I'm going to be straight with you: most agencies hand over a GoHighLevel account and never touch the Reputation Management tab. They set up the pipeline, build a couple of automations, maybe configure a calendar — and that's it. Reviews are left as a "the client will handle it" item that nobody handles.
I get it. Reputation management feels like one more thing to set up, and it's not as flashy as a full funnel build. But here's the thing: it's one of the highest-ROI features in GHL, and skipping it is leaving your client (and your retention) on the table.
This is the setup guide I wish I'd had when I started. Let's do it right.
What GHL's Reputation Management Actually Does
Before we configure anything, let's be clear on what the feature covers — because "reputation management" sounds broad.
Inside GHL, Reputation Management handles three things:
1. Review Requests via SMS and Email
GHL can automatically send a review request to a contact after a trigger — a completed job, a closed opportunity, a specific tag applied. The request goes out via SMS, email, or both, with a direct link to your client's Google or Facebook review page. No logging in, no navigating. One tap, leave a review.
2. Review Monitoring
Once connected to Google Business Profile and/or Facebook, GHL pulls in new reviews and displays them inside the platform. Your client can see their review feed, track star ratings, and respond to reviews — all without leaving GHL.
3. Reporting
GHL tracks review volume over time, average star rating, and response rates. This becomes genuinely useful data when you're doing monthly reporting for clients, which I'll get into at the end.
That's the feature set. It's not complicated — but there are setup steps that bite people, so let's walk through them in order.
Step 1: Connect Google Business Profile
Go to Reputation → Settings inside the subaccount. You'll see the option to connect Google Business Profile and Facebook.
For Google: you'll authenticate via the client's Google account. A few things to get right here before you click:
- Use the Google account that actually owns the GBP listing. This sounds obvious, but I've seen agencies connect their own Google account by mistake, especially when doing setup on behalf of a client. The auth prompt will pop up, and if you're logged in as yourself, you'll connect the wrong account. Log in as the client first or use an incognito window where you authenticate as them.
- Make sure the GBP listing is verified. GHL cannot connect to an unverified listing. If the client's profile is pending verification, pause here and get that resolved first.
- If the client has multiple locations, you'll need to select the correct one during the connection flow. Don't assume GHL defaults to the right one — check it.
Once connected, GHL will start pulling in existing reviews within a few minutes. Your client's historical review data will populate the feed.
For Facebook: the process is similar — authenticate via Facebook, select the correct Page, grant the required permissions. The main gotcha is that the Facebook account used must have admin access to the Page. A lot of small business owners have this tangled (they created the Page under a personal account they no longer use, or an employee has admin access and the owner doesn't). Untangle that before the GHL setup call, not during it.
Step 2: Set Up Review Request Templates
Go to Reputation → Review Requests. You'll create the message templates that get sent when a review request is triggered.
A few principles I follow:
Keep it short. One sentence of context ("You recently worked with [Business Name]"), one sentence of ask ("We'd love to hear about your experience"), one link. That's it. The instinct is to write something warm and lengthy — resist it. Short messages get more clicks.
Personalize with custom values. At minimum, include the contact's first name ({{contact.first_name}}). If your client's business has a relevant field — like a technician name or service date — use it. Specificity makes the message feel less like a blast.
Test your merge fields. Send a test to yourself before activating any automation. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen a review request go out as "Hi {{contact.first_name}}, thanks for choosing..." because someone skipped the test send.
Offer both SMS and email. SMS gets better open rates (obviously), but some contacts prefer email. Send both if you can — stagger them by an hour or two so it doesn't feel spammy.
For the review link itself: GHL will generate a direct link to the Google or Facebook review form based on your connected account. Double-check that this link actually opens the review form. Sometimes it opens the GBP listing instead of the write-a-review prompt — especially on mobile. Test on both desktop and mobile.
Step 3: Configure Timing and Automation
This is where most of the actual strategy lives.
When to trigger the request:
The best timing is specific to the business type, but as a rule of thumb:
- Service businesses (plumbers, HVAC, cleaners, contractors): send within 2–4 hours of job completion, while the experience is fresh.
- Healthcare or wellness: send 24–48 hours after the appointment, once the client has had a moment to reflect.
- Retail or e-commerce: send 3–5 days after confirmed delivery.
- Restaurants or quick-service: same day, within a couple of hours.
Don't send too soon (the job isn't fully done yet in the client's mind) and don't send too late (they've forgotten you exist).
How to trigger it in GHL:
You have a few options — a workflow trigger, a manual send from a contact record, or a bulk send. For most clients, I set up a workflow:
- Trigger: opportunity stage moved to "Won" (or whatever your client's closed stage is called)
- Wait: the appropriate delay for their business type
- Filter: exclude contacts with a "do not review" tag (more on that in a moment)
- Action: Send Review Request
Make sure the workflow has a goal or filter to prevent the same contact from receiving multiple review requests. GHL doesn't automatically deduplicate these.
What to Watch Out For
This is the part that saves you from an uncomfortable client conversation at 8pm.
Sending to the wrong contacts. The biggest mistake I see: review requests going to leads who never became customers, or to contacts who had a bad experience. The automation doesn't know context — it only knows triggers. If an opportunity gets marked "Won" erroneously, or if your client stages deals differently than you set up, requests will go to the wrong people.
Fix this with a tag-based exclusion. Create a tag like "do not review request" and add a filter in your workflow so anyone with that tag is skipped. Coach your client to apply this tag to any contact where a review request would be inappropriate — refunded customers, complaints, contacts who explicitly asked not to be contacted.
Asking too soon. If the request goes out before the work is actually complete, you're inviting a bad review ("they asked me to review them but the job isn't even done"). Build in a delay that accounts for how your client's delivery actually works, not just when the deal is marked closed.
Not getting buy-in from the client. Review requests require the client's Google or Facebook credentials. They require the client to understand that these messages are going out under their name. Get them involved in the template language and the timing. If they find out after the fact that automated messages have been going to their customers, you have a trust problem even if the results are good.
Not having a response process. GHL shows your client their incoming reviews. But if they don't have a habit of responding to reviews, the feed just sits there. Set a reminder cadence — even a weekly 10-minute review check — and make it part of your onboarding. A business that responds to reviews (positive and negative) performs better in local search and looks more credible to prospects reading them.
How to Report on It for Clients
This is where Reputation Management goes from "nice feature" to "undeniable proof of value."
Every month, include a Reputation section in your client report:
- Review volume: total reviews this month vs. last month vs. 90-day average
- Average star rating: current rating and trend over time
- Review request send rate and open/click rate: how many requests went out, how many were opened, how many led to a review
- Response rate: what percentage of reviews got a response from the client
GHL's built-in Reputation reporting covers most of this. For clients who want a cleaner view, I export the data and build a simple one-page summary — total reviews acquired this month, rating trajectory, and a highlight quote from a five-star review. That last piece is a nice touch. Clients love seeing their own best reviews reflected back to them.
Over 90 days, you should be able to show measurable growth in review volume if the automation is working. That's a concrete, visible result that directly connects to the client's local SEO and conversion rate — and it keeps the conversation about your value well outside of "did you post on social this week."
The Real Reason Agencies Skip This
Setting up Reputation Management correctly takes maybe 90 minutes per client. The reason most agencies skip it isn't time — it's that it requires client credentials, client buy-in, and a client education conversation. It's more coordination than just building something in the backend and handing it over.
But those 90 minutes, and that coordination, are what separate an implementation that actually improves your client's business from one that just adds software to their stack.
Set it up. The clients who have it will thank you for it. The ones who don't have it will eventually wonder why their competitor down the street has four hundred Google reviews and they have eleven.