Google reviews are one of the biggest drivers of new-customer trust for local service shops. Asking manually after every job is a discipline most owners can't sustain. Automating the ask runs in the background — track your own before/after review velocity in Reports → Marketing → Review Velocity.
Step 1 — Find your Google review link
Open Google Business Profile (business.google.com). Find your shop. The "Get more reviews" panel has a short URL like g.page/r/yourshop/review. Copy it.
If you can't find it, follow Google's official path: business.google.com → Customers → Reviews → "Get more reviews" → Copy link.
Paste it into Settings → Shop Profile, in the Google review link field. That's what the review ask ultimately points customers at.
Step 2 — Set up the automation
This one isn't under Settings — it lives on the Reputation page (/app/reputation), in the Auto review requests card right at the top. Two controls:
- Auto-send — on by default. While it's on, every completed appointment fires a review ask. Switch it off and reviews only go out when someone at the shop triggers one by hand.
- Delay after appointment — a dropdown: 2 hours (same-day), 4 hours, 24 hours (recommended), 48 hours, 3 days, or 1 week. 24 hours is the default and a good starting point.
Worth knowing what *isn't* there: you can't scope the ask to particular services, and there's no "skip if the job had a problem" rule. It's all completed appointments or none. If a job went sideways, catch it before the delay elapses and switch auto-send off for the moment, or expect the ask to go out like any other.
Step 3 — Write the message
Leave this alone and SalesThumb sends a solid default: a thank-you, a link to the customer's before/after photo gallery (which converts better than a bare review form, because they land on their own car looking good), and a one-tap link to book their next service.
To use your own wording instead, edit the Follow-up template under Settings → Notifications → Message Templates and toggle it Active — an inactive template means the default keeps sending, not that nothing sends.
Only three merge fields fill in on this particular send: {{first_name}}, {{shop_name}}, and {{review_link}}. Anything else you drop in — {{vehicle}} is the tempting one — comes out blank, not as visible braces, so a broken template reads as an awkward gap in the sentence rather than something obviously wrong. Keep it to those three, and send yourself a test before you turn it loose.
A version that works:
"Hey {{first_name}} — hope you're loving the results! If you have 30 seconds, a quick review really helps {{shop_name}}: {{review_link}}. Thanks for choosing us."
Things that matter:
- Personalized — {{first_name}} earns its place; the customer should feel written to
- Short — under 200 characters, fits in one SMS bubble
- Genuine — sounds like a person, not a marketing template
- The link — leave {{review_link}} in; it routes to the gallery and review flow for you
Step 4 — Send window
There's no quiet-hours control for review requests — the delay you picked in Step 2 is the only timing lever, and it's measured from when the job was marked complete. A job closed out at 8pm with the 24-hour delay sends around 8pm the next day.
That's worth a moment's thought if your shop closes late. Bumping the delay to 48 hours or 3 days shifts the send off awkward evening hours for most of your jobs, and many shops find mid-week, mid-day asks land better anyway — watch your own reply pattern and adjust.
Step 5 — Watch the numbers
After 60 days, check:
- Review request open rate (proxy from delivery + click)
- Review-write rate — % of requests that converted to a written review
- Star average trend — is the auto-request raising your shop average?
There's no universal benchmark — click rate, write rate, and how much your star average moves all depend on your work quality, your customer base, and how many requests you send. Watch your own numbers in Reports → Marketing → Review Velocity (assuming you do good work — the automation accelerates the ask, doesn't change the work).
Step 6 — Handle negative reviews fast
If your star average is dropping, the automation is making it worse, not better. Two checks:
- Quality control issue — your work quality is actually slipping. Stop the automation, fix the work, restart.
- Selection bias — you're asking everyone, including unhappy customers. Some shops add a 1-star buffer: if the customer's post-job satisfaction rating is below 4 (collected via a quick 1-question survey), don't trigger the Google review ask, route to private feedback instead.
The second pattern (private feedback for unhappy, public review for happy) is allowed by Google as long as you're not "gating" reviews based on rating intent (a known dark pattern). The exact line: you can route based on actual customer-given satisfaction, but you can't ask "would you leave a 5-star review?" and only proceed if they say yes.
Step 7 — Respond to every review
Within 48 hours, reply to every Google review — positive AND negative. Settings → Integrations → Google Business Profile → Connect for in-app review management, or do it in GBP directly. Either way, response rate signals to Google that your business is active and to new customers that you care.