When Exactly Should You Ask for a Review?

The same message, to the same customer, in the same words — sent at one moment it earns a review, sent at another it is ignored. The difference is not the wording. It is the distance between the request and the peak of satisfaction.

The one rule behind everything else

Satisfaction is not flat. It peaks, then decays. And the peak is not always the moment service ends.

In a restaurant it is during the meal or minutes after. In a clinic it is once the patient actually feels better — possibly days later. In a salon it is when the client sees the result in her own mirror at home, not the salon's. For an online store it is after the product has been used, not when it arrived.

Ask yourself: when does my customer know this worked? That is your moment — not the moment they paid.

Timing by business type

Restaurants and cafes — with the bill, or within an hour of leaving. A meal fades fast, and waiting a day loses the detail that makes a review worth reading.

Salons and beauty — after one to two days. The result needs to be tested outside the salon, and the client needs to hear a comment from someone.

Clinics — two days to a week after the appointment, depending on the treatment. Asking on the way out arrives before the patient feels any difference.

Hotels — checkout day or the day after. Wait longer and the whole trip blurs together, making the stay hard to isolate.

Online stores — three to five days after delivery. Long enough to use the product, short enough that the purchase is still present.

Professional services — on delivery of the result, or at the first tangible outcome if the engagement runs long.

Time of day

These differences are smaller than the day-level ones, but real:

• Avoid after 10pm. A polite message at the wrong hour reads as an intrusion.
• Avoid the working peak — Sunday morning in the Gulf, where it gets buried.
• Usually best: afternoon or early evening, when people are calmer.

And if you are sending days after the service, pick a working day rather than a weekend — a Thursday evening request disappears.

When never to ask

Right after a complaint, even a resolved one. Leave space, then ask on a subsequent visit if one comes. Asking immediately after a fix looks like buying silence.

Before the service is finished. Asking mid-way puts the customer on the spot and turns the answer into politeness rather than opinion.

Only from the happy ones. If you are choosing timing based on who looked pleased, you are filtering opinions rather than collecting them — that is review gating and it breaches Google's policy. The full boundary is in asking for reviews without breaking the rules.

Finding your own timing

The guidance above is a starting point, not a fact. Test two timings on two similarly sized groups — one an hour after, one two days after — for a fortnight, and compare.

The answer varies by business, by city, and by customer type. Your timing is discovered, not looked up, and the gap between a good one and a poor one is wider than most owners expect.

The short version

Ask when your customer knows it worked — not when you finished. Send once, remind once, and treat everyone the same. Ready wording is in the WhatsApp templates.

And once the review lands, Raddly drafts the reply in the reviewer's own dialect and publishes it after you approve — so your time stays on the service itself.