Google review NFC cards for plumbers, electricians and builders, handed over at sign off

The strongest two minutes of any job come once you have finished and tidied and the customer is stood looking at the work. The boiler is firing, the sockets are live, the fence is straight. They are relieved, and that wears off fast once your van is off the drive.

Fold the ask into the handover instead of bolting it on the end. Show them the isolation valve, show them where the certificate is, show them the timer, then get the card out in the same breath. Never ask while you are still working. Nobody leaves a Google review for work they cannot see finished.

• When you run the appliance up and show it working
• When you hand over the certificate or the test paperwork
• On the walk round at the end, stood in front of the job
• Once payment is sorted and nothing is left hanging

You come down out of a loft sweating, hands black, and asking a favour feels like one thing too many, so it gets skipped.

Say it once, while you are carrying the tools back out to the van. “This is how people find me” is true, it is one sentence, and people understand it straight away. If they say they will do it later, believe them and get going.

Hand the card to everybody, including the job that went sideways and the customer who queried the bill. Never steer what they write, and keep money out of it: no tenner off the invoice for a Google review. One honest line about you turning up when you said you would is worth more than a page of glowing sentences.

Out of hours is different. Water through a ceiling at ten at night, no heating with a baby in the house, lights off across a whole flat. When you sort it the relief is enormous, and relief is what gets written down.

Ask on the night while it is still raw. If you have only made it safe and you are back next week for the proper repair, the callout is still the moment to use, because that is the story they will tell.

One bit of care. Keep the card apart from the callout rate: settle the invoice first, then hand it over with the same line you use on every job.

A Google review card in the lead engineer's bag is not a card the other two have, so the other two never ask. Give one to every person who finishes work in front of a customer, and keep a spare in each van. On your own in one van, keep three: one in the work bag or toolbox, one in the certificate folder and the spare. A firm with three vans and five on the tools wants five for the hands, three van spares and two or three for the office, so ten or eleven. If you leave cards behind with the paperwork rather than taking them back to the van, every job costs you a card, so start with ten.

With more than one van, decide whether every card points at one Google listing or at the branch listing for the area that van covers. One listing means every van carries the same Google review NFC card and the whole batch can be written in one go. Separate listings mean writing each depot's batch on its own and keeping it in that depot's vans.

Subbies are the awkward one. Somebody finishing a job under your name is a review for your page, but they may want their own. Hand them one of yours for work done in your name. Our Google review NFC cards come blank unless you ask, so you can write the whole batch at the kitchen table on a Sunday night, under a minute a card with any NFC phone. If you would rather not, we programme yours before they ship.