Google reviews for mechanics: asked for once the car has been driven.

A driver choosing a workshop cannot judge the work and knows it. They cannot tell a good brake job from a bad one, so they judge the only thing they can read, which is what other people said about being treated fairly.

The fear is specific and it is always the same. Being overcharged, being sold work that was not needed, or being told the car is ready when it is not. Every review a workshop has is read against those three worries.

That is why the content matters more here than the count. A review saying the workshop rang before doing extra work does more for a stranger than ten saying great service.

It is also why a single bad review lands harder on a workshop than on most businesses. One review describing a surprise bill confirms the thing the reader was already afraid of.

The moment to ask is when the customer picks the car up and it is fixed. They are relieved, the bill matched the quote, and they are standing in front of you. It never happens again after that.

Every workshop knows this and almost none of them do it, for a simple reason. Handover is the busiest part of the afternoon, there are three other cars going out, and asking feels like it comes after taking their money.

There is a second moment that works nearly as well and is far easier to systematise, which is a short message a few hours later once the car has been driven and it is clearly fine.

What makes a workshop different from most local businesses

• The customer is relieved, not delighted.

  Relief is a real feeling and it writes good reviews, but it fades within a day.

• You have their number and their car.

  Unlike a cafe, a workshop has a record of every customer, which makes following up genuinely possible.

• Repeat work depends on it.

  A driver who trusts you comes back for a decade. The review is a by-product of the same trust that produces that.

You can ask every customer. You cannot discount a service in exchange, you cannot ask only the ones who did not complain, and nobody in the workshop can write them.

Discounting for a review is the version workshops reach for, often phrased as a thank you rather than a deal. It is against Google's policy either way, and the reviews can be removed months later when the profile is reassessed.

Asking only the happy customers is the other one, and in a workshop it feels almost reasonable. It is still gating, it is still against the policy, and it produces a page that does not read as genuine.

The one worth being careful about is the bad review from a customer who did not like the price. Reply once, briefly, without arguing the invoice in public. The reply is written for the next person reading it.

A short message a few hours after pick-up, from the workshop, with a link that opens the review box directly. Sent to every customer, on the day, without anybody in the office having to remember.

The timing is doing most of the work. A few hours later the car has been driven and the customer knows it is right, which is the moment they can honestly say so. A week later they have stopped thinking about it entirely.

The other half is that it goes out automatically. Every workshop that relies on somebody remembering at four in the afternoon ends up asking about one customer in ten, and it is always the ten percent who were chattiest.

What the ask has to do

• Go out after the car has been driven.

  Not at handover, when they are paying, and not days later when it is forgotten.

• Open the review box in one tap.

  A link to the profile loses most people at the point where they have to find the right button.

• Go to every customer.

  Same message, same timing, no selection. That is the policy and it is also what makes the page read as real.