kept seeing the same pattern with local businesses. a handful of reviews from years ago, nothing recent, even though customers were clearly happy. the problem wasn't satisfaction, it was that nobody asked at the moment it mattered.

built this in n8n:

**trigger:** webhook fires when a job/order status flips to "complete" in the CRM. no manual step, no one has to remember to send anything.

**delay node:** short wait before the message goes out. asking the second something's marked done can feel automated and cold. asking an hour or two later, once the customer's actually used or received whatever they paid for, reads more natural.

**message:** SMS with a direct link straight to the google review box, not the business's homepage or a review "hub" with five options to click through. one tap, done.

**dedup check:** a lookup against a small store of already-messaged customer IDs so nobody gets hit twice if a status gets flipped back and forth by accident.

that's basically it. no AI writing the messages, no fancy logic. the whole thing works because it removes the two things that kill review requests: bad timing and friction.

what I didn't expect: it's less about the volume of reviews and more about the frequency staying steady. a business that gets reviews every week reads differently to google than one that got 30 in a single month three years ago and nothing since.

happy to share the workflow json if anyone wants to poke at it or improve on the dedup logic, that part still feels a little hacky.

built a review-request automation in n8n, sharing the actual workflow since "I built a thing" posts without details are useless