wrong.
Do not filter who you ask
Some review tools ask the customer how it went first, and only send the happy ones to Google. That is called review gating. Google's policy says businesses may not "discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers." The same page bans paying for reviews with money, discounts or free work.
We ask every customer, and so should you. A profile with forty good reviews and two bad ones looks like a real company. A perfect score with nine reviews looks like your cousins wrote them.
What this did for one hauling company
A hauling company we work with had 2 Google reviews and no marketing budget. Four months later it had 46, and it had taken 25 calls from people who found it on Google without an ad. Nothing was behind that except a profile set up properly and a text to every customer.
Asking every customer feels awkward for about a week. After that it is part of finishing the job, like loading the trailer.