What is the right way to ask customers for reviews?
Ask every customer at the same point in the job, through one channel, with one link, and follow up once. Do not screen by expected sentiment — routing happy customers to public review sites and unhappy ones to a private form is review gating, which platform policies prohibit. Offering anything of value in exchange for a review is also prohibited and raises advertising-disclosure questions that vary by jurisdiction; check with counsel.
What gating is, precisely
Review gating is filtering by predicted sentiment before deciding where a customer's feedback goes. The classic implementation asks a satisfaction question, sends the fives to a public review link, and sends everyone else to an internal complaint form. It was standard practice for years and is now against the policies of the major review platforms.
The line is the sentiment filter, not the survey. Asking every customer how the job went and following up on problems is normal service. Using the answer to decide who gets the public review link is the violation.
The mechanics that actually raise response rates
- Ask immediately. Same day, ideally while the technician is still on site or within the hour after. Response rates fall off fast.
- Ask from the person who did the work. A request that reads as coming from the technician the customer just met outperforms one from a company address.
- One link, one platform per ask. Giving customers a menu of platforms reduces completions. Pick the one that matters and send it alone.
- One follow-up, then stop. A second nudge a few days later is worth sending. A third is a complaint waiting to happen.
- Text usually beats email for field service, with the usual messaging-consent obligations attached.
The distinction worth getting right
There is a difference between filtering by rating and suppressing a request where the operational record shows an unresolved problem. Not sending a review request to a customer with an open callback or a disputed invoice is a service decision — you are not asking anyone to hide an opinion, you are declining to solicit while the work is unfinished.
That distinction survives only if the suppression rule is written down, based on operational state rather than predicted sentiment, and applied consistently. The moment somebody starts deciding case by case who seems happy, it is gating again. Regulatory expectations around reviews and endorsements vary and continue to shift, so confirm your specific policy with counsel rather than copying a competitor.
Automate the trigger, not the judgment
The durable setup fires the request from a job status change in the field service system or the CRM, with one suppression rule, and reports what went out. Nobody chooses who to ask, which is what makes it both compliant and consistent.
The reporting side matters as much. Requests sent versus reviews received, broken out by technician and job type, tells you where service quality actually differs — a signal that lines up closely with what call analysis surfaces about the same jobs.
Topics: review requests · review gating · policy · reputation
Have a version of this question about your own business?
The useful answer usually depends on which systems you run and how they're connected. That's a conversation, not a blog post.