Google reviews and reputation:
building a process in an acquired SME
Two brands, deactivated GMB accounts, ratings below 4, and no process for responding to reviews. How we rebuilt online reputation from the ground up and what changed in the first month of the campaign.
The situation at acquisition
The company operated two brands offering digital services to local businesses across France. Both had been acquired through a search fund. When the new CEO took over, one of the first things to surface was the state of the Google My Business accounts: both had ratings below 4.0 and one had been deactivated entirely because the previous management had decided it was better to be invisible on Google than to be visibly poorly rated.
There was no process for collecting reviews, no guidelines for responding to them, and no monitoring of what clients were saying publicly. Negative reviews sat unanswered. The sales team had no incentive to ask satisfied clients for feedback. The company was selling online visibility to thousands of SMEs while being largely invisible and poorly represented on its own Google profile.
No response process
Negative reviews went unanswered for weeks or permanently. There were no templates, no guidelines, no escalation path for serious complaints.
Sales team not involved
Happy clients existed but were never asked for a review. The sales team had no process, no prompt, and no incentive to collect feedback at the right moment.
What the diagnosis revealed
We audited both GMB accounts and the full review history across Google and Trustpilot. The pattern was consistent: a large volume of satisfied clients who had never been asked for a review, a smaller number of unhappy clients who had taken the initiative to post publicly, and a complete absence of any company response.
The reputation problem was not primarily a product problem. Many of the negative reviews reflected miscommunication during the sales process or unmet expectations that could have been addressed directly. The satisfied majority had simply never been asked to say anything publicly. The online rating did not reflect the reality of the client base.
The approach was not to manufacture a false image. It was to give satisfied clients a simple, low-friction way to share feedback they were willing to give anyway, while building a structured process to handle unhappy clients before they reached a public forum. The goal was to make the visible rating reflect the actual experience of the majority of clients.
What was built
Four workstreams ran in parallel from the start, with the monitoring process continuing beyond the initial campaign.
GMB account reactivation and brand image update
Both GMB accounts were reactivated and fully updated: brand visuals, service descriptions, location data, opening hours, and photography. The accounts were brought in line with the updated brand identity so that the first impression on Google reflected where the company was heading, not where it had been.
Review response process and AI-assisted templates
A structured response process was built for both positive and negative reviews. AI-assisted response templates were created for the client support team, covering the most common review types with a clear structure: acknowledge, personalise, address the specific point raised, invite direct contact where needed. All reviews were to be answered within 24 hours. For serious complaints involving contract or delivery disputes, an escalation path was defined involving the sales team directly, with the goal of resolving the issue privately and where possible converting a negative review into a retraction.
Sales team incentivisation campaign
A three-month internal campaign was launched to activate the sales team as the primary driver of review collection. Sales team members were given a simple process: identify satisfied clients at the right moment in the relationship, send a direct review request, track it in the CRM. A prize structure was introduced to reward the sales team members who collected the most reviews over the campaign period. The focus was on timing, asking clients when they had just had a positive interaction, not at random.
Monitoring and direct client engagement
Google Alerts were set up for both brands. Every incoming review was logged in the CRM and tagged. Negative reviews triggered an automatic notification to the client support team and, where relevant, to the account’s sales team member. The process meant that an unhappy client posting a review was no longer simply a reputational event but an opportunity to re-engage, address the issue, and in some cases retain a client who might otherwise have churned quietly.
What changed
Reviews collected in the first month of the campaign, with an average rating of 4.7
GMB rating sustained after reactivation, up from below 4.0 with no active review process
Maximum response time for all incoming reviews, positive and negative, across both brands
Beyond the rating, the reactivated GMB accounts restored the company’s visibility on Google Maps. Clients searching for the company by name now found an updated, professional profile. Negative reviews that had previously gone unanswered now received a structured, personalised response within 24 hours, which changed the signal those reviews sent to prospective clients reading them.
The escalation process also had a direct effect on retention. Several clients who had posted negative reviews were contacted by the sales team, the underlying issue was resolved, and in some cases the review was retracted or updated. An unhappy client who felt heard was more likely to stay than one whose complaint disappeared into silence.
A less visible but equally important outcome was what the reviews revealed about the business itself. Recurring themes in negative feedback pointed to specific gaps in the sales process and onboarding experience. That information, systematically collected for the first time, gave the CEO something concrete to act on beyond the rating. Client feedback, when there is a process to capture and read it, becomes an operational tool.
Client feedback is one of the most valuable things you will find in an acquired SME. Build a process to capture it early.
Building a process to capture that feedback early, through reviews, satisfaction surveys, or direct conversations, gives you something no financial model or due diligence report can: an unfiltered view of what the business actually delivers from the client’s perspective. That visibility is the foundation of retention. If you already have a CRM in place to track client interactions, connecting it to a feedback loop is a natural next step. Read how we built a CRM and communication system from scratch in an acquired SME.