Ask every customer. Hear the unhappy ones first.

Most contractors know they should ask every customer for a review, and most ask about a third of them, whenever a tech remembers. The other problem is quieter: the unhappy customer who never says anything to the tech, then writes two paragraphs on Google that night. TradesWork handles both with the same short text after every job.

What the customer gets

Two hours after the job is marked completed (you can pick right away, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, next day or 2 days), the customer gets a text like this:

Summit Heating & Air: Hi Dana, thanks for choosing us! How did Marcus do? Rate your visit (takes 10 seconds): [link] Reply STOP to opt out.

The link opens a short page: five stars and an optional comment. Right on that page, before and after they rate, are your public review links with "Prefer to review us publicly?" and "Would you share it publicly?" That's the whole experience. Email works the same way, with a Rate your visit button.

Each job gets one request. If two techs worked the job, both share the rating.

Why every customer sees your Google link

A common trick in reputation tools is to send 5-star customers to Google and route everyone else to a private form. Google's content policy says businesses must not "selectively solicit positive reviews from customers," and it also bans offering incentives for reviews.¹ The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, effective October 21, 2024, bans buying positive or negative reviews and certain review suppression practices.²

TradesWork was built to stay on the right side of both. The private rating doesn't decide who sees the public links; it decides who gets a phone call from your office.

Settings that matter

The Reviews page has an Ask now list of completed jobs from the last 14 days that haven't been asked, for the jobs closed before you turned requests on. A request that couldn't be sent (for example, the customer replied STOP) shows the reason, with a Send again button for when the problem is fixed.

Reading the Reviews page

Pick 30 days, 90 days or 12 months. The cards across the top show average rating, ratings, requests sent, response rate, unhappy ratings and how many customers opened a public site. Below them, a table by technician shows each person's average, number of ratings, response rate and unhappy count, and another breaks it down by business unit.

Two cautions when you use these numbers for coaching. First, response rate depends on the customer as much as the tech: commercial jobs and rentals answer less. Second, TradesWork counts clicks on your public links, not posted reviews, because Google doesn't tell anyone that. Treat the click count as a leading indicator and check your Google profile for the real number.

Ratings also feed the coaching scorecard as a Customer rating metric once a technician has at least three ratings in the period.

The referral program

Every customer can have a personal referral link, like /ref/DANA-7K3QX. They find it in their customer portal, and your office can copy it from the customer page. When a friend opens it, they see "Dana recommends Summit Heating & Air," the friend's discount and your terms. If online booking is on, the friend can book right there; if not, they fill in a callback form that lands in your lead inbox on a Referral campaign.

1. 1

   New lead

   The friend booked or asked for a callback through the link. Fraud checks run immediately.

2. 2

   Booked

   The lead became a job.

3. 3

   First invoice paid

   The friend's first invoice is paid in full and meets your minimum, if you set one. Now the referrer's reward is created.

4. 4

   Approve and issue

   Approve the reward (or let auto-approve do it), apply the credit or discount or buy the gift card, then mark it issued.

The defaults are a $50 account credit for the referrer and $50 off for the friend. You can switch the referrer's reward to a discount on the next service or a gift card, up to $1,000, set the friend's discount to zero, and require a minimum first invoice.

Three checks run on every referral. A friend whose phone or email matches the referrer is a self-referral. A friend who was already referred is a duplicate. A friend who had a job before the referral date was already a customer. Any of these makes the referral ineligible and blocks its reward. The friend never sees the check and still lands in your leads, so you don't lose the work. Rate limits (10 submissions per hour per network, 20 per day per link) and a spam trap keep bots out.

The Referrals page shows referrals, eligible referrals, booked, first invoice paid, rewards waiting for approval and issued, plus your top ten referrers. Those ten are worth a personal thank-you call.

How it compares to ServiceTitan

ServiceTitan's Reputation product, sold within Marketing Pro, automatically sends review requests by text or email after a completed job, brings Google, Facebook and Yelp reviews into one feed, keeps listings consistent across more than 60 sites, and links each review to the customer, job and technician.⁴ We found no referral program on the ServiceTitan pages we reviewed.

Who needs more than this

If you manage several Google profiles and reply to dozens of reviews a week, you'll still want a dedicated reputation tool for the reply inbox and listings. If what you need is a steady stream of honest requests, a same-day save on unhappy customers and a referral program that pays only on real revenue, this covers it.