Customers loved your work. Why not get them to say it online?
Well, there’s a slight hitch. Getting people to share their thoughts can be challenging, especially if you wait too long to request feedback or you're too insistent and your messaging sounds desperate.
Requesting plumbing testimonials without sounding awkward requires finesse, which is exactly what this guide will explore.
Discover:
Why testimonials are important for plumbers
Where to collect plumber testimonials from
What formats plumbing testimonials can adopt
The best practices for requesting testimonials
How to use testimonials in marketing
Bonus testimonial request template
From timing to tone, learn how to turn customer testimonials into persuasive tools that build credibility and trust.
What Are Plumbing Testimonials?
Plumbing testimonials are short reviews from satisfied customers who want to share the positive experience they’ve had with a plumbing company. In general, these testimonials describe what work was done, how the plumbing team tackled it, and why the customer would recommend the company.
While you might dismiss testimonials as unimportant, they actually help build trust with potential customers who are looking for plumbing services. A good testimonial highlights the plumber’s skill and shows the personal care and professionalism behind your service.
Whether written or recorded, testimonials serve as proof that your company delivers on its promise.
Let’s explore testimonials’ importance in greater depth.
Why Are Testimonials Important for Plumbers?
In service-based industries like plumbing, customer trust is everything. Customers aren’t just choosing a product; they’re letting a stranger into their home and paying for services they might not fully understand.
Testimonials put them at ease and reduce uncertainty by showing that others in similar situations had positive, stress-free experiences with your services.
Good reviews act as social proof, validating your reputation and making new customers feel confident in their choices.
Build trust with new customers
When people look for plumbing services, they often need them urgently, like when a pipe bursts in the middle of the night or a water heater freezes on a cold winter morning.
Even if it’s not an emergency, customers want to hire someone reliable.
Testimonials provide that reassurance as people trust a neighbor’s review far more than any ad. When potential customers read a genuine review, they hear the relief and satisfaction of homeowners who faced the same panic. In fact, it builds confidence in your business, often before the prospects even compare quotes or credentials.
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Improve online reputation and SEO
Not only do testimonials build trust, but they also boost visibility on Google, Yelp, Angi, or other local directories. When customers leave reviews on any of these platforms, they signal to search engines that your business is reliable and trustworthy.
Frequent positive reviews improve your local SEO which helps you rank higher in search results for keywords such as ‘emergency plumbing near me’ and appear more prominently in map packs.
In short, more testimonials mean more eyes on your business and more calls.
Help close more sales
Your customers might be hesitant to close the deal, and a good testimonial can be the tipping point. When you showcase reviews from people with similar issues, especially during a sales call, it reinforces your credibility and alleviates last-minute doubts.
A genuine, well-placed quote can speak louder than any pitch and help sway customer decisions in the right direction.
Increase customer lifetime value
Customers who take the time to leave a thorough testimonial strengthen their connection to your brand. This sense of loyalty often leads to repeat business (calling you again for plumbing needs) and word-of-mouth referrals (recommending your services to friends and family).
Overall, a simple request for a review can turn one job into many.
Next, let’s see where to collect these testimonials.
Where to Find Plumber Testimonials
You want to know the secret to getting great testimonials? It all starts with knowing where to look for them. Many customers are more than willing to share their experience if you make it easy and natural for them to do so.
Here’s a list of the perfect places for collecting plumber reviews.
Let’s explore them in more detail.
Google reviews
Everyone trusts a Google review. They’re the most visible and trusted source of customer feedback and probably the first place a customer checks. Plus, they play a crucial role in local SEO, as positive reviews boost your search rankings and make your plumbing company stand out in local results.
To keep track of your reviews, use a tool like ServiceTitan. With its Reputation Management feature, you can pull reviews from across the web into one easy-to-use dashboard.
This way, it’s easier to track new reviews, respond promptly to them, and highlight the most powerful testimonials that you can later share on social media or your website.
Facebook recommendations
Another easy way to collect testimonials is via Facebook recommendations from your social followers. They’re also great for building engagement within your local community and connecting with potential customers who already follow your business.
Once again, ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management comes to the rescue.
Thanks to this feature, plumbing businesses can monitor brand mentions and customer comments across multiple platforms—including Facebook—making it easy to spot positive feedback and turn it into valuable testimonies they can use.
Email surveys or post-job follow-ups
Email surveys and post-job follow-ups provide a direct and convenient way to gather testimonials right after a successful job. This method feels the most natural because you ask for feedback when customers are most willing to share their experience and while it’s still fresh in their minds.
But it can be challenging to remember who you’ve sent an email to or who’s yet to reply. ServiceTitan’s Job Completion Surveys and Customer Notification feature solves that problem by automatically scheduling review request emails and texts after each job.
This feature allows you to collect valuable feedback effortlessly by capturing responses as soon as the project is done to ensure honest, detailed, and timely testimonials.
Third-party review sites
Think of sites like Nextdoor, Angi, and Better Business Bureau (BBB)—trusted, neutral platforms where customers feel safe leaving honest reviews. Plumbers can mine these places for positive quotes and request permission to feature them as testimonials on their website or in marketing materials.
It’s a good idea to include these reviews because they’re perceived as unbiased and authentic, bringing credibility to your business.
Remember Reputation Management?
With this feature, you can track and gather reviews from multiple platforms — even third-party review sites — in one place. No need to switch between different websites or platforms anymore!
Direct client outreach
Sometimes, the direct and personal approach is best.
Reaching out to clients, whether by phone, text, or in person, is an effective way to gather testimonials. It works best with long-term clients who’ve always had a positive experience with your plumbing service.
It shows you care about their thoughts and value their feelings, resulting in detailed and heartfelt reviews that resonate with future customers.
Now that you know how to collect plumbing testimonials, let’s discuss the formats they can come in.
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What Formats Can Plumbing Testimonials Adopt?
When you hear ‘testimonial,’ the first thing that comes to mind is a piece of text. But the truth is, not all reviews are written. They come in various formats:
Text testimonials: The most common form of testimonial, they’re easy to collect through direct messages, emails, or post-job surveys. Usually, they’re just a few well-chosen sentences from a satisfied customer.
Video testimonials: The most personal and compelling of reviews, they offer a more personal, authentic touch to your brand. Seeing and hearing real people speak positively about your work builds trust fast, especially if you share them on your website or social media pages.
Star ratings with comments: Similar to those on Google and Yelp, these bite-sized reviews are easy to scan and provide quick validation, helping future customers decide on the spot.
Social media screenshots: Another great, quick option, you can share these types of testimonials as an image post, adding credibility and personality to your brand.
Before/after visuals + testimonial quote: Pairing a customer’s review with real project results and footage creates powerful social proof, which is especially important for plumbing jobs. They’re ideal for case studies or service pages.
Let’s now go over tips and tricks for requesting reviews from your clients.
Best Practices for Requesting Plumbing Testimonials
Asking for testimonials can sometimes feel awkward; maybe you don’t want to bother your clients or you’re waiting for the right time.
Whether you’re following up after a big repair or wrapping up a long-term project, how you ask for a request can make all the difference.
In this section, we’ll cover best practices that help you get better responses without sounding salesy or pushy.
1. Ask at the right time
Requesting a testimonial requires good timing. The best moment to ask is right after a successful job, especially when the customer expresses satisfaction or relief that their problem was solved.
Why? Because this is when their experience feels fresh and positive, making them more likely to respond with genuine feedback.
ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro helps automate testimonial requests using job-completion triggers. This ensures your request goes out at the ideal time without you having to remember or manually follow up.
2. Make it easy for the customer
Make the feedback process as simple as possible by including direct links to your review platforms, offering clear instructions, or even providing a short template.
This will reduce friction, making customers more likely to follow through.
With ServiceTitan’s Customer Notifications, you can automatically send a follow-up text or email after every job, complete with a link to the page where they can leave the review.
It’s fast and seamless, and makes it effortless for customers to share their positive experiences with you.
3. Personalize the request
When you see a generic message like ‘Please leave us a review,’ you don’t quite feel compelled to do so. But when it says, “[name], your feedback matters to us, please give us your thoughts,” that’s another story.
A tailored message—using the customer’s name or mentioning the specific job—feels more personal.
This human touch shows you remember them and care about their experience, making them more likely to respond.
4. Use automation to save time
Manually sending testimonial requests after every single job is tedious and time-consuming. Good news is, you can automate the process with tools like ServiceTitan’s Email Campaigns.
This feature lets you set up review request emails or SMS texts that trigger automatically after a job is done or a customer leaves a high satisfaction rating.
You don’t have to write the email from scratch. Choose one of ServiceTitan’s templates to speed up the process even further.
Ilene Hackett, marketing specialist at Roto-Rooter, had this to add:
“The stock templates were OK. I definitely tweaked, changed, and added stuff, but it’s always nice to just start with a template and not have to build one from scratch. I wanted to put my own brand spin on it.”
Paired with set-and-forget automation, this feature lets you gather testimonials effortlessly.
5. Follow up respectfully if they don’t respond
You might send a timely, well-crafted request and people still might not respond. That’s fine — sometimes, people are too busy to respond right away or they completely forget. A single, polite follow-up is perfectly acceptable and that gentle reminder can be all it takes.
Keep it short, friendly, and respectful, like ‘Just checking in—your feedback means a lot to us!’ If you find it appropriate, you can also offer a small incentive, such as a discount on future services or a giveaway entry.
If this doesn’t prompt a response, it's best not to push it. Respect their space and move on; maybe they’ll eventually find their way back to you.
Let’s now put these practices into action and create a template for an effective review request.
Testimonial Request Email Template
To make things easier for you, we’ve created a customizable, ready-to-send template you can use to request testimonials after each job.
Grab it 👉 here.
Your request should have the following sections:
Friendly greeting: Make your message personal by adding the client’s name. Open with a warm tone to set a positive atmosphere.
Reference the recent service: Remind the customer of what was done and when; highly useful for reinforcing context.
CTA to leave a short testimonial: Clearly state the purpose of the email and provide a direct link to the survey. The easier the process, the more likely your customers will answer.
Thank-you message: Show appreciation at the end of the message for taking their time. It will make customers feel valued and appreciated.
Once again, ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro is a useful tool for plumbing contractors who want to send branded testimonial-request emails at scale.
With ServiceTitan’s smart lists and segmentation, you ensure the right message goes to the right people at the right time. You can group clients based on specific behaviors, like past jobs or equipment type, and automatically send targeted emails relevant to their needs.
How to Use Plumber Testimonials in Marketing
You’ve sent your requests and received tons of good testimonials: what do you do with them? Testimonials aren’t just nice words about your company; they’re a tool for building trust and influencing potential customers.
Here’s how to put them to good use across your marketing channels:
Website content: Feature these testimonials on your homepage, service page, landing pages, or dedicated testimonials page.
Social media: Video testimonials, for example, do great on social media like Instagram or YouTube, adding credibility to your brand. They’re also easy for followers to share and engage with.
Email campaigns: Incorporate testimonials into your newsletters and drip campaigns as it helps customers who are still on the fence to make a choice.
Sales materials: Proposals, estimates, or follow-ups could all benefit from testimonials. When a lead sees a satisfied customer who had a similar issue, they’re more confident your company will be able to solve their own problem.
Google and directory listings: Highlight great reviews on your Google Business Profile to strengthen your online presence.
Turn Satisfied Clients Into Powerful Marketing Assets
Collecting plumbing testimonials doesn’t have to be a chore.
With ServiceTitan Marketing Pro, you’ll automate the entire process and make it easier for clients to leave their testimonials. By always asking for requests at the right time, it’s easy to build trust, improve your reputation, and turn satisfied clients into brand advocates.
Strategically using plumbing testimonials across your marketing means turning positive feedback into real growth for your business.
ServiceTitan is an all-in-one solution built for home services businesses. It helps you target the right customers with the right messages, whether it’s reminding homeowners of annual inspections or promoting water heater upgrades. As a result, you stay top-of-mind and turn routine jobs into long-term revenue.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Discover the answer to some of the most common questions plumbers ask about testimonials.
How can plumbing testimonials influence customer trust?
Well-made testimonials reinforce trust in multiple ways:
Providing immediate social proof
Demonstrating your expertise
Showing you take accountability for mistakes by responding to negative feedback
How can plumbing testimonials be displayed on a website?
You can display testimonials on your website in a few practical ways:
Homepage highlight carousel
Job-specific testimonials on service pages
Sticky or pop-out quote
Visual before-and-after stories
Video testimonials or embedded review clips
Star rating snippets or trust badges
What makes a plumbing testimonial credible?
Here’s what gives a testimonial credibility:
Specific details (‘Called for leaking water heater and they replaced everything,’ not just ‘Great service!’)
Real names and locations
Natural, imperfect language (e.g., ‘Honestly, I didn’t think anyone would come out on a Sunday.’)
Matching customer pain points
Verifiable source (pulled from Google, Yelp, etc.)
What are the risks of using fake plumbing testimonials?
Not only are fake plumbing testimonials just plain wrong, there are also practical reasons why you shouldn’t resort to them:
Regulatory fines and legal action
Platform penalties (e.g., Google blocks fake reviews and even suspends business profiles)
SEO and ad fallout
Reputation damage
ServiceTitan Plumbing Software
ServiceTitan is a comprehensive plumbing business software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and achieve growth. Our award-winning, cloud-based platform is trusted by more than 100,000+ contractors across the country.