The contractor outranking you is just better at asking.
Automated review request software
They're not better at the trade. They ask every single customer, a few days after the job, while it's still fresh, and they never forget. That part is software, and it's probably the highest-leverage thing a local contractor can fix.
- One module, $950
- Fixed price, in writing
- Yours, including the code
Reviews are the local search battle.
For a contractor, the map results are the search results. And what decides who shows up in them isn't how clever your website copy is.
Two things drive the local pack: how many reviews you have, and how recently they arrived. A business with sixty reviews where the newest is from two years ago looks abandoned. One with twenty where three landed this month looks busy, and busy is what a homeowner is trying to find out.
The second thing reviews do is close the sale after the search. Your quote is $400 more than the other one. The homeowner reads eleven recent reviews saying you turned up when you said you would and cleaned up after yourself. That's the $400, right there.
And almost every happy customer will leave one if asked. They just never get asked, because you finished the job, got paid, and moved to the next one — which is exactly what you should have been doing.
Ask every time, at the right moment, in your voice.
A job gets marked done
However you already do it: the invoice is paid, a box is ticked. No new process to remember and nothing extra to log.
It waits a few days
Long enough that the mess is gone and the thing is working. Short enough that they still remember your name. Usually two to four days, and it's yours to set.
A short message goes out
In your words, not a template's. One link, one ask, no paragraph about how much your business values feedback.
One reminder, then nothing
People mean to and forget. One nudge recovers a lot of them. Two makes you the business that nags, so there isn't a second.
You see who was asked
Every finished job, whether the request went, and whether a review appeared. The gap between those numbers is the thing worth watching.
What it doesn't do. It doesn't filter out unhappy customers before asking, and I won't build it that way. Gating reviews so only the happy ones get the link is against the platforms' rules and it's the kind of thing that ends a local business's listing.
Some trades feel this one more than others.
Roofing
Because the customer was nervous and it went fine, which makes roofing reviews unusually persuasive.
What I'd build first for roofing →
Plumbing
Because they called you in a panic and you turned up, and that is the review that converts the next panicking person.
What I'd build first for plumbing →
$950 as one module.
On its own, built properly, working by itself. If you want it alongside one or two of the others that's $1,950, and the whole connected Back Office is from $2,995. Start wherever the pain is and add later, or don't.
Half up front to book, half on launch, agreed in writing before anything starts. You own the code and the data whichever step you stop at.
Not sure this is the one to build first?
That's what the audit is for. Send me what you pay for every month and I'll write back with what's worth replacing and which single thing I'd build first, with a fixed number on it.