A feedback text should take the customer about four seconds to answer. If it takes longer, they skip it. A 12-question survey link sent three days after the job gets ignored. A one-line "how did we do, reply 1 to 5" sent two hours after the technician leaves gets answered, because the visit is still fresh and replying is as easy as texting a friend.
This post gives you wording you can copy, when to send it for different kinds of service businesses, and what to do with the replies. It also covers consent and the review-gating rule, which is where most feedback programs run into trouble. Each template stays under 160 plain characters, so each one bills as a single segment.
Why the format matters more than the wording
The asks that work share three traits:
- One question, answerable in one reply. A number, a yes/no or a short sentence.
- The business name in the first line. People don't answer unknown numbers that don't say who they are.
- No emoji. One star emoji switches the whole message to unicode, and the single-segment limit drops from 160 characters to 70. A 110-character ask with a ⭐ becomes 2 segments instead of 1, which doubles the cost of that send.
If you want a wider set of review and appointment wording, our review and invitation template post covers more variations. This post focuses on the feedback loop itself.
Templates you can copy
Replace the brackets. Include the "Reply STOP to opt out" line on the first text to each contact, at minimum.
The 1-to-5 rating ask (start here)
Hi [Name], it's [Business]. How did today's [service] go? Reply 1-5 (5 = great). Reply STOP to opt out.
About 105 characters, 1 segment. This version gets the most replies because answering takes a single keystroke.
The open question
Hi [Name], it's [Business]. Quick question: what's one thing we could have done better on your visit? Reply STOP to opt out.
Use this one when you care more about the reasons behind a rating than the rating itself, for example after you change your pricing or your process.
The recommend question (NPS-style)
Hi [Name], it's [Business]. How likely are you to recommend us to a friend, 0-10? Just reply with a number.
The review request (send to everyone)
Thanks, [Name]! If you have a minute, a Google review helps a small shop like ours a lot: [link to your review page]
The reply to a low score
Sorry we fell short, [Name]. [Owner name] will call you today to make it right. Anything you want us to know first?
The single reminder
Hi [Name], [Business] here again. No pressure: if you have 5 seconds, how did the [service] go? Reply 1-5.
Send one reminder at most, 2 to 3 days after the first ask, and only to people who haven't replied. A second nudge reads as nagging and draws STOP replies.
Don't gate reviews
It's tempting to send the review link only to people who reply 4 or 5. Google's review policies prohibit selectively asking for positive reviews, and the FTC's rule on consumer reviews targets review suppression. Use the rating to decide how you respond: a low score gets a same-day call from a person. Send the review link to every customer who finishes a job. The rating tells you who to call. It does not decide who is allowed to leave a review.
When to send, by type of business
Feedback texts get answered best while the customer still remembers the visit. Here are reasonable starting points (not measured benchmarks):
| Business type | When to send the ask | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Plumbing, HVAC, electrical | 1 to 3 hours after the job closes | Gives time to confirm the fix held |
| Salons, spas, barbers | Same evening | Before they've seen the result in daylight for days |
| Auto repair | Next day after pickup | Gives them one drive in the car |
| House cleaning | 1 to 2 hours after the crew leaves | While they're walking through the house |
| Dental and medical | Next day | Keep it generic: no procedure or health details in the text |
| Contractors, multi-day jobs | Day after final walkthrough | Ask about the whole job, not the last day |
Send only during permitted local hours, roughly 9 AM to 8 PM in the customer's time zone. Ready enforces quiet hours by the recipient's area. If a Ready automation sends the ask, a text triggered by a job that closes at 9:30 PM is held until the next morning, and it's charged only when it sends. If your own software sends it through the API, schedule it for the morning: an API text at 9:30 PM is refused, not held. 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.
If you already text appointment reminders, the feedback ask is the last step of that flow. Our appointment reminder SMS guide covers the earlier texts.
Handling the replies
Replies are where the value is, and they're also where most programs fall apart. Sort them into four buckets:
- A number (4-5, or 9-10). Send the thank-you. Log the score.
- A number (1-3, or 0-6). A person calls the same day. Don't send a canned apology and leave it there.
- Free text ("the tech was great but late"). Read it, reply as a person, and pass it to whoever runs operations.
- STOP, "who is this", or anger. Ready honors STOP and similar keywords automatically, and the opt-out applies across every campaign so that contact can't be texted again. For "who is this", a one-line answer naming the business and the visit usually settles it.
Replies land in the Ready Inbox, and in GoHighLevel if the account is connected. Ready's AI message writer can help you draft and spam-check the templates. Ready no longer lets accounts create AI agents that answer customers on their own, so plan for a human to read and respond to the replies.
What a feedback program costs
Here's a worked example with stated assumptions: 400 completed jobs a month, every template a single plain-text segment, a reminder sent to 200 non-responders, and an assumed 40% eventually replying (160 people), each of whom gets one follow-up text.
| Item | Segments |
|---|---|
| First ask | 400 |
| Reminder | 200 |
| Inbound replies (billed like sent texts) | 160 |
| Thank-you / review link / low-score reply | 160 |
| Total | 920 |
On Ready Standard that's 920 × $0.0075 = $6.90, plus 920 × $0.0045 in carrier fees, itemized separately on the bill. That total excludes the optional compliance surcharge: DNC scrubbing and landline validation are $0.003 extra per segment each, and both are off by default. If you put an emoji in the first ask and it ran past 70 characters, that line would go from 400 to 800 segments.
Registration costs extra: $25/mo for registration and $2 per number. The first month, $25, is charged when you submit. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days. Unregistered traffic gets filtered by carriers, so skipping registration means many of these texts never arrive.
Consent and registration
Feedback texts go to existing customers, but you still need their consent to text them. In practice:
- Collect it at booking. For example: "We'll text you about your appointment and ask for feedback afterward. Msg & data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out." Our opt-in language examples have more wording.
- Keep the record yourself. Store when and where each customer agreed, and the wording they saw. Ready records your attestation per send (who sent, to how many, when), which builds an audit trail. It does not store each customer's opt-in. (A contact who signs up on a Ready-hosted opt-in page is the exception: Ready stores that sign-up, with the time, IP address and exact wording, and support@tryready.com can send you a copy.)
- Register the right use case. Review requests sit close to marketing. If your campaign is registered as customer care and you send review asks and promos, carriers can filter the mismatched traffic. See matching your use case to what you send.
Compliance is ultimately the sender's responsibility. The tools reduce risk; they don't remove it.
If you're sending from your own software, the ask is a single call to POST /v1/messages with an Idempotency-Key header, so a retried request never sends twice:
{"to": "+12125550199", "body": "Hi Dana, it's Maple Plumbing. How did today's repair go? Reply 1-5 (5 = great). Reply STOP to opt out.", "consent_attested": true}The full reference is at docs.tryready.com/api/messages.
The practical takeaway
Ask one question, a few hours after the job, in plain text under 160 characters. Send one reminder at most. Send the review link to everyone, and have a person call anyone who scores you low. Get consent at booking and keep that record.
If you want to test the wording before committing, the first 20 texts on Ready are free. They're one-to-one sends, so use them on real customers before you pay for registration.