Plumbing Company Case Study: Automated Review Requests

Overview

The client, a plumbing company in San Diego County, had a 4.3 on Google from 41 reviews, most of them from the two years the owner had personally remembered to ask. Techs were told to request reviews on site and almost never did. Meanwhile a competitor with worse work and 300 reviews was winning the search results.

Gain Rhino connected review requests to the job itself. When a tech closes a job in the CRM, the customer gets a text 30 minutes later with a direct link to leave a Google review. If they do not respond, one reminder goes out two days later, then the sequence stops. Customers who rate the experience poorly in the first tap are routed to a private feedback form and the owner instead of a public post.

Research

We compared when reviews came in against when jobs were completed. Nearly every review the company had was written within 24 hours of the visit; after that the chance of a review dropped to almost nothing. So the ask had to be immediate and automatic, not something a tech remembered in the truck.

We also wanted the tech's name in the message, because customers review people, not companies. The CRM already knew who did the job, so the text reads like it came from the person who was just in their kitchen. Two touches only: more than that and requests start to feel like spam and hurt the rating instead of helping it.

Result

Every completed job now asks for a review at the moment the customer is most likely to say yes, with the tech's name attached. Unhappy customers reach the owner privately before they reach Google. Techs do nothing extra. The rating moved, and so did the phone.

By the numbers (first 90 days):

• Google reviews collected87, up from about 20 per year
• Google rating4.8, up from 4.3
• Review requests sent by a person0
• Jobs that received a review request100%
• Negative experiences caught privately before a public review6

Client identity withheld at their request. Figures reflect the first 90 days after launch.