Google reviews for pest control: nobody recommends you at a barbecue.

Nobody asks a friend for a pest controller recommendation. There is no word of mouth to speak of, because the conversation is embarrassing, so the customer goes straight to the map and decides from what is on the screen.

That makes the profile more decisive in pest control than in any other local trade. In plumbing a good listing supplements a referral network. Here it replaces one that does not exist.

The reader is also in an unusual state. They found something in a cupboard an hour ago, they are unsettled, and they want this dealt with today by somebody who will not make it worse.

What they are reading for is competence and discretion in about equal measure, and the ability to come quickly. Price is checked and rarely decisive.

A review of a pest business is a public statement that the writer had a problem with cockroaches, rats or termites at their address, under their own name. A large share of customers will simply not do it, and they are not being difficult.

This is the real reason pest control profiles are thin, and it gets misdiagnosed as customers being ungrateful. They are grateful. They just do not want it on the internet next to their name.

There are two ways through it and both work. The first is asking about the service rather than the problem, so the customer can write about the technician being on time and thorough without ever naming what was in the roof.

The second is knowing which customers do not have the problem at all. Pre-purchase inspections, annual termite checks, landlords and real estate agents carry no embarrassment whatsoever, and they are the easiest reviews in the trade.

Who will actually write one

• Preventative and annual customers.

  An inspection is sensible rather than shameful, and they say so happily.

• Landlords and property managers.

  It is a business decision about a property they do not live in.

• Commercial food premises.

  Compliance work, and they are proud of passing.

• Termite inspections before a purchase.

  A good outcome about a house they were buying anyway.

Unlike almost every other trade, the result is not visible when the technician leaves. A treatment works over days or weeks, and a customer asked on the day genuinely does not know yet whether to be pleased.

This changes the timing completely. Asking as the van pulls away gets a review about a polite technician, which is fine but weak. Asking a fortnight later gets a review saying the problem is gone, which is the one that sells.

It also means a two-week follow-up is worth doing for its own sake, review or not. It catches the small number of treatments that did not take, before the customer decides you are useless and says so publicly.

That follow-up is the single highest-value habit in the trade, and it produces the review as a side effect of good service rather than as a marketing task.

Why the delay works here

• The customer has evidence.

  Two weeks of nothing in the kitchen is a fact they can write down.

• You catch the failures first.

  A callback before a complaint is the difference between a five star and a one star.

• The relief has settled into confidence.

  Which is what the next reader is actually buying.

A restaurant, a food manufacturer or an aged care facility needs pest control for compliance, with documentation an auditor will read. They are not embarrassed, they are organised, and they will review you if asked.

What they value has nothing to do with what a homeowner values. It is paperwork on time, a technician who does not walk through a kitchen during service, and a report that stands up in an audit.

Those reviews are enormously valuable on a profile because they change what kind of enquiry comes in. Two reviews from food premises make a commercial buyer take the business seriously in a way that fifty domestic reviews cannot.

They also last. A commercial contract is annual and quiet, so the review sits there working for years while the business gets on with it.

What a commercial client will say

• The reports arrive when they should.

  The thing auditors ask for and the thing most contractors are late with.

• The technician works around service.

  Early, late, and out of the way.

• Nothing has come back.

  The whole point, stated plainly.

A message about a fortnight after a domestic treatment, worded around the service rather than the problem, with a link that opens the review box in one tap, plus a deliberate annual ask of the commercial and preventative clients.

The two weeks is the whole difference. It is late enough for the customer to know it worked, early enough that they remember who did it, and it doubles as the check-in that stops a failed treatment becoming a public complaint.

The wording has to give them a way to write it without naming the problem. Asking how the technician was and whether the visit was on time gives the customer a review they are comfortable putting their name to.

And it has to be automatic, because a pest technician doing six jobs a day is not going to set a reminder for a fortnight's time for each of them.

What the ask has to do

• Go out about a fortnight later.

  When the customer knows, and before they forget you.

• Ask about the service, not the pest.

  So a customer can write one without a public confession.

• Catch the failures on the way.

  The same message flushes out the treatments that need a second visit.