Big companies pay serious money to find out what their customers think.
Focus groups. Surveys. Consultants with clipboards. Mystery shoppers. All to answer three questions: What do customers love about us? What annoys them? And what words do they use when they talk about us?
You get the answers to all three for nothing. They turn up on your Google profile every time a customer leaves a review.
Plenty of tradies glance at a new review, think “nice” or “bloody hell”, and move on. That’s like a fisherman throwing back every fish to see if a bigger one turns up.
This post is about two things you can do with reviews that many service businesses don’t: read them like research, and reply to them like advertising.
Your reviews are the most honest feedback you’ll ever get
Your customers are polite to your face. They’ll say “yeah, all good mate” at the door even if the job ran an hour late and you left a bit of mess.
In a review, they tell the truth. Not always, and not always fairly, but far more honestly than they would standing in their driveway with you.
And plenty of people are now being asked for it. The BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (a panel of 1,002 US consumers, but the habit is just as familiar here) found that over the past 12 months, 78% of consumers were asked to leave feedback for a business. If your customers are used to being asked by everyone else, they’re ready to tell you what they think too.
Three things to look for in your reviews
Pull up your last 30 reviews and read them in one sitting. You’re looking for patterns, not individual comments.
1. What they praise that you never mention
Picture an electrician in Hobart who thinks he wins jobs on price. Then he reads his reviews and notices half of them mention the same thing: “turned up when he said he would.”
That’s not a throwaway line. That’s his real selling point. Punctuality is what customers value, and it’s not on his website, his quotes or his ute.
Your reviews will show you what your customers actually buy from you, which is often different from what you think you’re selling.
2. What keeps cropping up as a gripe
One complaint is a bad day. Three complaints about the same thing is a pattern.
If several reviews mention communication (“never knew when they’d turn up”), you’ve just been handed the cheapest business fix there is. A simple “on my way” text could lift the experience for every future customer.
3. The words they use
Customers don’t say “comprehensive residential plumbing solutions”. They say “fixed our leaking tap” or “sorted the blocked drain fast”.
Those are the words the next customer types into Google. Use them on your website, in your Google Business Profile services, in your ads. (Part 3 covered how reviews win the click in search.) Your reviews are a free keyword list written by people who actually hire you.
Now the second half: replying
Reading reviews can make your business better. Replying to them makes your business look better to the people who haven’t hired you yet.
Here’s the thing plenty of owners miss. A review reply isn’t really for the person who left the review. They already know how the job went. Your reply is for the next fifty people who read it while deciding whether to ring you.
Google puts it simply on its tips to improve your local ranking page (Google, 2026): “When you reply to customer reviews, it shows that you value their feedback. Positive reviews and helpful replies can help your business stand out.”
And on its tips to get more reviews page (Google, 2026), Google adds: “Your replies are public and help you build good relationships with customers.”
Public. That’s the key word. Every reply is a tiny advert that shows how you treat people.
What customers expect from you now
If you think replying is optional, the numbers say customers disagree. From the BrightLocal 2026 survey:
- 89% of consumers expect business owners to respond to reviews.
- 80% say they’re likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews.
- 42% say they’re unlikely to use a business that never replies.
And they expect it fast:
- 19% expect a response the same day, up from 6% the year before.
- 32% want a response by the following day.
- 81% expect to hear back within a week.
Picture a cleaning company in Adelaide with 60 reviews and not one reply. To a prospect, that profile says “nobody’s home.” The cleaner down the road with replies under every review looks switched on and genuinely interested in its customers.
Reply to all of them, not just the good ones
Some businesses only thank the five-star reviews. Others only jump in to defend themselves against the bad ones. Both look a bit off.
The BrightLocal 2026 survey found far fewer consumers are likely to use a business that responds only to positive reviews (45%) or only to negative ones (47%), compared with the 80% for businesses that respond to every review.
Google also makes the case for the not-so-glowing ones. Its tips page says: “A mix of positive and negative feedback often feels more trustworthy. As best practice, reply to reviews and share your perspective.”
So a calm, fair reply to a 3-star review isn’t damage control. It’s one of the most persuasive things a prospect can read.
The trap: copy-paste replies
There’s a catch. Customers can smell a template.
The same survey found 50% of consumers are unlikely to choose a business that uses templated or generic responses. “Thanks for your review!” pasted under 80 reviews looks worse than you’d think.
That’s not an argument against automation. It’s an argument against lazy automation. Good automated replies are tailored to each review: they use the customer’s name and pick up on what they actually mentioned, whether that’s the tidy site or the bloke who turned up early. That’s how The Online Group’s Google review automation is set up. No single canned template copied under every review.
BrightLocal’s own advice is to “rotate between multiple tailored templates, or use AI-assisted responses to speed up the process, but keep these genuine and tailored to the feedback.” In other words: replies need to sound like they were written for that customer. Mention the job, the suburb, the person’s name if they gave it.
A quick before-and-after (hypothetical)
Review: “Great job on our pool fence in Mandurah, finished a day early.”
Weak reply: “Thanks for your review!”
Strong reply: “Thanks Sarah! Glad the fence came together early. Enjoy the pool this summer, and give us a shout if you need anything.”
Same effort, basically. Completely different impression on everyone who reads it next.
The bottom line
Your Google reviews are two things at once.
They’re free, honest market research that tells you what customers value, what bugs them and the exact words they use. Read them in batches and act on the patterns.
And they’re a public stage. Replying to every review, quickly and personally, shows prospects how you treat people. Customers increasingly expect it, and plenty say they’d pass over a business that stays silent.
Want replies handled without the copy-paste look?
The Online Group’s Google review automation sets up automated review requests after every job, so you’ve always got fresh feedback to learn from, plus automated replies to your reviews so no one is left hanging.
If you’d like more reviews coming in and replies going out without adding to your to-do list, see how our review automation works.
Sources
- BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (1,002 US adults): https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/
- Google Business Profile Help, “Tips to improve your local ranking on Google”: https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091
- Google Business Profile Help, “Tips to get more reviews”: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3474122