How to get more Google reviews

Getting more Google reviews is a conversion funnel, not a list of tricks. Six stages sit between serving a customer and a published review, and each one leaks. Fixing the wrong stage is why most review pushes stall after a fortnight.

The funnel

Six stages, and where each one leaks

served -> asked -> taps -> submits experience -> chooses Google -> completes review

Customer served

Where it leaks: Nobody decides who asks, so nobody asks.
What fixes it: Make the ask belong to a moment, not a person's memory: at payment, on handover, at the chair. A card that lives at that moment does the reminding.
How to measure it: Not measurable in software — this is a rostering and habit question.

Asked

Where it leaks: The ask is vague (“leave us a review sometime”) and dies in the car park.
What fixes it: Ask while the customer is still in front of you and hand them something physical to act on immediately.
How to measure it: Compare taps per store per open day. Wildly different rates across similar stores is an asking problem, not a customer problem.

Taps or scans

Where it leaks: Cards are in a drawer, behind the till, or were never taken out of the box.
What fixes it: One card per counter, table or staff member — and check the ones that have never been tapped.
How to measure it: Device Health separates “never tapped at all” from “used to be tapped and stopped”. Those are different management conversations.

Submits their experience

Where it leaks: The page asks too much, or asks for the review before it asks about the visit.
What fixes it: One rating, one optional comment, one screen. Capture it on submit so the visit is recorded whatever happens next.
How to measure it: Submitted ÷ taps. This is where page friction shows up.

Chooses Google

Where it leaks: Nothing makes it easy to carry what they just wrote across to Google.
What fixes it: Copy their comment to the clipboard or the native share sheet, then open Google so they paste rather than re-type.
How to measure it: Google opened ÷ submitted, per store and per staff member.

Completes the review on Google

Where it leaks: A Google login wall, a slow app switch, or the customer simply moving on.
What fixes it: Nothing you can control on Google's side — which is exactly why the capture happens before the hand-off.
How to measure it: New synced Google reviews scored against tap logs and captured names, so a review can be marked as a confirmed or likely tap rather than guessed at.

Diagnosis

Follow-through problem, or a deployment problem?

These two look identical in a Google rating average, and they need opposite responses.

Deployment failure

Taps are low or zero. The store has cards but they aren't in customers' hands. Nothing about the customer journey is broken yet — the ask never happened. Look at cards that have never recorded a genuine tap, and at cards that were tapped for two weeks and then went quiet.

Follow-through failure

Taps are healthy and experiences are being submitted, but few reach Google. That is a hand-off problem: the comment isn't carried across, or the customer hits a login wall. More cards will not fix it.

Personal vs shared

Who the card belongs to changes the numbers

Personal staff cards

One card per person. Asking becomes part of how someone finishes a job, and the feedback is unambiguously theirs. Best where the relationship is one-to-one: barbers, trades, sales floors, service advisers.

Shared counter cards

One card at the till, table or desk, optionally asking “who helped you today?”. Higher volume, softer attribution. Best where many people serve the same customer.

Non-negotiable

No review gating — and why it also happens to be better data

Every customer sees the Google option, at every rating, on every card.
A soft rating changes what we offer next — a callback — not whether Google is available.
Captured private feedback is never matched to, or presented as, a Google review.

Filtering unhappy customers away from Google breaches Google's policies, and it hides the problem from you as well. Capturing the experience first gets you the same early warning that gating promises, without suppressing anyone.