How to get more Google reviews as a locksmith: the ask at the door, word for word
Locksmiths have the easiest review ask in the trades and most never make it. Scripts, timing, a weekly target, and what a healthy review pace looks like.
A lockout customer is the most grateful person you will meet all week. Ten minutes ago they were standing in a parking lot at night with a dead phone battery and a car they could see their keys inside of. Now they are holding those keys. If you ask for a review in that moment, with the link already on their screen, most of them write one. If you text a link the next morning, almost none of them do.
That is the whole guide, but the details decide whether it works. Across 12,373 locksmith listings the median shop has 50 reviews and 22.4% have fewer than 10. The top tenth starts at 319. The gap between the median and the top tenth is not talent. It is whether the ask happens on every job.
Why reviews matter more in this trade than in most
Two reasons. First, Google uses review count and recency in map pack ranking, and lockout searches are won or lost in the map pack. Second, the locksmith category is full of listings that are not real shops, and searchers have learned to be wary. A listing with 140 reviews, each one mentioning a real street, a real tech by name and a real price, is the clearest signal of "this one is real" a locked-out person can see at 11 p.m.
Ratings will not do that work for you. 83.4% of locksmiths are already at 4.5 or better. The count and the words inside the reviews are what separate you.
The ask at the door
Timing: after the door is open, after payment, before you walk to the van. The customer is relieved and still standing with you.
Script, for a lockout:
"Glad that worked out. One favor. Reviews are how people find a real locksmith instead of one of the fake listings. Can I text you the link right now? It takes about a minute. If you mention it was a lockout on Elm Street and that I got there in 25 minutes, that helps other people find us."
Then send the text while you are still there. The text is three lines:
"Thanks again, Maria. Here is the review link: [link]. Dan, Ridge Lock."
Do not say "if you have time later". Later does not exist. Do not say "five stars"; asking for a rating is against Google's review policy and it also sounds like begging. Ask for a review that says what happened.
For a rekey or commercial job where you invoice, ask when you hand over the keys and send the link with the invoice. For automotive work at a dealership or body shop, ask the service writer; a business can review you too.
Make the link short
Your Google review link is long and ugly. Shorten it once and put it in three places: a saved text on your phone, a QR code on your invoice, and a card in the van with the QR code on it. The card matters for older customers who do not want a text; hand it over and say "scan this when you get inside."
Google provides the link under "Ask for reviews" in your Business Profile. Use that one, not a third-party link that routes through a review-gating page, which Google's policy prohibits.
A healthy pace
One review per working day is a realistic floor for a one-van shop doing 6 to 10 jobs a day. That is 20 to 25 a month. A shop at 30 reviews today, asking on every lockout, passes the 75th percentile of 141 in about five months and the top tenth within about a year.
Watch the velocity more than the total. Google and customers both notice a listing whose newest review is eight months old. Twenty reviews in a week from a shop that averages one a month looks like something was bought, and Google's filters treat it that way. Steady beats bursts.
Who asks, and how you track it
If you have two or three techs, every tech asks and every tech is tracked. A simple whiteboard or a shared note: name, jobs this week, reviews that mention them by name. Pay a small bonus for a named review, $10 to $20 per review is typical and it is cheap compared to what a review is worth in a lockout market.
Techs stop asking when they get three "no" answers in a row. Tell them the base rate: about one in three customers who are asked at the door will post, and the ones who say no are not offended. Nobody has ever refused a locksmith for asking.
Reply to every review, in detail
Replies are read by the next customer, and they are read by Google. Reply within a day, use the customer's first name, name the job and the area:
"Thanks, Maria. Glad we could get you back into the Civic on Elm so fast. Call any time."
That reply now contains "Civic", "Elm" and "lockout" in text Google can index. For a negative review, reply once, calmly, with facts: what the job was, what was quoted, what was done. Do not argue. The reader is judging you, not the reviewer.
Reviews you should not get
Do not buy reviews, trade reviews with other shops, or ask employees and family to post. Google's filters are good at catching review swaps between businesses, and the locksmith category is already watched closely because of the lead-gen fronts. A removed review batch can take the listing down with it. The profile guide covers what else keeps a locksmith listing safe.
Frequently asked
Can I offer a discount for a review? No. Google's policy prohibits incentives for reviews, and a review that mentions a discount gets your other reviews looked at. A bonus to your tech for asking is fine; a reward to the customer for posting is not.
What if the customer paid cash and left before I could ask? Text the link within 10 minutes anyway, with the tech's name and the street. The response rate drops to maybe one in ten, but one in ten is not zero, and the text is already written.
How many reviews do I need to show in the map pack? There is no fixed number. You need more than the three shops currently showing for your town, with a newer latest review. Look up those three, note their counts, and that is your target. The benchmark report has your state's median and 90th percentile for context.
If you would rather have the review requests sent and tracked for you, review generation is one of the services in the free 14-day trial. No card, text or call.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, locksmith businesses among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor