Reputation Management in HighLevel

Updated: February 6, 2026  | 
Author: Bill Stilwell

This post covers what Reputation Management includes, how to connect review platforms, how the review dashboard works, how automated review request workflows are built, how to respond to reviews, and why consistent review management matters for local business visibility.

Reading time: about 7 minutes.

What Is Reputation Management in HighLevel?

Reputation Management in HighLevel is the feature set that handles the business’s online review presence – pulling reviews from Google and Facebook into a single dashboard, enabling review requests to be sent to customers via SMS or email, and allowing responses to be written and submitted without leaving HighLevel.

It connects to the Google Business Profile and Facebook Page that are already linked to the sub-account via the Integrations settings. Once connected, reviews from both platforms appear in the Reputation section alongside tools for requesting, monitoring, and responding to reviews.

Access it at Reputation in the sub-account navigation.

Why Reviews Matter for Local Businesses

For local service businesses, online reviews are one of the most significant factors in both local search visibility and prospect conversion. Google uses review count and average rating as ranking signals in the local pack – the map results that appear for local service searches.

A business with 200 five-star reviews consistently ranks higher than one with 12 reviews at the same rating.

Beyond ranking, reviews influence conversion. A prospect who finds two plumbing companies in local search and sees one has 4.9 stars with 180 reviews and one has 4.2 stars with 22 reviews has a strong signal about which is more established and trustworthy.

The higher-rated, higher-volume company wins that lead before anyone picks up the phone.

The practical implication: growing review count and maintaining rating is not a passive activity. Satisfied customers rarely leave reviews spontaneously.

Asking systematically – at the right moment, through the right channel – is what drives review volume. HighLevel’s Reputation Management makes that asking systematic and automated.

Connecting Google and Facebook

The Reputation Management feature requires connected platforms to function. Google reviews require a connected Google Business Profile.

Facebook reviews require a connected Facebook Page. Both are connected through the same integrations used for other HighLevel features.

In the sub-account, go to Settings, then Integrations. Connect the Google Business Profile via OAuth and the Facebook Page via OAuth.

Once connected, the Reputation section begins pulling in reviews from the connected profiles.

If the Google Business Profile is already connected for Google My Business Messaging or for the local SEO audit features, the same connection also enables the Reputation Management review functionality – no additional connection step is needed.

The Reputation Dashboard

The Reputation section dashboard shows the business’s current review standing at a glance. The overall star rating aggregates the scores from connected review platforms.

The total review count shows how many reviews exist across connected sources. The rating distribution shows how many reviews are at each star level – useful for understanding whether a lower-than-desired average is being pulled down by a cluster of 1-star reviews or is genuinely spread.

Below the overview, recent reviews appear in chronological order – showing the reviewer’s name, rating, review text, and response status. Reviews that have not been responded to are visually indicated so they can be prioritized.

Older reviews are accessible by scrolling or filtering the review list.

Sending Review Requests

Review requests can be sent manually from the Reputation section. Find the review request tool, select a contact from the CRM, choose the send channel (SMS or email), and send.

The message contains a direct link to the business’s Google review page.

The manual review request is useful for one-off sends – a business owner who wants to follow up with a specific recent customer, or an agency community manager who is doing a targeted review push for a client. For ongoing, consistent review collection, the automated workflow approach is more effective.

The review link in the request goes directly to the Google review interface – not to a landing page the customer has to navigate from. The customer taps the link and immediately sees the five-star rating selector and the text field to write a review.

Removing navigation friction between the request and the act of leaving a review directly improves response rates.

Automating Review Requests

The most effective implementation of review requests in HighLevel is through Workflow Builder automation – requests that fire automatically after specific trigger events rather than requiring a team member to remember to send them.

Common trigger events for review requests: appointment marked as completed, pipeline stage changed to “Job Completed,” invoice marked as paid, or a custom tag applied when a service is finished. The workflow fires after the trigger, adds a short wait period (30 minutes to a few hours), and sends the review request SMS or email.

Automated review requests ensure that every qualifying customer receives a request – not just the ones someone remembered to follow up with. Consistency is the difference between a business that accumulates 5 reviews per month and one that accumulates 50.

The request volume determines the review volume, and automation is what sustains the request volume without ongoing manual effort.

Timing the Request Right

When a review request arrives matters as much as whether it arrives at all. The best time to ask for a review is immediately after a positive experience – when the service is fresh, the outcome is satisfying, and the customer’s goodwill toward the business is at its highest point.

A review request sent the day after a completed service performs significantly better than one sent a week later. The customer’s recollection is still clear.

The experience is still fresh. They have not moved on to the next thing.

The recommended timing for most service businesses: send the review request between 30 minutes and 4 hours after the service completion or appointment checkout. Immediate sends (within minutes) can feel automated and impersonal.

Next-day sends lose the peak satisfaction window. The 30-minute to 4-hour range feels timely and personal without being immediate.

Responding to Reviews

HighLevel allows responding to Google reviews directly from the Reputation section. Find the review in the dashboard, click Respond, write the response, and submit.

The response posts to the Google Business Profile review without opening Google Business Profile Manager.

Responding to reviews – positive and negative – matters for three reasons. It shows prospective customers that the business is attentive and cares about customer experience.

It signals to Google that the business is actively engaged with its profile, which is a positive signal for local ranking. And for negative reviews, a thoughtful, professional response mitigates the damage the negative review does to conversion – prospects who see a negative review addressed respectfully are far less deterred than those who see a negative review with no response.

The response strategy for positive reviews: be specific, reference something from the review content if possible, thank the reviewer by name, and mention the business’s commitment to that type of service. Generic “Thanks for the review!” responses are better than no response but significantly weaker than specific, personal ones.

AI Review Responses

HighLevel’s AI Review Responses feature (covered separately) integrates with Reputation Management to generate review response drafts automatically. When a new review arrives, the AI reads the review content and generates an appropriate response – personalizing it based on what the reviewer wrote rather than using a generic template.

The AI-generated response can be reviewed and edited before posting, or configured to post automatically for positive reviews. This dramatically reduces the time required to maintain consistent review response – particularly for businesses receiving high review volumes where manual responses to every review are impractical.

Handling Negative Reviews

Negative reviews require a different approach than positive ones. The goal of a negative review response is not to win an argument – it is to demonstrate professionalism and customer care to the prospective customers who read the review and response together.

The structure of an effective negative review response: acknowledge the customer’s experience without being defensive, apologize for any aspect of their experience that fell short, offer to discuss the matter further offline (provide a direct contact method), and keep the response brief. Long defensive responses often make the situation look worse.

Never reproduce specific accusations in the response – this amplifies the negative content for readers who might not have read the full review. Never argue with the reviewer’s factual claims in the public response.

Take any factual corrections offline.

Where possible, resolve the underlying issue before responding. A business that resolves the customer’s problem and then responds noting the resolution performs better in prospect eyes than one that responds defensively to an unresolved complaint.

What Can You Do With It?

• See all Google and Facebook reviews in one dashboard without logging into separate platforms: The Reputation section consolidates reviews from both platforms. Monitoring and responding happen from one place within the business’s daily HighLevel workflow.
• Systematically grow review count through automated post-service requests: Automated review request workflows fire after every qualifying service completion – not just the ones someone remembered to request. Consistent volume of requests produces consistent volume of new reviews.
• Respond to every review without switching platforms: Google review responses are submitted directly from HighLevel. Maintaining a consistent response habit is easier when the response tools are in the same platform already being used for daily operations.
• Use AI to draft review responses at scale: AI Review Responses generate personalized response drafts for every new review – reducing the time required to maintain consistent response without sacrificing response quality.
• Track review trends over time: The Reputation dashboard tracks rating changes and review volume over time. Agencies can include reputation metrics in monthly client reporting – showing how review count and rating have changed as a result of systematic review management.

Key Definitions

Use Cases by Industry

Home Services – Post-Job Review Automation

A roofing company builds a review request workflow triggered when a pipeline opportunity is moved to the “Job Completed” stage. A 2-hour Wait action fires after the stage change, then an SMS goes to the customer: “Hi [First Name], thanks for choosing [Company Name] for your roofing project!

We’d love your feedback – it only takes 30 seconds. [Review Link]”

Before the workflow, the company had 34 Google reviews over 8 years of business. After 6 months of the automated workflow, they have 127 reviews – nearly all 5-star.

Their local pack ranking for “roofing company [city]” moved from page 2 to the top 3 results. Inbound lead volume from Google search increased significantly without any change to ad spend.

Result: A single automated workflow drives consistent review accumulation. The ranking improvement from higher review volume produces more inbound leads from local search – leads that cost nothing per acquisition because they come through organic local ranking rather than paid ads.

Medical Practice – Post-Appointment Request via Email

A chiropractic practice sends review requests via email to patients after their second appointment – the timing chosen because first-appointment patients have less experience to reflect on, while second-appointment patients have seen real results. The email subject line: “How was your experience at [Practice Name]?” The body includes a personal note from the doctor and a direct link to the Google review page.

The practice monitors the Reputation dashboard weekly. The practice manager responds to every new review within 48 hours.

Positive reviews receive a specific, warm response. The few negative reviews receive a professional acknowledgment and an offer to discuss the concern directly.

Result: The practice’s Google review count grows from 28 to over 90 within one year. The higher review count and consistent response habit improve the practice’s visibility in local searches for chiropractic services – bringing in new patients who specifically mention the reviews as a reason for choosing the practice.

Restaurant – Review Request at Checkout

A restaurant integrates HighLevel into their table checkout process. When a customer pays at the table, the server offers to send them a review link by text.

If the customer agrees, the server enters their phone number and the review request SMS fires immediately from HighLevel.

The immediacy of the send – while the customer is still at the table and their experience is freshest – produces a strong conversion rate from request to actual review. The restaurant monitors the Reputation dashboard daily and the owner personally responds to every negative review within 4 hours.

Result: Review requests at the peak satisfaction moment – right after a positive dining experience – produce the highest conversion rates. The restaurant’s review count grows rapidly, and the owner’s visible engagement with every review reinforces the restaurant’s reputation for attentive service among the many prospects who read reviews before choosing where to eat.

Marketing Agency – Reputation Reporting for Clients

An agency includes reputation metrics in monthly client reports for all clients on HighLevel. Each report shows: Google review count at the start of the month, new reviews during the month, current star rating, and the number of reviews responded to.

The review request workflow runs automatically on all accounts – the agency does not need to manually trigger review requests for any client.

Reputation reporting gives the agency a tangible, visible metric to show in monthly results – review count is easy for clients to understand, and growth is easy to see. Clients who might not fully understand attribution reporting or pipeline metrics immediately understand that their Google review count grew from 45 to 78 over the quarter.

Result: Reputation metrics become a key component of the agency’s monthly value demonstration. The automated workflow handles the review accumulation without ongoing manual effort from the agency. The client sees the results; the agency demonstrates the system that produced them.

Who Is This For?

How to Set Up Reputation Management

Step 1: Connect Google Business Profile

Go to Settings, then Integrations. Connect the Google Business Profile via OAuth.

The connected profile enables both review display and review response from HighLevel.

Step 2: Connect the Facebook Page

In the same Integrations section, connect the Facebook Page. Facebook reviews now appear alongside Google reviews in the Reputation dashboard.

Step 3: Navigate to Reputation

Click Reputation in the sub-account navigation. Review the dashboard – current rating, review count, and recent reviews.

Step 4: Respond to any unanswered reviews

Identify unanswered reviews in the dashboard. Click Respond on each one.

Write a specific, personal response for positive reviews. Write a professional, non-defensive acknowledgment for negative reviews.

Step 5: Send a manual test review request

Use the manual review request tool in the Reputation section. Select a recent customer contact.

Send a test SMS review request. Verify the message arrives and the review link works correctly.

Step 6: Build the automated review request workflow

In Workflow Builder, create a workflow with the appropriate trigger – appointment completed, pipeline stage changed to Job Completed, invoice paid. Add a Wait action (1 to 4 hours).

Add an SMS action with the review request message and the Google review link.

Step 7: Test the automated workflow

Trigger the workflow manually with a test contact. Verify the SMS arrives after the wait period.

Confirm the review link directs to the correct Google review page.

Step 8: Activate the workflow

Activate the workflow. Review requests now fire automatically after every qualifying trigger event.

Step 9: Establish a weekly response routine

Check the Reputation dashboard weekly. Respond to all new reviews.

Maintaining a consistent response habit is what separates passive review monitoring from active reputation management.

How Does It Connect to HighLevel?

• Google Business Profile Integration: Reputation Management is built on the Google Business Profile integration. The GBP connection enables review display, review response, and the review request link generation. The same connection also enables GBP messaging and local SEO audit features.
• Workflow Builder: Automated review requests are built in Workflow Builder. The review request SMS action fires as part of a workflow triggered by job completion, appointment checkout, or any other qualifying event. Automation is what makes review accumulation consistent.
• AI Review Responses: AI Review Responses integrates with Reputation Management to generate review response drafts automatically. New reviews trigger AI response drafting – reducing the time required to maintain consistent, quality responses at scale.
• Two-Way SMS: Review requests sent via SMS go through Two-Way SMS – the LC Phone infrastructure. SMS is generally the higher-converting channel for review requests versus email, making the LC Phone infrastructure a critical part of effective reputation management.
• Reporting and Analytics: Reputation metrics – review count, average rating, monthly review growth – can be included in HighLevel reporting dashboards. Agencies use these metrics as visible proof of reputation management value in monthly client reports.

Common Questions

What is Reputation Management in HighLevel?

A feature set at Reputation in the sub-account that consolidates Google and Facebook reviews in one dashboard, enables automated review requests via SMS and email, and allows Google review responses from within HighLevel.

Where do I find Reputation Management in HighLevel?

Reputation in the sub-account navigation. Requires connected Google Business Profile and/or Facebook Page via Settings, then Integrations.

Can HighLevel send review requests automatically?

Yes. Build an automated review request workflow in Workflow Builder – trigger on job completion, appointment, or invoice paid.

The workflow sends the review request SMS or email after a configured wait period.

Can I respond to Google reviews from within HighLevel?

Yes. Find the review in the Reputation dashboard, click Respond, write the response, and submit. The response posts to the Google Business Profile without opening a separate platform.

Does HighLevel Reputation Management work with Facebook reviews?

Yes. Facebook reviews appear in the Reputation dashboard alongside Google reviews when a Facebook Page is connected.

Can HighLevel send review requests to specific contacts?

Yes. Manual requests target any CRM contact from the Reputation section. Automated workflows target contacts based on trigger events.

Can HighLevel use AI to respond to Google reviews?

Yes. AI Review Responses generates draft responses based on review content. Configure for manual approval before posting or auto-posting for positive reviews.

How do review requests in HighLevel direct customers to Google?

The review request message includes a direct URL that opens the Google review interface immediately – no searching required. Customers tap the link and see the rating selector and text field immediately.

Can I see my current Google rating in HighLevel?

Yes. The Reputation dashboard shows the current aggregate star rating, total review count, and rating distribution from connected platforms.

To Wrap It Up

Online reviews are a primary decision factor for most local service business prospects. Before calling any business, most people check the reviews.

A business with a strong, growing review presence wins more of those decisions. A business with few or mixed reviews loses them – often to a competitor who figured out systematic review collection earlier.

The math on review requests is straightforward: if 20% of customers who receive a review request leave a review, and the business serves 40 customers per month, that is 8 new reviews per month. After one year, that is nearly 100 additional reviews – potentially moving from 30 to 130 reviews, which is a meaningful ranking and conversion signal.

Without the automated request, that same year might produce 5 to 10 reviews from customers who happened to feel strongly enough to leave one spontaneously.

The response habit is what completes the reputation management picture. Review requests build the volume.

Responses build the engagement signal and the conversion trust. A business with 150 reviews and responses on 140 of them communicates attentiveness and professionalism to every prospect who reads the review profile before deciding whether to call.

Here is how to get started:

1. Connect the Google Business Profile in Settings, then Integrations
2. Navigate to Reputation and review the current rating and recent reviews
3. Respond to every unanswered review – start with the most recent and work backward
4. Send a manual review request to 5 recent customers to test the process
5. Build the automated review request workflow in Workflow Builder with the appropriate trigger
6. Test the workflow with a personal phone number as the test contact
7. Activate the workflow and let it run for 30 days
8. Review the Reputation dashboard weekly and respond to new reviews within 48 hours
9. After 90 days, compare the review count and rating to the baseline established at the start

Respond to existing unanswered reviews before activating the automated request workflow. Prospects who check reviews see the full picture – both the reviews and the responses.

An active review request campaign that brings in new reviews while old reviews sit unanswered sends a mixed signal. Spend an afternoon catching up on responses first, then activate the workflow that will keep new reviews from accumulating without responses going forward.