Definition
The part of reputation management focused specifically on reviews: asking customers for them, responding to what comes in, and reading them for patterns. It spans Google, Yelp, Facebook, and industry sites, and treats review volume and recency as things to work on deliberately rather than leave to chance.
What it looks like in practice
At the close of every job, a cleaning company adds one step: the crew lead texts a thank-you with a direct review link the same afternoon, while the house still smells like it was just cleaned. Requests go out only after jobs with no complaints logged, so the ask is not landing on someone already annoyed. Reviews that come in get a reply within a day: thanks by first name for the good ones, an offer to re-clean for the bad ones. Reading them in a batch each month, the owner notices three separate mentions of a crew arriving late and fixes the route.
Why it matters
Reviews do double duty: they are one of the strongest reasons a nearby customer picks you over the shop down the road, and they feed how prominently you appear in local search. Recency counts as much as the average, which is why a business with a great rating from three years ago quietly loses to a competitor collecting a few every month. Left alone, review mix skews negative; an unhappy customer is far more motivated to write than a satisfied one who has already moved on with their day. Asking has to be built into the job, not remembered when someone thinks of it.