What a review request system costs an electrician, and the month it pays back
The real cost of asking every customer for a Google review, from free to paid software, and how many extra calls it takes before the system pays for itself.
Most electricians know they should have more Google reviews. Fewer know what it costs to get them on purpose, and whether that cost ever comes back. So here is the breakdown, from the free version to the paid one, and the point where each pays for itself.
Where most electricians start
Across the 65,890 electrical listings in our data, the median company has 7 Google reviews. 57.6% have fewer than ten, and 16.3% have none at all. To land in the top quarter you need about 23. To reach the top tenth you need roughly 71.
Those are not big numbers. An electrician who finishes a few jobs a week and asks every customer can pass the median in a month or two. The trouble is that most do not ask, or ask once in a while when they remember. The full spread is on the benchmarks page.
Option one: the free version
The free version is a text you send yourself. You copy your Google review link from your Business Profile, save it in your phone, and send it after every job.
Cost: zero dollars, plus about two minutes per job.
The catch: you will forget. Almost everyone does. After a long day on a service upgrade, the last thing on your mind is a text. Owners who run the free version well usually tie it to something they already do, like closing the invoice. The reviews guide has the exact words that work best.
If you send it after every job and get, say, one review for every four asks, a shop finishing ten jobs a week adds about ten reviews a month. That is enough to move from the median toward the top quarter in a season.
Option two: built into your field software
Many electricians already pay for job management software. A lot of those tools can send a review request automatically when a job is marked complete. Some include it, some charge an add-on, usually somewhere between $0 and $50 a month.
Cost: often nothing extra, sometimes a small add-on. Plus an hour to set up the message and the timing.
The catch: the default message is usually generic. Rewrite it. Use the customer's first name, mention the job, and send it within a few hours of finishing, not the next morning.
Option three: dedicated review software
Dedicated review tools run anywhere from about $50 to $300 a month. They send the request, follow up once if there is no reply, show all your reviews in one place, and remind you to respond.
Cost: call it $100 to $200 a month for a small shop, plus setup.
The catch: some tools try to filter unhappy customers away from Google before they leave a review. That practice, often called review gating, is against Google's policies. Make sure the tool sends everyone the same link.
When it pays back
Here is a simple way to think about it. Use your own numbers.
Say your average service call is $400 and you keep 40% after labor and materials. That is $160 of profit per job. A $150-a-month tool needs to produce about one extra job a month to cover itself.
Does it? More reviews do not directly book jobs. What they do is change how often a person who finds you picks up the phone. When a homeowner compares three electricians on the map, the one with 7 reviews usually loses to the one with forty. If your profile turns even one more search a month into a call that books, the paid tool has covered itself. Two more, and it is making money.
Most shops see the payback somewhere in month two or three. Month one is mostly the backlog: customers from the past year you never asked. Send to all of them once, with a short note. That alone often doubles a small review count.
What to spend before you spend on reviews
Reviews are not the first dollar. If your calls go to voicemail and nobody calls back within the hour, more reviews just send more people to voicemail. Fix the phone first. The calculator shows what missed calls cost at your ticket size, and for most electricians that number is bigger than any review tool.
After the phone, check your hours. 40% of electrical listings in our data show no hours at all, which hurts the emergency calls that pay best.
Then reviews. For a shop finishing fewer than five jobs a week, the free version is enough if you are disciplined. Above that, a tool that asks for you is usually worth the money, because the asks you forget cost more than the subscription.
If you want help with any one of those pieces, the free 14-day trial of any service needs no card. See the free trial page or text or call (346) 496-4068.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, electricians among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor