Customer feedback form and review request messages: ask everyone the same way, and stay inside the Fair Trading Act.
A one-page feedback form, then the text, email, one reminder and the public reply to a bad review, with the rules that keep review requests legal. Free, no email required.
How do you ask customers for reviews without breaking the rules?
Ask after the follow-up call, not on the day, and ask every customer, not only the happy ones. One text or email with the link, one reminder a week later, then stop. Never offer a discount or gift for a review, never write or edit one for a customer, never post as staff, and never hide the bad ones on your own site: the Fair Trading Act 1986 treats all of that as misleading conduct and the Commerce Commission has prosecuted businesses for it. Reply to every review, including the bad ones, within two working days. Across 20,286 publicly posted NZ trade reviews, 53 to 64% of positive reviews already use referral language (‘would recommend’, ‘will use again’). Those customers are telling you they would review you. Most are never asked.
The job this document is doing.
- —Reviews are only requested from customers who seemed happy, so the profile has nine reviews from 2023
- —A $20 voucher for a review, which is the example regulators use of what not to do
- —Three ‘quick reminder’ messages saying nothing new
- —A one-star review sits unanswered for a year and does more damage than the job did
Open it and use it today.
- 01Feedback form: six rated lines (punctuality, explanation, quality, tidiness, communication, invoice accuracy), two open questions, consent to quote, optional contact
- 02The rules box: ask everyone, no incentives, no editing, no staff reviews, no hiding, reply to all
- 03Text, email, single reminder, and a public reply to a negative review
- 04Where to send them: one Google link, at most one other platform, and a log so nobody is asked twice
Free to use and adapt for your own business. Not legal advice: check contract terms against your own terms of trade and, where it matters, with a lawyer.
The law behind it. Fair Trading Act 1986 (misleading and deceptive conduct) and Commerce Commission guidance on online reviews. Checked on comcom.govt.nz and legislation.govt.nz on 9 October 2026.
Why this document, and not another one.
| Trade | Referral language in positive reviews | Repeat-use language | Politeness praised |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plumbers | 53.4% | 40.2% | 74.2% |
| Electricians | 54.7% | 42.5% | 74.0% |
| Painters | 63.9% | 80.5% |
From 20,286 publicly posted reviews of 369 NZ electricians, plumbers and painters, collected August 2026. Positive reviews score 80 or more out of 100. Negative reviews score under 50 on any dimension; those samples are small (56 to 167 reviews), so negative-review figures are rounded and reported as rank order, not precision. Full corpus, method and thresholds: the trades methodology page. Full findings: the trades research study.
The questions this document answers, in full.
How to Ask Customers for Reviews (Trades, NZ): When, How, What to Say
Read the answer →How to Handle a Bad Review as a Tradie (Without Making It Worse)
Read the answer →Use it alongside
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