Online reviews are the cheapest marketing a business has. When a homeowner searches for an electrician or a plumber, the business with forty five-star reviews wins the call before the phone even rings. And every review you have was free.
The problem is the asking. You finish the job, pack up the van, and you are already thinking about the next one. The review request is the small admin task that never quite happens, and every time it slips, that is a five-star review you never got and a lead that quietly went to the competitor with a longer list.
So let us take you out of the loop entirely. In Axiom Blue you can wire up an automation that emails every customer a review request two hours after their job is marked complete, automatically, forever. No code, no plugins, three nodes on a visual canvas. This is the easy one, so it is a good place to start. Let us build it.
What we will set up
- Open a blank automation in the visual editor
- Add a trigger that fires when a job is marked complete
- Add a short delay so the timing feels natural
- Write the email that asks for the Google review
- Connect the three nodes and switch it on
Workflows -> New Automation -> Add node
Open a blank automation
Open Workflows from the sidebar and choose New Automation. You land on a blank canvas with a toolbar across the top: Add, History, Test and Save.
Click Add to open the node palette. Think of an automation the way the rest of the platform does: when this happens, do that. Triggers are the "when", Actions are the "do", and the Logic and Data nodes in between let you wait, branch and look things up. For this automation we only need three of them.
Concept
Every automation is built from nodes on a canvas. The Add button opens a palette grouped into Triggers (the "when"), Logic, Actions (the "do") and Data.
Advantage
You are assembling a workflow visually, the same way you would sketch it on a whiteboard. There is nothing to install and not a line of code to write.
Event Trigger node -> Event type
Trigger it when a job is marked complete
From the palette, under Triggers, add an Event Trigger. A node appears on the canvas. Click it to open its settings on the right.
Set the Event type to Job Completed. That is the whole trigger. From now on, every time your team marks a job complete in Axiom Blue, this automation wakes up. You can leave the optional filter blank, which means it runs for every completed job.
Concept
An Event Trigger listens for something happening in your business. Set its event type to Job Completed and the automation starts the moment a job is closed off.
Advantage
Nothing runs until a real job is finished, so the request is always tied to actual work. You never have to remember to start anything.
Delay node -> Fixed delay
Wait two hours before reaching out
From the palette, under Logic, add a Delay node. Open it and set the Delay type to Fixed, the Value to 2 and the Unit to Hours.
That is the only trick to this whole automation: do not ask the instant you drive off. Give them a beat. Two hours is long enough to feel considered and short enough that the job is still fresh in their mind.
Concept
A Delay node simply pauses the workflow. Here it holds for two hours between the job finishing and the email going out.
Advantage
Timing matters more than people expect. A short wait means the customer has had a moment to enjoy the finished work, which lifts response rates, without leaving it so long that they forget who you are.
Send Email node -> Recipient and content
Write the review request email
From the palette, under Actions, add a Send Email node. Set the Recipient type to Context and the recipient field to the customer email from the trigger, written as {{trigger.data.customer_email}}. The double curly braces are placeholders that fill in real values when the automation runs.
Give it a friendly subject, for example "How did we go?", and keep the body short. Thank them for the work, ask for a quick Google review if they were happy, and drop in your review link. You can reuse the customer name and your business name as placeholders too, so the same template reads personally for everyone who receives it.
Concept
A Send Email node composes and sends the message. It pulls the customer details straight from the job that triggered the automation, so every email is personalised.
Advantage
One short, warm message does the work that a staff member would otherwise have to write out by hand after every single job, and it goes out exactly the same way every time.
The finished automation
Connect the nodes and switch it on
Join the three nodes in order: Job Completed, then Wait 2 Hours, then the review email. Drag from the handle on the right of one node to the next to draw the connection. Give the automation a name at the top, then hit Save.
New automations start Paused so you can test them first. Use the Test button to run it through once, and when you are happy, flip it to active. That is it. You just built your first automation. From here, the only question is how much more of your week you want to hand over, because the multi-step ones can chase invoices and book jobs while you sleep.
Concept
Each node has a small handle on its edge. Drag from one node to the next to connect them in order, then Save and switch the automation from Paused to active.
Advantage
Once it is on, it runs in the background for every completed job with zero ongoing effort, quietly building your online reputation while you are out on the job.
Most businesses treat reviews as something they will get around to. The ones that grow fastest treat them as a system that runs whether anyone remembers or not.
This is three nodes and five minutes of setup, and then it works on every job you ever complete. That is the whole idea behind automation in Axiom Blue: do the thinking once, and let the system do the remembering forever.
Try it in Axiom Blue
Want to put your review requests on autopilot?
Explore the live demo or start a free trial to build this automation yourself, then see how Axiom Blue chases overdue invoices, books jobs from accepted quotes and keeps customers in the loop, all without code.