Getting reviews, and answering them

Where a review is actually worth having

You cannot keep up with every platform, and you do not need to. Two places are enough for most businesses.

• Your Google Business Profile, first. Those reviews appear in the panel beside the search results and on the map, which is where somebody checking you up sees them without looking for them. If you have not claimed the profile yet, start there.
• Then whichever one your trade really uses. Checkatrade for some trades, Trustpilot for others, Facebook where your customers already are, or the directory your industry body runs. Ask a customer where they looked before they called you, and believe the answer rather than the sales pitch.

Ten honest reviews in the two places people look beat fifty spread across platforms nobody checks.

How to ask, without being a nuisance

Most people are willing and simply never get round to it. The ask does the work, and the timing does most of the rest.

1. Ask while they are still pleased

   The day the job finished, not a month later. If somebody has just said something kind to your face, that is the moment: "would you mind putting that in a review? It genuinely helps."

2. Make it one tap

   Google gives you a short link for exactly this, from the Business Profile under the option to ask for reviews. Send that link. Anybody who has to search for your business, find the right one, and hunt for the button will do something else instead.

3. Use the channel you already use with them

   If you have been texting about the appointment all week, text. A formal email out of nowhere gets ignored, and so does a card in a drawer.

4. Ask everybody, not only the pleased ones

   Partly because it is fairer, partly because it is what the rules expect, and partly because a wall of perfect fives reads as bought. A business sitting at somewhere around four and a half, with the odd grumble answered well, is the one people believe.

What the rules expect

This part changed recently and a lot of businesses have not caught up. Since April 2025, under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, fake reviews are specifically against the law rather than merely frowned on, and the Competition and Markets Authority can act without going to court first.

In practice, for a business your size:

• Never write, buy or commission a review of your own business, and do not let anybody do it on your behalf. That includes the agency that offers to "seed a few to get you started", and it includes family.
• If you give somebody anything for a review, that has to be said plainly in the review itself. An incentive that the reader cannot see is the thing the rules are aimed at.
• Do not filter who gets asked by how happy they seem. Sending the link only to the customers you expect will say something nice is the practice the CMA describes as concealing negative reviews.
• If you publish reviews on your own website, you are expected to take reasonable steps to satisfy yourself they are genuine, and to keep them accurate once they are up.

None of this is difficult if you simply ask real customers and print what they say. The CMA publishes guidance for businesses, and anything with real money attached to it is worth putting to your own solicitor rather than to a website.

Answer every one of them

Your reply is not really for the person who wrote the review. It is for the next person reading, who will see both and decide what sort of business this is.

• Keep it short and human. Two or three sentences in the voice you would use on the phone. The stock reply pasted under twenty reviews is worse than nothing.
• Use their name and the job. It shows you remember, and it shows the review is real.
• Do not thank a five and ignore a three. The pattern is obvious from the outside.

The bad one

You will get one eventually, often from a misunderstanding rather than the work. Write the furious reply if it helps, then delete it, and send this one instead.

1. Leave it a day

   Nothing is gained in the first hour, and quite a lot can be lost.

2. Acknowledge, briefly and without arguing

   Say what happened from your side in one plain sentence, without blaming them. A reader can tell the difference between an explanation and a defence.

3. Take it off the platform

   Invite them to contact you directly to put it right. If they do and you sort it out, many people will update the review on their own. It is fine to ask, once, and only after it is fixed.

4. Correct a plain factual error, calmly

   If the date, the price or the work described is simply wrong, say so once, politely, and leave it. Never mention anything about that customer that they have not mentioned themselves.

Reviews that are not from customers

A review from somebody who was never a customer, or one that is abusive, or one aimed at the wrong business, can be reported. On Google that is done from the review itself in your Business Profile, and it is judged against their published policies rather than against whether it is fair.

Take a screenshot before you report anything, keep whatever record you have of the job or the lack of one, and expect this to take a while and sometimes to fail. What not to do is retaliate, reply with anything about the person, or ask your customers to bury it with a rush of new ones. If a review crosses into something defamatory, that is a question for a solicitor and not for the report button.

Putting them on your own website

Quoting reviews on your site is worth doing, and is where an honest business most often drifts into a claim it cannot support.

• Quote real ones, as written. Trimming for length is fine. Tidying the meaning is not.
• Say who and when. A first name, the town and the month is enough, and it is far more convincing than a page of anonymous praise.
• Say where it came from, and link to it if it is public. That is also how a reader checks you, which is the point.
• Keep the page current. Quotes from four years ago, or from a service you no longer offer, quietly work against you.

If you do not have enough reviews yet to fill a page, use the two you have and leave the space empty. An invented testimonial is the one mistake on this page that can cost you the business rather than the booking.