How to Get More Google Reviews as an Electrician

Most electricians we talk to know they should be asking for Google reviews. They also know they never do. By the time the job is done, you're packing the van, calling the next customer to confirm the afternoon slot, and working out whether you'll make it back for dinner. Asking for a review feels like the kind of thing you'll get to on Sunday evening, which is when you'll actually be doing quotes instead.

So this isn't a pitch for why reviews matter. You already know. This is about how to actually get them when your working day doesn't leave much room for marketing.

Why it's harder for electricians than for most trades

A hairdresser's work walks out the door and gets posted to Instagram. A gardener can photograph a finished lawn. Your work sits inside a wall. When a customer looks at their sockets a week later, they don't think "beautifully terminated conductors" – they think nothing, because everything is working the way it should. That's the whole problem. Good electrical work is the absence of problems, and it's very hard to write a review about an absence.

On top of that, a decent chunk of your work probably isn't the kind that generates reviews at all. Landlord callouts go through the landlord, not the tenant. Commercial fit-outs go through a site manager who has twenty trades on the job and won't be reviewing any of them. Insurance claims go through a loss adjuster. If you only ever asked the customer whose name is actually on the invoice, you'd miss half your jobs. You need a habit that works for residential, because that's where the reviews will come from, and you need it to take no effort, because you don't have any.

The window to ask is narrower than you think

There's a specific moment, usually about ten minutes after you've finished a job, when the customer is at their most grateful. The lights work. The new spurs are where they wanted them. You've swept up after yourself. They've stopped worrying about the thing that's been bothering them for months. This is the moment to ask, and it's the only moment that really works.

Wait a day and they've moved on. Wait a week and they've forgotten what the problem even was. The emotional peak is when the job ends, and if you're not there to ask, you're relying on them to remember you unprompted – which they won't, because nobody talks about the day the electrician came round the way they talk about the day the bathroom got retiled.

The exception is any job where the customer needs to actually use the thing before they can tell it's working. A new consumer unit, a replacement shower, underfloor heating, an EV charger. For those, you want to wait a day or two, because if you ask too early and something does go wrong, you've now asked for a five-star review for a job that's about to become a complaint. One or two days, then a follow-up text.

The in-person ask

The in-person version should be short and a bit awkward. Nobody trusts a tradesman who has a slick sales pitch. What works is something like: "If you've got a second, it really helps us out if you leave a quick Google review – I can text you the link when I get back to the van." That's it. You don't push. If they say yes, you send the text. If they hesitate, you change the subject and don't send anything.

The reason this works is that you're giving them a way out. You haven't handed them a phone or asked them to type anything while you stand there watching. You're saying you'll send a link they can ignore if they want. Ninety percent of people don't want to say no to your face, and the ones who would rather not leave a review will just not click the link. Either way, you've done the ask without any of the awkward energy of a pitch.

One thing to avoid: don't ask while you're still writing up the invoice. It reads like you're fishing for a review in exchange for being reasonable about the price. Ask after you've packed up, after they've seen the finished work, ideally while you're walking to the door.

The follow-up text

This is the one that actually gets the review, not the conversation. The conversation just gives you permission to send it. Keep it short, keep it from you personally rather than from a company, and don't include three links to your website.

Three things are doing the work here. First, your name, not your company name, because the customer remembers you, not the business. Second, "get more local work" rather than something vague about supporting a small business – electricians know what local work means, and so do their customers. Third, "no worries if not", which sounds like a throwaway but genuinely matters. It reads as low-pressure, which makes people more likely to click, not less.

Send it from the van before you drive off. Not that evening, not the next morning. The link has to arrive while the kettle is still warm.

The email version, for bigger jobs

Text is for a socket change, a light fitting, a fault find. For anything where you've been on site for more than a day, email feels more appropriate – the customer paid a bigger invoice, and a text feels a bit casual for the size of the job. Same principle, slightly longer.

The last paragraph is doing more than it looks. It's the difference between an unhappy customer leaving a one-star review and replying to your email to complain privately. You want complaints to come back to you, not to Google. Offering to come back out for free – for things that are your fault, which is the implication – gives the customer a reason to tell you directly. Most will never take you up on it. A few will, and those are the ones you needed to hear from.

The invoice footer

If you use invoicing software – most electricians are on something like QuickBooks, Xero, or one of the trade-specific apps – you can add a line to the bottom of every invoice. Something like:

You won't get loads of reviews from this, but it costs nothing and it catches the customers who read their invoice a few days later, when they've got time. The "before you leave one" line is the key bit. It's permission to complain directly, and it often saves you from a bad review that would otherwise have appeared without warning.

QR codes on stickers and cards

Most electricians already leave something behind after testing – a sticker on the consumer unit with the test date, a business card in the kitchen drawer, a folder with the installation certificate. Any of those is a good place for a QR code. Not because the customer will scan it that day, but because they'll see it again in six weeks when something else goes wrong, and that's the moment to remind them.

The one that works best is the sticker on the consumer unit. Homeowners open that cupboard a few times a year – usually because a breaker tripped. They're not in a good mood when they look at it, but they see your name, and if the reset works, they're reminded you exist. A QR code on that sticker, with "leave a review" next to it, catches a surprising number of people who meant to do it after the job and forgot.

If you want to set one up without paying a designer, our free Google review link generator gives you the link and a downloadable QR code in about thirty seconds. Print it on sticker paper from any office shop, cut to size, done.

The pricing complaint reviews

Sooner or later you'll get one. Usually three stars. "Work was fine but the price seemed high." Sometimes one star, from a customer who didn't actually dispute the quote before you started and is now processing the invoice emotionally. These are the worst kind of reviews because they're not really about the work, but they sit on your profile next to the legitimate ones.

The response to a pricing complaint is not to defend the price. That's the instinct, and it's wrong. Every customer reading the response is going to side with the reviewer, because defending prices in public reads like you're arguing with a paying customer. What works instead is to acknowledge the feedback without agreeing with it, and offer to talk:

This doesn't argue. It doesn't deny. It mentions, calmly, that you quoted the price up front – which is the actual defence, but phrased as context rather than rebuttal. Future customers reading the review and the response will walk away with the impression that you're professional and the reviewer is a bit unreasonable, which is usually the correct impression.

The delay complaints are similar. "Took three weeks to come back." The instinct is to explain that you were booked up, but again, don't argue. Acknowledge it, apologise briefly, and don't justify:

Short, owns it, moves on. The reviewer might update the review, they might not. Either way, the next customer reading it sees a tradesman who handles feedback like an adult, which is worth more than winning the argument.

What a realistic month looks like

A one-man electrician doing maybe 15 to 20 residential jobs a month, with an occasional commercial bit on the side, should be able to get 4 to 6 new Google reviews per month once this is set up properly. That's the rough number we see. Not 20, not 30 – because commercial jobs don't convert and not every residential customer will click the link. But 4 to 6 per month compounds. In a year you've gone from wherever you started to 50+ reviews, and if you're keeping your average above 4.7, that puts you above most of the local competition in the map pack. Above the 4.7 mark is where customers stop comparing and just call.

The electricians who don't get there aren't the ones who ask badly. They're the ones who don't ask at all, or who try to remember to ask and only actually do it once a fortnight. The whole point of having a system – whether that's a text template in your phone, a habit you've built, or something like TrustMint that sends the follow-up automatically – is that it happens without you having to decide to do it.

If you'd like the text and email going out automatically after every job, with the bad reviews filtered to you privately instead of to Google, that's what TrustMint for electricians does. It's built for people who work from a van, not a desk, so adding a customer takes about fifteen seconds between jobs. And if you just want the review link for now, our free link generator will give it to you in a minute.