Watch: How to Get Google Reviews Automatically (0:51)
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 Review wall page (/app/reputation), in the Auto review requests card right at the top. The Review wall page is a Growth feature; on Starter, auto-send still runs with the defaults (on, 24 hours) but you can't open this card to change them. 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 (default), 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, the ask still goes out like any other — reach out and make it right, but don't pause the ask for that customer (switching auto-send off means they're simply never asked, which Google treats as selective solicitation).
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 (so 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
Review requests aren't held for quiet hours — SalesThumb holds marketing texts and sales calls to 8am–8pm in the recipient's local time, but a review request is a follow-up on a finished job, so 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 — 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.
- Unresolved problems — customers with a complaint are reviewing before you've had a chance to fix it. The answer is faster follow-up, not a filter: the review-request page offers every customer an optional private "tell us how we did" form alongside the review link, and low private ratings alert you so you can reach out.
Don't screen customers before the review ask. Google's review policy prohibits selectively soliciting positive reviews — sending only happy customers to Google, or asking "how was your experience?" first and hiding the review link from anyone who answers poorly, is "review gating" and can get reviews removed. SalesThumb shows the review link to every customer, whatever they think of the visit.
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.