Review follow-up. Ask everyone, and reply to everyone.

Happy customers leave and never write a word. The unhappy one writes two hours later, and their review sits at the top for months with no reply. This piece asks genuine customers for a review at the right moment, and drafts a reply to every one that comes in.

This page covers a single piece of the system. The other pieces, and how we choose which one to start with, are on the services page.

What changes in practice

Reviews stop being a matter of luck. Today they come in when someone remembers to ask, so there are few of them and often from the wrong customers; with a request tied to a real event, more arrive, and they genuinely reflect the people who come through your door.

97% of consumers read reviews of local businesses, according to BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey. The figure is high wherever it's measured, and it tells you something simple: people check that page before they choose, and everyone checks it.

The second change is in the replies. 80% say they're more likely to choose a business that replies to all its reviews, good ones included, and replying to all of them only becomes possible when the drafts are ready every morning.

An unanswered negative review doesn't hurt because it's negative. It hurts because it looks more believable than all the others.

Asking only happy customers is prohibited, and it's worth knowing that up front

This is the part hardly any service in the sector builds honestly, and plenty sell the opposite as a feature. Directive (EU) 2019/2161 added the following to the list of commercial practices that are unfair in all circumstances, word for word: “stating that reviews of a product are submitted by consumers who have actually used or purchased the product without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to check that they originate from such consumers”.

The same list prohibits submitting or commissioning fake reviews. The so-called review gating approach, which only sends customers to a public review page if they gave a good answer to a private question first, builds exactly the kind of picture that rule is designed to prevent.

So there's only one rule here, and it's not up for negotiation: every customer of the same kind is asked, in the same way. Anyone who doesn't want to write doesn't write, and that's useful information, not a problem to work around.

There's a practical reason too. A profile full of nothing but glowing reviews is obvious at a glance and is worth less than one with a few middling ratings and thoughtful replies underneath, because readers have learned to be suspicious of anything too perfect.

What the system does, step by step

Every request comes from a recorded event and every step leaves a log entry, so you always know who was asked and when.

Step	What happens	What you get
Eventa real purchase	The request is triggered by an order delivered, a stay completed or a service provided, never by a generic list.	Everyone who gets the request is a real customer, and your review page reflects your real customers.
Timingset for your trade	The right delay is agreed once: straight away after a meal, the day after a stay, once an order has been delivered.	You ask while the experience is still fresh, which is when people actually reply.
Requestto everyone, the same way	The message is the same for every customer of that kind, in their language, with no filtering by expected rating.	The picture that builds up is one you can stand behind, and nobody can question how you got it.
Alertas soon as it arrives	Every new review is flagged with the text, the platform and the customer's history if you have it.	Negative reviews are seen the same day, not two weeks later by chance.
Replydraft ready	A draft arrives that mentions the specific details rather than recycling the same stock phrase, and a person sends it.	Replying to every review becomes a five-minute job, and it's obvious from outside that there's someone behind it.

Identical replies are easy to spot

A reply that thanks people with the same sentence twenty times in a row tells readers nobody actually read anything. Under a list of reviews, repetition is obvious to anyone scrolling the page, so each draft mentions the specific details of that visit or that order.

On negative reviews, the draft doesn't argue or explain why the customer is wrong. It acknowledges what happened, says what has changed or what's being looked into, and takes the rest offline. Readers aren't judging the incident; they're judging how you respond.

When a review contains a serious accusation or a refund request, the system doesn't draft anything and passes it to a person with the full history. Those are the cases where the wrong sentence costs more than silence.

What goes out on its own, and what waits for a person

The review request goes out on its own, because it simply follows up on something that happened and commits the business to nothing. You keep the switch to turn it on or off, channel by channel.

A public reply never goes out on its own. A reply is the business speaking on a page future customers will read, and a person signs it, including replies to positive reviews.

Where an automatic message reaches a customer, it says in one line that it comes from a system. From 2 August 2026, Article 50 of the AI Act applies, and how we say it is on the AI transparency page. The reasoning behind keeping a person in the loop is on our page about the principles we build by.

Same mechanism, different name in every trade

The mechanism is identical; the right moment to ask isn't. It's worth looking at your own case, because getting the timing wrong is the most common reason people don't reply.

Sector	When to ask	Where you see it
Hospitalityaccommodation and events	The day after checkout, when the trip is over and the whole experience is still in mind. For an event, once the photos or other materials have been delivered.	The run-up to the season for a guest accommodation business
Restaurantsand bars	The same evening or the next morning, because the memory of a meal fades fast, and after three days all that's left is the bill.	A dinner service with the phone ringing unanswered
Food and agricultureand export	Once the order has been delivered, not when it ships, because the customer is judging the product that arrived, not the parcel that left.	A typical day for a small food producer who exports

What this piece doesn't do

It doesn't buy reviews and never writes any. Both are prohibited under the list the directive refers to, and they're also the fastest way to get a profile removed from the platform it's on.

It doesn't make negative reviews disappear. Only the platform can do that, and anyone promising otherwise is selling something that doesn't exist. What you can do is reply well and reply quickly, and have enough genuine reviews that one bad evening doesn't read like a verdict.

It doesn't reply on your behalf. It prepares and suggests, and the public voice stays with the person who signs. Filling the calendar is a separate piece, handled by booking recovery.

Questions and answers