Getting reviews in a city where nobody knows you

A second-city listing usually starts the same way. The home profile carries years of reviews, and the new one has two, both from relatives. Get real ones by asking every early customer in the new city at handover, with the finished job in front of them. Ask whoever will live or work with the result, not only the one who paid. Ask them to say what you did and which part of town they are in, and to write what they honestly think. A buyer in a new city wants one thing from your reviews: somebody nearby who took the risk first.

Why the reviews from your home city do not travel

A new location starts at zero. Its Google Business Profile is a separate listing, and none of the trust built over years in the first city moves across with it.

The temptation is to fill the empty page with friends, staff or loyal customers from home. Do not. Review platforms do not want reviews from people who never bought from that location, or reviews given in return for anything. Check their current rules before you ask anyone. Local buyers also see through it faster than the platform does. A review that says "very professional team" with no street, no product and no detail reads as exactly what it is.

Ask at handover, and ask the right person

Handover is the one moment when the job is finished, the customer is looking at it and the person who did the work is in the room. Three days later the customer remembers the delay in delivery. At handover they remember how quiet the room went when the window shut.

Ask every customer, including the ones you expect to be critical. The choice you get to make is who in that household or firm you ask. In a home, the person who negotiated the price may not be the one who will cook in the kitchen or sleep in the room, and that person knows the result better. In a factory, the purchase head who fought over the rate may have little to say about the machine, but the maintenance in-charge who watched it start has a lot.

The person who asks should be whoever did the job, the site supervisor or the installer, not the owner by message from head office a week later.

What to say, word for word

Give your supervisor these lines and ask them to use their own voice.

Said aloud at handover, once the customer has seen everything:

"Before I leave, one request. We are new in Raipur, and people here ask us who we have worked for nearby. Could you write two lines on Google, whatever you honestly think? What we fitted, and which colony you are in. I will send the link to your WhatsApp right now."

Sent while still standing in the house, so the link arrives before the conversation ends:

"Thank you for today. Here is the link to review us in Raipur: [link]. A line on what we fitted and your colony is all it needs, good or bad. Hindi or English, whichever you prefer."

And the reply, posted on the review once it appears, naming the area back:

"Thank you for trusting us with the bedroom windows in Shankar Nagar. Glad the road noise has dropped."

Make the town visible wherever the review is shown

On Google you cannot edit what a customer writes, which is why the request asks for the area up front. Everywhere else, you control the label.

On your website's city page, put the local reviews first, each signed with a first name and a locality: "Anita, Devendra Nagar". Ask permission first. Some people will want initials only, and that is fine. Reviews from the home city can sit lower down, labelled with their own city so nobody mistakes them for local work. A photograph of the finished job helps, with the house number and any family photos kept out of the frame.

For example: a Nagpur window maker opens in Raipur

This is an invented case. A Nagpur maker of uPVC windows and sliding doors opens a small display centre in Raipur. The profile looks bare, so the owner asks two cousins and three old Nagpur customers to post reviews on it. Five stars each, no detail. Within a month a Raipur caller asks the salesperson outright whether they have fitted a single window in the city.

That was the mistake. The reviews made the profile look busier and the firm look less local.

Three handovers turned it round. The cousins took their reviews down. The site supervisor used the lines above at the first jobs in Shankar Nagar, Telibandha and Avanti Vihar. In the Shankar Nagar house the son had argued over the rate for a week, and the grandmother's bedroom faces the main road, so the supervisor asked both. She dictated four lines in Hindi to her granddaughter about the quiet nights and named her colony. The son's review, posted a day later, grumbled about the delivery date. Both stayed up. Three Raipur callers in the next month mentioned the first review, and one quoted the second.

When not to push for a review

Do not ask while a snag is still open. Fix the hinge, the leak or the late part first, then ask as you would ask anyone else, and accept what they write. Asking only the customers you are sure of is the habit platforms object to.

Some customers do not want to be seen buying from you, and some trades cannot ask at all. Clinics, counselling services and some legal or financial work fall here. For healthcare, the rules on what a provider may ask patients for or publish differ by state and body and change, so check with your own council or adviser first. Our note on managing reviews for a healthcare business covers that case.

Business buyers whose company does not let staff post public reviews can still help. Ask for a reference call you can offer the next buyer in that town, or a short note on letterhead for your website, with permission.

Before the first handover in the new city

Decide who will stand in the room at the first handovers, give them the three messages above, and look at the profile after each job. Read the new city's page in our locations pages first; the localities named there are the ones your reviews should carry. If you want help setting up the asking and replying for the new city, online review generation and management is the related service. Then tell us what you need.