Asking For A Review Right After You Raised Your Price

You finally put your prices up. Took you a year to do it and you still felt sick sending the first invoice at the new number.

The job goes fine. Better than fine. And then you get to the part where you normally ask for the review, and you just do not do it.

Because the last thing that customer felt was the price. And asking them to go say something nice about you right after that feels like you are asking them to sign off on it.

I get it. But you are reading the moment wrong, and it is costing you the reviews you most need right now.

What is actually happening in their head

You think the price is sitting there in the front of their mind, hot, unresolved.

For most customers it is not. They already made peace with it when they said yes. The decision happened at the quote, not at the invoice. By the time the work is done they have moved on to whether the thing works.

The person who is still thinking about the price after the job is the person who did not get what they paid for. That is a different problem and no review ask is going to fix it.

So the awkwardness you are feeling is usually yours, not theirs. You are the one who is not sure about the new number yet.

The one real risk, and how to not walk into it

There is a version of this that goes badly, and it is worth naming so you can avoid it.

If you ask in the same breath as the money, you tie the two together. Invoice, then a review link underneath it. Card machine beeps, and while they are still looking at the screen you slide the tap card across.

Now you have made the review about the transaction. You handed them the bill and immediately asked for applause. Some people will do it anyway. The ones on the fence will feel handled, and a few of them will go write about the price because you just put it in front of them.

The fix is not to skip the ask. It is to move it off the money.

Ask at the result, not at the register

The moment you want is the one where the customer sees what they got.

The room is finished and they walk into it. The car pulls out and it does not make the noise any more. The site is live and they are clicking around it. The dog comes back looking like a different animal.

That is the peak. That is when the value is loudest and the number is quietest.

At the register, the number is the loudest thing in the room. You are competing with it. So do not ask there.

For a lot of businesses that means the ask stops being the last thing that happens and becomes the second to last. Show them the result, ask while they are looking at it, then handle the paperwork.

What to say when you know the price went up

You do not need to mention it. Really.

Bringing it up yourself is what makes it a thing. "I know we are more expensive now, but if you had a good experience" is a sentence that plants the exact doubt you were worried about.

Say the normal thing. Point at the result, ask them to say what happened.

Something like: "If this came out how you wanted, would you mind saying that in a Google review? Takes about a minute and it genuinely helps people find us."

If they bring the price up themselves, that is different, and it is actually good. Now you can answer it. What you say next is the whole game, and it is not a defense of the price. It is a description of what they got for it.

Higher prices change which reviews you need

Here is the part most people miss.

When you were cheap, your reviews only had to say you were fine. Cheap plus fine is an easy yes.

At a higher price, fine is not enough. A person about to spend real money is looking for proof that the extra money bought something specific. They want a review that says the guy showed up when he said he would, explained what he was doing, cleaned up after himself, and it has not moved since.

Those reviews come from the customers you served after the increase. Which means the moment you put your prices up is the moment you need new reviews the most, and it is exactly the moment most owners quietly stop asking.

Six months of that and your profile is full of people describing the old, cheaper version of your business. Then you wonder why the new price is a harder sell.

Do this

1. 1Move the ask off the invoice. Never in the same conversation as the payment.
2. 2Ask at the result. The walkthrough, the reveal, the handover, the first time it works.
3. 3Say the normal ask. Do not pre-apologize for your price.
4. 4If they raise the price themselves, answer it by describing what they got, then still ask.
5. 5Ask everyone after the increase, not just the ones who did not flinch. Filtering is against Google's rules anyway.
6. 6Read your last ten reviews. If they all describe the old version of your business, you have a freshness problem, not a price problem.
7. 7Give it three months of consistent asking before you decide the increase hurt you.

What it comes down to

A price increase does not make people stop saying good things about you. Asking at the wrong moment does.

The customers who pay more will tell a better story about you than the cheap ones ever did, because they were paying attention. They noticed the parts that justified it. You just have to catch them while they are looking at the result instead of at the total.

That works when the ask is one motion at the moment the job lands, not a text you remember to send three days later. A tap card in your pocket makes it a thing you do while you are standing there. It is at shop.optechsol.llc.

Charge more. Then let the people who paid it tell everybody why it was worth it.