GoHighLevel Reputation Management Setup: Get More Reviews on Autopilot

Step 1: Connect your Google Business Profile

Go to Settings in the left sidebar, then Integrations, then Google My Business. Click Connect and sign in with the Google account that has ownership or management access to your GBP listing. Grant GHL the requested permissions including the ability to view and respond to reviews.

After authorising, GHL shows a list of business locations associated with your Google account. Select the correct location for this sub-account. If you manage multiple locations under one Google account, each location connects to a separate GHL sub-account. One sub-account connects to one GBP location.

Once connected, go to Reputation in the left sidebar. Your existing Google reviews appear here, pulled from your GBP listing. This import may take a few minutes for accounts with a large number of existing reviews. New reviews posted to your GBP appear in GHL within a few minutes of being posted on Google.

Also connect your GBP under the Calendar integrations if you want Google to show your booking button directly on your listing. This connection is separate from the reputation management connection and enables the "Book" button on your GBP that lets customers schedule appointments directly from Google Maps.

Step 2: Set up automated review requests

The review request automation is a workflow that triggers when a job is marked complete in your pipeline. Go to Automation, then Workflows, then Create Workflow. Name it "Review Request, Post-Completion." Trigger: Pipeline Stage Changed. Select your pipeline, select the stage Completed.

Add a Wait step: 2 hours. This delay is intentional. Sending the request immediately when the job is marked complete means the message arrives while the technician may still be on site. A 2-hour delay gives the customer time to see the finished work and feel satisfied before you ask for a review.

Add action: Send SMS. Your review request message should be brief, personal and include your direct Google review link as a plain URL. The link takes the reviewer directly to the review compose screen rather than your general GBP listing. Find your direct review link by searching for your business on Google, clicking Write a Review and copying the URL from the browser, or using a tool like Whitespark's Google Review Link Generator.

Add a Wait step: 24 hours. Add an If/Else branch: has the contact replied in the last 24 hours? If yes, end the workflow. If no, continue. Add action: Send Email with the same review request in a slightly expanded format. A brief subject line like "How did we do, {{contact.first_name}}?" and a short email body with the review link and a sentence of context.

Publish the workflow. Test it by moving a test contact to the Completed stage and confirming the SMS arrives on your personal phone within 2 hours.

Step 3: Route negative feedback privately

Sending a review request to an unhappy customer risks a public negative review that affects your rating for years. Add a private satisfaction check before the public review request to give dissatisfied customers a private channel.

Before the review request SMS in your workflow, add an earlier touchpoint at the 30-minute mark after job completion: "Hi {{contact.first_name}}, just checking everything went well today. Are you happy with the work? Reply YES for great or NO if there is anything we should know about." Add an If/Else branch on the reply. If the contact replies with NO or any message containing negative keywords (problem, issue, not happy, wrong, disappointed), route them to an internal notification to your team and a private follow-up: "Thank you for letting us know. We would love to make it right. Can we call you today?" Stop the public review request from firing for this contact by ending the workflow at this point.

If the contact replies YES or does not reply at all within 30 minutes, continue to the review request at the 2-hour mark. This simple filter prevents most public negative reviews by catching dissatisfied customers before they reach the public request step. See our detailed review request automation guide for more detail on the negative feedback routing setup.

Step 4: Monitor and respond to reviews

Go to Reputation in the left sidebar. Your reviews appear here sorted by most recent. The filter options at the top let you show only positive reviews (4 to 5 stars), only negative reviews (1 to 3 stars) or reviews that have not yet been responded to.

Click Reply on any review to open the response editor. Write your response and click Post. The response appears on your Google Business Profile immediately. Responding to every review, both positive and negative, signals to Google that you are an active, engaged business. This engagement is one of the factors Google uses to determine local search ranking.

For positive reviews, a brief personalised response works best: "Thank you, [reviewer name]. We are really glad the [specific service] worked out well. We look forward to helping you again." Avoid generic copy-pasted responses. Google's algorithm and potential customers both notice when every response is identical.

For negative reviews, respond within 24 hours. Acknowledge the experience without arguing, apologise for the dissatisfaction and offer to resolve the issue offline: "We are sorry to hear this was not the experience we aim for, [reviewer name]. Please reach out to us at [phone or email] and we will make it right." This response shows potential customers reading the review that you take feedback seriously and resolve problems professionally.

Set up a GHL notification workflow that alerts you when a new review appears below a threshold rating. Trigger: New Review Received with a rating filter of 3 stars or below. Action: internal notification SMS or email to the business owner with the review content. This ensures you see and can respond to negative reviews within hours rather than discovering them days later.

Step 5: Track your review performance

In the Reputation section, GHL shows your overall average rating and the distribution of review scores across your review history. Check this monthly alongside the new review count to track progress. Set a target of a specific number of new reviews per month and track whether your automated review request workflow is hitting that target.

If your monthly new review count is below target, check two things. First, the workflow analytics to confirm the review request SMS is being sent to all contacts who reach the Completed stage. High drop-off in the workflow before the SMS sends indicates a configuration issue. Second, check the SMS click rate on your review link. Most SMS platforms show link click data. A low click rate on the review link usually means the message body needs to be rewritten to be more compelling or more personal.

Step 6: Multi-location review management

For businesses with multiple locations or agencies managing reviews for multiple clients, each GHL sub-account connects to its own GBP location independently. Each sub-account has its own review request workflow, its own reputation monitoring and its own response queue.

From the agency parent dashboard, the reputation summary shows aggregate review counts and average ratings across all connected sub-accounts. Use this view to identify which locations are building reviews effectively and which need attention. A location that consistently receives fewer reviews per month despite similar job volume might have a misconfigured workflow or a team that is not consistently moving jobs to the Completed stage to trigger the automation.

See our full Google reviews guide for more detail on maximising review volume and the response strategies that improve your local search ranking over time.