Google review push: happy customers to Google

Google reviews are the single biggest driver of local search ranking and consumer trust in the trades. Every quote you win owes some of the credit to whatever your star count and review count look like in the search results.

The frustrating thing is, getting reviews is mostly about asking, and most tradies forget or feel awkward asking. Karven's review push automates the ask in a way that lifts review counts without feeling pushy to the customer.

How it works

Two days after you mark a job complete in Karven, the customer gets an SMS:

G'day Sarah, hope the new deck is looking good. Quick one, how'd we go on a scale of 1-5? Just reply with a number.

If they reply with 5 (or 4): they get a follow-up message with a one-tap link to your Google Business review form.

Cheers Sarah! If you've got 30 seconds, would mean the world to drop us a Google review: [short link]

If they reply with 3 or below: the conversation routes to a message thread back to you, not to Google. You handle the friction privately.

If they don't reply at all: Karven sends one gentle nudge after 4 days, then drops it.

Setup

Settings → Growth → Reviews.

1. Link your Google Business profile. You need a Google Business profile (free; sign up at google.com/business if you don't have one). Karven uses the place ID to build the review shortlink.
2. Edit the messages. Karven's defaults are battle-tested but you might want to tweak voice. Keep them short.
3. Set the trigger. Default is "2 days after job completion". You can shift to 1 day, 7 days, or "manual trigger only".
4. Turn on.

That's it. Every completed job from then on runs through the loop.

Why the two-step gating matters

Asking customers for a Google review directly is high-friction. Half don't bother because writing a public review feels like work. Some respond with frustration if anything about the job was below their expectations, and that frustration ends up in a 2-star public review.

The "rate it 1-5 by SMS" pre-screen catches both. Happy customers self-identify and get an easy on-ramp. Unhappy customers get a private channel where you can fix things before they go nuclear.

This isn't dishonest. You're not suppressing negative reviews, anyone can leave one independently of Karven's flow. You're just not actively asking unhappy customers to write a public one.

Results

Tradies who turn on the review loop see, on average:

• ~22% of completed jobs result in a Google review (industry baseline is ~3-5%).
• Average rating of new reviews is 4.7-4.9 (because of the gating).
• Most lifts in search ranking become visible within 60-90 days as the review count and recency climb.

If you do 4 jobs a month and 22% of them review, that's about 10 new reviews a year. Over three years, 30 reviews. That's enough to move the needle on a competitive local search.

What happens with the 3-or-below replies

The customer's reply lands in your Karven inbox with a flag: "Review escalation, low rating". You see the SMS thread, the underlying quote, and a button to call them or message back.

How you handle this is your call. The pattern that works best:

1. Ring them within an hour. Don't text.
2. Listen. Don't argue.
3. If it's a real problem, fix it (return to site, redo work, refund a portion).
4. Once fixed, ask politely if they'd reconsider how they feel about leaving a review. Most genuinely-happy-after-the-fact customers will leave a positive one.

Tradies who handle this well often end up with the strongest reputations, not because nothing ever goes wrong, but because they're known to fix it.

Editing the wording

The defaults are deliberately casual ("G'day", "cheers"). If your business voice is more formal, commercial work, government contracts, edit accordingly.

Things not to do:

• Don't promise rewards for reviews. "$50 off your next job for a 5-star review" violates Google's policies and can get your profile penalised.
• Don't write the review for them. "Could you copy-paste this?" reads as fake even if it isn't.
• Don't chase repeatedly. Karven sends max 2 messages per job. Don't manually message a third time.

Opt-out

Every Karven SMS includes "Reply STOP to opt out". Customers who opt out of reviews specifically (a more granular option) can do so by replying "NO REVIEWS". They'll still get job-related messages, just not the review nudge.

When NOT to run the loop

A few cases where you should skip the auto-trigger:

• The job had a genuine dispute. Don't auto-ask for a review on a job where you ended up in a refund argument. Karven flags this and pauses the trigger.
• Commercial / government jobs where the contact is not the reviewer. The site supervisor isn't the person who'd leave a Google review for your business. Karven detects this from the customer record (commercial-type customers are skipped by default).
• Friend / family jobs. Awkward. Mark the customer as "no review trigger" in their record.

Beyond Google

Karven currently only supports Google reviews. We've looked at Productreview.com.au, Trustpilot, and Facebook reviews. Google is by far the highest-impact venue for tradies (70-80% of local search trust signal comes from there), so we've concentrated effort. If you need broader review distribution, the same gating logic works manually: high-raters get a "Could you share that on Google / Facebook / Productreview?" message from you.

A common gotcha

Don't disable the review loop after a bad month. Bad months happen. The customers who'll be willing to leave a 5-star review for a good job aren't going to suddenly disappear because you had a tough July. Keep it running.