This list is the result of 4 years building a review management solution. I built it using conversations I’ve had with dozens of clients, prospects, and even from my own personal experience working with reviews.
Some of those strategies might not apply directly to your industry, or to your business, but in every case, I tried to include a takeaway to show how this could apply in other industries.
I had to make the list go up to 10 so I had to draw from my personal experience, and the last few examples might feel a little less structured than the first proper case studies that a few clients shared.
If you have a story you think deserves attention, please send us an email on hello@reviewflowz.com with a detailed breakdown. The more numbers the better. I’ll include it here, and credit it properly.
1. The Personal Ask From the Person Who Did the Work
Franck, a renovation contractor in the south of France works on around 100 projects per year with 2 project managers – mostly kitchen & bathroom renovations. Most projects last a week.
They were sending automated emails through their service management system when they closed a project. In 2024, they got 12 reviews.
As it turns out, virtually nobody was following up on those emails. Every one of the 12 reviews they collected were acquired by Franck himself, following up on the projects he handled himself.
In 2025, he started asking his 2 project managers to send a personal text a couple of days after the final walkthrough – usually on the next Monday.
A real message referencing the project. "Hey Marie, really happy with how the island turned out. If you're pleased, it would mean a lot if you could share that here: [link]."
The ask came from someone who'd spent weeks in their home, knew their dog's name, solved problems with them. That relationship made it hard to ignore.
In 2025, they collected 65 reviews out of 112 projects so far.
That’s an almost 4x increase in collection rates.
The takeaway: Just because you can automate it, doesn’t mean you should. Automation is a great tool to ensure things get done, at scale. But volumes like 100 projects per year definitely don’t warrant automation.
In our last session with Franck, we strategized incentive structures to encourage project owners to increase their collection rates all the way to 80%.
2. Give Something Unexpected, Then Ask Right There
Jaime operates a walking tour in Barcelona’s old district. He gets groups of 6 - 10 people every day, and he was struggling with getting them to review the tour on Google & Tripadvisor.
He did ask for reviews at the end of the tour, but there was always a weird vibe by the end – people were a little tired of walking around, and usually just wanted to sit in the shade somewhere. Get Your Guide & Viator were also sending automated emails the day after the tour, asking tourists for their opinions. But overall, he would get one or two reviews every day.
One thing he noticed was that people often mentioned the cold bottle of water he offers at one of the tour’s stops, around two hours into the 3 hour tour.
He didn’t mention it in the tour perks on purpose, he wanted to go beyond expectations. Someone had told him about the extra fries they throw in the bag at Five Guys, and he wanted to do something similar with his tours.
That’s when he started asking for reviews at the same time as he was delivering the bottles. "If you're enjoying the tour, it would help us if you left a quick review. Just search “Barcelona walking tour” and you’ll find us. If you booked through Viator or GetYourGuide, please respond to their email. Your reviews are what allow me to continue doing what I love every morning.”
Jaime now gets 3 or 4 reviews every day. He even had a perfect day once, with every guest reviewing the tour on Google.
The takeaway: When you ask matters just as much as how you ask.
In this case, moving the ask an hour earlier made all the difference. The principle of reciprocity also probably helps here. If your clients are literally holding a gift when you ask them for a review, there’s a solid chance they’ll want to help out more.
3. Build a Staff Program Around It
Erin works in marketing at a European car parts shop in the US. They have a total of 6 locations, and make around 50% of their business online.
They send automated review request emails a week after items were delivered, but in general, conversion rates are really low. They got around 12% online, and only 3% for local shop sales.
Local teams were supposed to ask for reviews, but they often didn’t, and the timing was kind of weird because customers couldn’t really review the sales staff for their work before installing the car parts and knowing everything went fine.
So Erin started running contests between each location. The store with the most reviews every month would get a free team lunch – up to $25 per person.
Employees started pitching the review request before it was even sent. And when customers got the request a week later, they remembered the employee had mentioned it, and would often want to help.
Conversion rates went from 3% all the way to 9% in the first month. Soon enough, staff started complaining that they didn’t know how many reviews they were getting, and it was hard to know how they were doing.
That’s actually when Erin found Reviewflowz. She started sending out weekly emails to store managers with a leaderboard of all stores. After a couple of months, she included a leaderboard with each store employee, based on whether the employee names were mentioned. Conversion rates soared to 17%.
Takeaway: First, incentives don’t have to be boring. You could very well offer $5 for every review that mentions an employee by name, but if you want the whole team to engage, you can make it a group effort.
Second, and I would argue most importantly, staff needs data to improve. Sending out this leaderboard every week meant local managers knew who were over-performing and under-performing, and they could train and coach the right people, with the right ideas.
4. Right After You've Solved Their Problem
This one is a personal story, from back when I worked at an email marketing software company. I was hired as what we called a “growth hacker” back in the late 2010s.
Back then, we were probably still under 20M ARR, but the support team was pretty significant and the ticket load was also quite significant.
I would think North of 50 people were working full time in customer support or support-related functions.
The review engine was a very clever NPS follow-up sequence that someone had set up ages ago. We were collecting 30 day NPS, and 180 day NPS, and then following up with happy customers to ask for a review.
But we wanted more reviews, more volume.
The first thing I did was set up ad hoc campaigns.
That worked, but pretty soon I was out of customers I could contact. And campaigns were bringing diminishing returns.
So I looked for other ways of getting more reviews.
That’s when we started following up on Zendesk CSAT scores.
I even wrote a dedicated post on the topic on Zendesk’s blog. Every time a ticket was closed successfully, Zendesk would automatically send a customer satisfaction survey. Whenever the answer to that survey was positive, the customer would automatically get an email a few hours later asking if they’d be willing to make their feedback public.
New reviews immediately soared from around 50 new reviews a month, to 100 reviews per week.
I’ve seen a few clients run similar flows since I started reviewflowz, and this is hands down the one that brings in the most reviews. This works for any high-ticket-volume business: SaaS, e-commerce, you name it.
5. Follow Up With Something Valuable, Then Ask
Sigurður runs northern lights tours out of Reykjavik. Small operation — two vans, runs from September to March. He gets mostly American and British tourists, usually couples or small groups.
He was doing everything right. Great tours, solid TripAdvisor presence, guides who genuinely knew their stuff. But the review volume was inconsistent. Some weeks he'd get 8-10, other weeks just 2 or 3. The automated emails from his booking system had maybe 10% response rate on a good day.
One thing his guides had always done was take photos during the tour, with real cameras, not phones. Northern lights are hard to capture on a smartphone, so guests genuinely appreciated getting proper shots. But the photo delivery was inconsistent. Sometimes guides would email them, sometimes they'd forget, sometimes guests would ask and never receive them.
Sigurður systematized it. Every morning after a tour, guests receive a WhatsApp message with a link to a shared album. "Here are last night's photos, feel free to download and share." At the bottom: "If you enjoyed the experience, a review would mean a lot to us: [link]"
Two things happened. First, the photos actually got delivered every time, no exceptions. Second, reviews jumped. He went from that inconsistent 10% to around 35% of guests leaving a review.
The WhatsApp message gets opened because people want their photos. By the time they see the review link, they've already scrolled through 20 shots of themselves under the aurora. They're feeling good. The ask barely feels like an ask.
The takeaway: If you’re going to follow up with a review request, bring value in the follow-up. And if you have a good reason to follow-up with your customers after the experience, make sure you ask for a review!
6. After They've Already Given You Feedback
HomeExchange is a platform where members swap homes for vacations. After every stay, the platform prompts you to review the home you stayed in and the host. Standard marketplace stuff. Airbnb does it, Uber does it, everyone does it.
But HomeExchange does something clever right after.
The moment you submit your review of the home, while you're still on the platform, still in "review mode," a second prompt appears asking you to review the platform on the App Store?
It works because reviewing is a mindset. You've already crossed the mental barrier. Reflecting on an experience, formulating your thoughts, typing them out.
A second review feels like a small extra step, not a whole new task. Your browser's open, keyboard's warm, you're already in the flow.
This pattern works for any two-sided marketplace.
The peer-to-peer review is mandatory for the ecosystem to function — trust depends on it. The platform review is optional, but the timing makes it feel effortless. You're already there. One more tap.
The takeaway: If your product already requires users to leave feedback at some point, that's your moment. Don't let them close the tab before asking for the public review.
7. Offer to Refund Their Last Payment
ScrapingBee is a web scraping API. Developer tool, technical audience, monthly subscriptions ranging from $49 to a few hundred dollars.
For B2B SaaS, reviews on G2 and Capterra actually move the needle.
Read more: Capterra VS G2 – Which one should you focus on?
But getting developers to leave reviews is hard. Both platforms are high-friction. Long forms, account creation, multiple steps.
ScrapingBee's approach is blunt: they email customers who've been subscribed for a couple of months and offer to refund their last invoice in exchange for an honest review on G2.
No conditions on what they write. Leave a review, get your money back.
This only really works if you’re in a b-2-small-b market, but the offer is really concrete. It’s specific, and immediate. No coupon code. No validation process. No voucher. It’s cash, put back in your pocket.
It sounds expensive until you do the math. After such a refund, most customers will feel like they owe you, and you’re making them write it down. People hate cognitive dissonance, and they just told the world they love your product.
This effectively improves retention, and gets you verified reviews on software review platforms.
I don’t have specific numbers but I remember their co-founder Pierre was really happy with the collection rates they were getting from this email.
The takeaway: Try to match your offer to your audience. Make it specific, and make it immediate. Know your customers, and offer something that aligns with their desires and the way they operate.
It’s hard to stand-out, specifically for software reviews where platforms have very much turned the game into a boring grind but it’s not impossible!
8. Celebrate a Milestone, Then Ask
Clara runs a dog daycare and boarding business in Austin. Three locations, about 100 dogs on the books at any given time.
Regulars come in two or three times a week, year after year.
But they almost never left reviews. Why would they? Nothing had changed. No single visit stood out.
Clara started pulling data from her booking system. She realized some dogs had been coming for five, six, seven years. She had photos of them from their first day.
So she started sending out anniversary emails. On the anniversary of a dog's first visit, the owner gets an email. "Happy anniversary with us, Biscuit! Here's a photo from his first day back in 2019." Side by side with a recent one.
At the bottom: "If you've been happy with Biscuit's care over the years, we'd be grateful for a Google review."
Open rates were over 60%. People replied just to say thanks. They shared the photos on Instagram.
And reviews started coming in. Not a flood, but a steady stream of long, detailed, genuinely emotional ones. The kind that mention staff by name and tell a story.
The takeaway: Your most loyal customers are your best reviewers but they need a reason to stop and reflect, and you need a trigger to send out requests. A milestone gives them that reason, and it’s a great way to build on the customer relationship.
9. A Card With Every Single Bill
Marc runs a “bouchon” in Lyon. 60 covers, open six days a week.
Traditional French food, mostly locals, some tourists in summer. He'd been asking staff to mention reviews when dropping the bill, but it was hit or miss. Busy nights, they'd forget. New hires didn't know to ask. Some waiters felt awkward about it.
He tried a lot of different strategies, but none of them really got him above 10% review rate.
He started thinking about the customer journey, and what people see every time.
When the waiters brought the bill to a table, they brought it in a small box. In that box, the bill, and a business card.
That’s fairly common really.
A few months ago, Marc thought of adding a QR code on the business cards that would take customers directly to his Google listing.
That’s how I know: he used our free google review link generator, and had a question so he reached out on the chat. We talked for a bit and he shared the use case with me.
I thought the idea was brilliant so I followed up a few weeks later. I didn’t get a number, but he did sound very excited about it.
The takeaway: Think about when people are most likely to be willing to review you, and how to communicate with the highest number of those people.
In Marc’s case, after a good meal, people certainly have an opinion about the restaurant, and they all open the bill box to check the bill & pay. It’s reasonable to think most would have a look at the card if they’re happy, and read the review request at a time when they’re still seated, happy, and in “gratitude” (pay) mode.
10. An NFC Tap Point Where They Pay
My hairdresser has this, and I asked him if it was effective.
I’m talking about the NFC badges you might see in different stores, usually next to the card reader.
As much as I’m a big fan of lowtech solutions, I must admit my hairdresser was really happy about it.
The thing is it always felt super awkward to ask. And it was never really the right time. Most customers are regulars, and it just didn’t feel right.
He said he had tried following up with SMS, but the results weren’t really convincing.
And then he bought an NFC badge online. No subscription or anything. I had a look and there are plenty of options on Amazon. He said he spent €25. That’s about what I saw.
The way this works is it just sits there, and it looks every customer in the eye when they’re about to pay.
The difference was immediate. That dead moment, phone in hand, waiting for the payment to go through became useful.
Customers would tap out of curiosity, see the Google page, and half of them would leave a review right there while waiting for their receipt.
He went from 2-3 reviews a week to 8-10. Not because more people wanted to review, but because he started actually asking, without having to ask himself.
The takeaway: Even if asking for new reviews feels cringe, you can always find low-touch ways of asking. Properly thought out and placed review requests can be very low-touch and still be incredibly effective.
