> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.servicebooked.ca/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Referral requests > Ask customers who just left you a positive review if they know someone else who needs you. A customer who has just rated you 4–5★ is the most willing they will ever be to recommend you. Referral requests catch that moment: a day after a positive review, they get one short message asking if they know someone who needs the same kind of work — and whoever they name lands in your CRM as a lead with a task to call them. This is **off by default**. Turn it on in **Reputation → Settings → Referral asks**. ## How it works 1. A customer taps **4 or 5 stars** on your review page. 2. On the thank-you screen they're offered **"Refer a friend"** right away — some people are happy to do it in the moment. 3. A day later (your **delay** setting) they get one message — SMS first, email as a fallback — with a link to your referral page. If they already referred someone from the thank-you screen, that message is skipped. 4. They enter one name plus a phone number or an email, and anything you should know. 5. That person becomes a **lead** in Contacts, tagged `referral`, with a note saying who referred them. 6. A **high-priority task** ("Call referral: …") is created, due in 4 business hours, and your owners get a notification. Everything shows up under **Reputation → Referrals**: who you asked, who opened the ask, and every referral you've received. ## We never message the referred person The person being referred never gave you permission to contact them — **their friend did**. So ServiceBooked creates the lead and the task, and stops there. Nobody gets an automated text or email from us on their behalf. That's a CASL requirement, and it's also just how referrals work: the value is a warm introduction, which means a human picking up the phone. ## Settings | Setting | What it does | | ------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Ask for a referral after a 4–5★ review** | The automatic trigger. Off by default. | | **Delay after the review** | Hours to wait. Default 24 — same-day reads greedy, a week later the goodwill has cooled. | | **Don't re-ask within** | Default 180 days. Being asked for referrals repeatedly reads as pestering. | | **Channels** | SMS first, email, or both. Email is used as a fallback when there's no mobile number. | | **Thank-you offer** | Optional, written as a full sentence ("You'll get \$50 off your next service."). It appears in the message and on the referral page. Leave it blank and the line is dropped entirely. | Messages are only ever sent inside **9am–8pm** in your timezone, and a customer who has replied STOP to your texts is never asked. ## Sending one by hand **Reputation → Referrals → Ask for a referral** lets you pick any customer and send the ask now — useful right after a job you know went well. This works whether or not the automatic trigger is on; the re-ask window still applies. ## Wording The message text lives in the **Referral Request** recipe under **Settings → Automations**, in the same place as your review-request wording, and follows your communication language (English, French, or both). ## Next The sequence that produces the positive review this ask hangs off. What happens when a customer taps a star.