Review request text messages: templates that earn Google reviews

A happy customer means to leave you a review. Most never do, because nobody asked at a moment when it took ten seconds. A text sent shortly after the job, with one tap to your Google review form, fixes most of that. A vague, late or pushy one gets ignored or reported as spam.

This post covers the templates, the timing, the consent and Google rules, and how to automate review requests in Ready without retyping them every afternoon.

Why text beats email for review requests

Email review requests land next to receipts and newsletters, and many go unopened. People generally read a text within minutes. The tap path is also shorter: the customer reads the message, taps the link and lands on your review form, already signed into Google on their phone.

Text has limits. You get roughly one shot and one follow-up before it starts to feel like nagging. Each segment costs money. Carriers also filter messages that look like spam, so wording and links matter more here than in email.

The templates

Swap in your own placeholders. Keep the business name in every message, because the customer may not have your number saved.

1. The same-day ask (default)

Hi [Name], thanks for choosing [Business] today. Mind leaving a quick Google review? [link] Reply STOP to opt out.

2. The personal version (name the person who did the work)

Hi [Name], it's [Business]. [Tech name] said your [job] went smoothly. If you have a minute, a Google review helps us a lot: [link]

3. The one follow-up (2 to 3 days later, only if they haven't reviewed)

Hi [Name], one last note from [Business]: if you have 30 seconds, we'd appreciate a Google review. [link] Thanks either way.

4. For appointment businesses (salons, clinics, dentists)

Thanks for visiting [Business] today, [Name]. How did we do? Tell us on Google: [link] Reply STOP to opt out.

5. When the customer already replied with praise

That's great to hear, [Name]. Would you mind posting that on Google? It helps neighbors find us: [link]

Template 5 converts best because the customer has already written the review in your inbox. You're asking them to paste it somewhere public. Reply to these personally from the inbox. Don't automate them.

For more ask types, see our templates for reviews, invitations and birthdays. If you want private feedback before a public review, see feedback request texts. Read the next section before you do that.

The Google rules that trip people up

Google's review policies prohibit two things that are common in review texts.

• Review gating. You can't send a "How did we do, 1 to 5?" text and then forward only the 4s and 5s to Google while routing everyone else to a private form. Google treats selectively soliciting positive reviews as a violation. You can collect private feedback, but either ask everyone for a Google review or ask no one.
• Incentives. Don't offer a discount, a gift card entry or a free add-on in exchange for a review. Offering the reward only for positive reviews makes it worse.

Ask everyone the same way, with no strings attached. That approach is the compliant one, and it produces a review profile people trust.

Consent and carrier rules

Get permission at booking or checkout

A customer giving you their number for an appointment confirmation hasn't necessarily agreed to every kind of text afterward. Add a line to your booking form or invoice, for example: "We'll text you about your appointment and ask for feedback afterward. Msg & data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out." Keep a record of when and where each customer agreed. That record lives in your booking system or CRM. Ready records your attestation for each send (who sent, to how many, when), but it isn't a per-contact consent record. Our opt-in wording examples have more phrasing.

Compliance is ultimately the sender's responsibility. Ready reduces risk but doesn't remove it. In Ready:

• STOP handling is automatic. An opt-out applies across all of your campaigns, so someone who opts out of review requests won't get your next promo either.
• Quiet hours are enforced. Sends outside permitted local hours are held based on the recipient's area. A job that finishes at 9:45 PM doesn't trigger a review text at 9:46. Campaigns, drip campaigns and automations wait up to 24 hours for the window; a one-to-one or API text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours, otherwise it is refused and must be resent; a one-to-one reply to someone who texted you in the last 24 hours goes out at any hour.
• Litigator and DNC scrubbing is optional. It costs $0.003 extra per segment when switched on for an account, and it's off by default.

Register first, or get filtered

Carriers filter unregistered business traffic. Registration (A2P 10DLC) is handled in-app. You pay $25 at submit, which covers the first month, then $25/mo for registration and $2 per number. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days. An account can send up to 500 texts a month before it registers. For the campaign sample messages, use your real review request template. Sample messages that are vague or don't match what you actually send are a common reason for rejection. Our 10DLC explainer covers the rest.

Watch the link

Use the full Google review link from your Business Profile (the "Ask for reviews" share link, usually a g.page/r/.../review address). Don't use a public URL shortener. Shared shortener domains are a well-known filtering trigger because spammers use them heavily. Link-in-first-message filtering is also a risk for cold traffic. Our post on links in the first text explains why. A customer you served an hour ago isn't cold, but the clean-link rule still applies.

Timing

• Send the same day, ideally 1 to 3 hours after the job. The experience is fresh and the customer is probably still near their phone. Same-day reviews also tend to mention specifics, which helps future customers.
• For appointment businesses, send shortly after checkout. It shouldn't arrive while the customer is still in the chair.
• Send one follow-up after 2 to 3 days, then stop. If you send a third ask, opt-outs start costing you more than the reviews you gain.
• Avoid early mornings and late evenings. Ready holds texts outside quiet hours anyway. For a send window, roughly 10 AM to 7 PM local is a reasonable default. Campaigns, drip campaigns and automations wait up to 24 hours for the window; a one-to-one or API text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours, otherwise it is refused and must be resent; a one-to-one reply to someone who texted you in the last 24 hours goes out at any hour.

What it costs: a worked example

Character count matters more than people expect. A typical Google review link is about 38 characters. Template 1 with a short name, business name and that link comes to roughly 150 characters, which is 1 segment. Add the phrase "It helps a lot:" and it reaches about 166, which is 2 segments and doubles the cost of every send. Add a single emoji and the limit drops to 70 characters per segment (67 for multipart), so the same message becomes 3 segments. Ready swaps curly quotes and long dashes for plain ones before sending, so those don't change the count. Emoji still do.

Assumptions: a business finishes 300 jobs a month. It sends a 1-segment review request to every customer, and 200 who haven't reviewed get the 1-segment follow-up. About 60 customers reply ("thanks!", "done"), and each reply is 1 segment. Replies are billed like sent texts.

That's $6.72 a month on the Standard rate of $0.0075/segment plus a $0.0045 carrier fee per segment. The total excludes the optional compliance surcharge and the registration fees above. With the emoji version (3 segments per send), the 500 outbound segments become 1,500. Keep review texts plain.

Automating it with Ready

You have three options, depending on where your jobs live.

GoHighLevel. Ready installs natively and syncs two-way, mapped per GHL location. A workflow triggered by an "appointment completed" or "job won" stage can wait one hour, send template 1, wait three days, check for a review tag, and send template 3 if the tag is missing. Replies appear in the GHL conversation. See our GHL setup guide.

The Ready app. Save templates 1 and 3 as reusable templates and use a drip campaign for the follow-up. The AI message writer and spam-filter check can tighten wording and flag phrasing that carriers tend to filter. Replies land in the Inbox, and on a new account a person answers them. An account that set up an AI agent before agents were retired still has it, and an agent in auto mode answers texts on its own until you pause its automation in Automations.

Your own software. If your booking or field-service tool can call an API, fire a request when a job closes:

POST https://api.tryready.com/v1/messages
X-API-Key: <your key>
Idempotency-Key: 4f9c2a1e-7b3d-4e8a-9c21-5d6f0a8b1e33

{"to": "+12125550199", "body": "Hi Maria, thanks for choosing Oakline Plumbing today. Mind leaving a quick Google review? https://g.page/r/CXyz123AbCdEfG/review Reply STOP to opt out.", "consent_attested": true}

Set consent_attested to true only if this customer actually agreed to texts. The idempotency key prevents a retried request from sending the review ask twice. Opt-outs are refused up front at no charge. A request made during the recipient's quiet hours is held and billed only when it sends, if sending opens within about 6 hours. Otherwise it's refused, and you send it again once sending opens. Full reference: docs.tryready.com/api/messages.

The short version

Ask every customer the same day with one plain message under 160 characters, using your real Google link. Follow up once, then stop. Don't gate reviews or offer incentives, and record consent where you book the job. If you already have a CRM sending these texts reliably, keep using it. If you're copying review links by hand at the end of each day, set up the automation once. You can sign up with a card on file and use the first 20 free one-to-one texts to test your templates on your own phone before you register.