How to ask past customers for reviews
Most businesses have hundreds of happy past customers who were never asked. A short, well-paced request to them is the quickest honest way to get fresh reviews, as long as you do it properly.
By Ranjit Shah, Founder, Flexi LocalEvery outside claim is linked to its source · How we write our guides
Who to ask
- Real customers from roughly the last 6 to 12 months, the more recent the better.
- Everyone on that list, not just the ones you think were happy.
- Never a bought or borrowed list.
How to pace it
Send to 20 to 30 people a day rather than everyone at once. A list of 200 takes about eight days. That keeps text messages from being filtered as spam and means reviews arrive steadily instead of in a suspicious spike.
Use the same rhythm as everyday requests: a first message, a reminder a few days later and, at most, one or two more over the following two weeks, stopping as soon as someone reviews.
What to say
Hi Sarah, it's Jo from The Corner Café. Thanks for being a customer! If you've got 30 seconds, a Google review would mean a lot to us: [link]
The rules
- Only message people who are genuinely your customers and who can be contacted.
- Include a way to opt out, and remove anyone who does.
- No incentives and no requests for specific wording.
- Don't message anyone you've asked in the last couple of weeks.
