Google reviews for electricians: the work nobody can see, judged on everything else.

A new switchboard looks like a grey box. A rewire looks like a patched wall. The customer has no way to know whether the work is good, and unlike a painted room or a paved driveway, there is nothing to admire afterwards.

So they judge on everything around the work. Whether the sparky turned up when they said, whether the price at the end matched the price at the start, whether the house was left clean, and whether anybody explained what was actually wrong.

The safety element sharpens all of it. Customers are quietly frightened of electrical work in a way they are not about plumbing, because the failure they imagine is a fire rather than a mess.

That fear is why a stranger reads an electrician's reviews more carefully than almost any other trade's. They are not looking for a bargain, they are looking for reassurance that this person is careful.

Three things, in this order: that you turned up, that the final bill was the quoted bill, and that somebody explained the problem in plain words. Reviews mentioning all three convert far better than reviews saying great job.

The explanation one is underrated by electricians and enormously valuable. A customer who was shown the burnt terminal and told why it happened has been given the one thing they could not get anywhere else, and they write about it.

The price one is where the trade gets judged hardest, and unfairly often. Electrical work uncovers other problems, so the honest job that grew has to be explained at the time or it becomes a review about a surprise bill.

The turning up one sounds trivial and is not. In a trade where a large share of customers have been let down by somebody who did not show, being the business that arrives is a genuine differentiator and it is the most common thing customers praise.

The reviews that do the most work

• The one about the unexpected extra.

  Rang first, explained it, priced it, then did it. That single review answers the fear every reader has.

• The one about the after-hours call-out.

  Availability is what a stranger is worried about at nine at night.

• The one from a job that went wrong.

  Something failed and the sparky came back and fixed it without a fight. Nothing else builds trust like it.

A builder, a property manager or a strata committee who uses you regularly will not write a review off their own bat, and they are the customers whose opinion carries most weight with a reader.

The reason is simple. It is a supplier relationship, not a purchase, and nobody reviews a supplier. But a strata manager saying you handled fourteen units without a complaint is worth twenty domestic reviews to somebody choosing a commercial electrician.

These have to be asked for directly and personally, not by an automated message. A property manager who gets a system-generated review request from a trade they use weekly will ignore it, correctly.

Domestic is the opposite. Domestic customers respond well to a message a few hours after the job, and badly to being asked in person while they are getting their wallet out.

Two different asks for two different customers

• Domestic, by message, the same day.

  Short, from the business, sent without anybody remembering to.

• Commercial and strata, in person, once a year.

  Asked directly by whoever they deal with, at a point where something has gone well.

• Builders you subcontract for.

  Worth asking, worth being specific about what would help, and worth not asking twice.

A short message a few hours after the job is finished, from the business, with a link that opens the review box in one tap. Sent to every domestic customer automatically, because on the tools nobody remembers.

A few hours is the right delay for this trade specifically. The customer has had time to switch things on and confirm the problem is gone, which is the moment they can honestly say the work was good.

Asking at the door does not work, and every electrician who has tried it knows why. The customer is paying, the sparky is packing up, and asking for a favour at the moment money changes hands feels like a second invoice.

The other half is that it has to go to everybody. An electrician relying on memory asks the friendly customers on the quiet days, which is maybe one job in eight, and it is never the emergency call-outs where the gratitude was highest.

What the ask has to do

• Go out after they have used it.

  A few hours, not at the door and not next week.

• Open the review box, not the profile.

  The extra taps are where most people give up.

• Go to every job, without exception.

  Same message, same delay, no selection by anybody.