How to ask a customer for a Google review.

The two rules that are not optional

Most of the advice on this subject is bad in a specific way: it works, and it is against the rules. Both of the following are Google policy rather than etiquette, and both are enforced by removing reviews and, in the worst cases, by acting on the listing itself.

You may not pay for reviews, in any form

Money, a discount, a free coffee, a raffle entry, a prize draw among everyone who leaves one. It does not matter that you did not ask for a good review — the incentive is the problem, because it changes who bothers to write. If you are currently running any version of “leave us a review and get 10% off”, stop; those reviews are removable and the offer is the evidence.

You may not ask only the happy ones

This one catches honest people, because it feels like common sense. You send a one-question survey, and the customers who answer “great” get the Google link while the others get an apology. That is called review gating and it is not allowed. The ask has to go to the same people regardless of how you expect them to answer.

What you can do — and should — is give an unhappy customer a faster route to you than to your listing. A sign that says “something wrong? tell the person behind the counter” is not gating. Deciding who receives the review link on the basis of their answer is.

The moment matters more than the words

There is a window, and it is short: the customer is in front of you, the thing has just gone well, and they feel briefly like they owe you something pleasant. That is when a review gets written. It is not an hour later, and it is very rarely the next day, because by then the goodwill is still there and the intention has gone.

This is the part most businesses get backwards. They put considerable effort into the wording of a follow-up email and none at all into asking at the till, when the till is the only place the ask is nearly free.

Words that work, said out loud

Short, specific, and honest about it being a favour. All of these are fine:

• “If you have thirty seconds, a Google review really does help us.”
• “Would you mind leaving a review? It is the main way people find us.”
• “Tap that on your way out if you have a minute — it goes straight to our reviews.”

What does not work is anything that sounds like a script, anything that asks for a rating rather than a review, and anything that hedges. Do not say “if you were happy with everything” — that is gating out loud, and it also tells the customer that the review is for you rather than for the next person deciding.

Why the yes does not become a review

Almost everybody says yes. Then they have to unlock the phone, remember your business name, find the right listing among the two other places with a similar name, scroll to reviews, be signed into a Google account, and think of a sentence. Six steps, none of them hard, all of them a reason to stop.

So the whole job is removing steps. In rough order of how much they cost you:

1. Get your own review link. Google gives every verified business a direct link that opens the review box with the star rating already showing — find it in your Business Profile under the option to ask for reviews. That single link removes four of the six steps and costs nothing.
2. Put it somewhere physical, at the counter. A printed card, a table tent, a sign by the register. The link has to be present at the moment the ask happens, or the ask is relying on memory.
3. Make it openable without typing. A shortened URL still has to be typed. A QR code or a tap does not, which is the difference between an intention and a review.
4. Add it to what they already receive. The receipt, the confirmation email, the invoice footer. Cheap, and it catches the people who meant to and left.

Asking after they have left

It works, and it works worse than asking in person, and it is worth doing anyway because it costs one line of text. Send the direct link, on the same day, in whatever channel they already hear from you in. One message. A second one is a nuisance, and a nuisance review is not the kind you want.

Send it to everybody who bought, in the same words, whatever you think they thought. That is not just the rule — it is also the only way you find out something is wrong before forty other people do.

What we make, for the counter part

Interested rather than neutral, so read it that way: the third step above is the one we sell. A Dote review panel stands on a counter carrying the ask, a tap target and a QR code, both pointing at your own Google review link — so the customer who just said yes can do it before they have put their card away. The link is one we host rather than one printed on the panel, which means moving to a different listing later does not mean reprinting anything.

It is not the only way to remove that step and we would rather say so. A printed card with a QR code does most of the same work for the price of printing, and if you have not yet found your direct review link, that is the change worth making first — it is free and it is bigger.