Online reviews are a fact of modern life – and they can have an enormous influence on the success of a small business. Great online reviews are a critical part of attracting new patients to your practice. Hopefully most of yours are positive, but many dental practices experience a bad online review at some point.
What do you do when this happens? How do you control the damage?
It’s critical to respond to negative reviews. The 1st step is to try and fix the problem that your negative reviewer is complaining about. Online reviews are publicly broadcast and readers want to see how the business responds, so it’s important to post a reply. The best long term strategy is to bury the negative review in a string of new positive reviews.
Fix the Negative Situation for Your Dental Patient
The most important thing is to try and make the negative experience better for the patient who posted a bad review. If the patient is complaining about something specific like not getting the service they paid for or not understanding the treatment you recommended, you can contact them to follow up and ensure they have what they need.
It’s more challenging if they’re complaining about things like personality – but the good news is, if their complaint is non-specific, other readers are more likely to write off the bad review. If the complaint is vague, depending on your relationship with the patient, it might be appropriate to contact them to ask if you could make their experience better in any way.
If you’re able to fix the patient’s problem and they are happy with the result, it’s well worth the extra step to ask them if they’d consider removing the bad review they posted.
Neutrally Reply to the Reviewer Publicly
Often when prospective patients are checking out your online reviews, they’ll read a mix of the good and any bad ones. Most patients are savvy enough to see when a patient is irrationally complaining about something, and they won’t put as much stock into a one-off bad review if they see many other positive reviews. Instead, they look for trends – if multiple patients post bad or mediocre reviews complaining about the same things, they’ll pay attention to that (and so should you!).
It’s important to respond to your bad reviews as soon as possible. After you’ve tried to fix their issue, you’ll want to post a neutral public reply to their negative online review. Patients searching your reviews will read your replies, and it tells them something about how you deal with difficult patients. If you provide a satisfactory reply to a negative review, they’re much more likely to skim past it and not let it prevent them from calling you to schedule.
Here’s a few tips on how to reply:
- Never criticize the patient or their experience.
- Never sound petulant or defensive.
- Focus on solutions and fixing their problem.
- Express how much you want them to have a positive experience and are willing to work with them to achieve that.
- Be polite, non-emotional.
- Ensure it is a well-written reply with proper sentences, grammar and spelling.
- Keep it as brief as possible and don’t be long-winded.
Focus on Generating More Good Reviews
The best way to deal with bad online reviews is to bury them with excellent reviews as quickly as possible. As soon as you see a bad review and have taken the 2 steps above, meet with your team immediately and get them on board with asking happy patients for good reviews. You can even run a contest to motivate them!
Good reviews do not happen passively - the offices with excellent online reviews have a solid strategy to ask patients for them. The most common online review websites are Yelp, Google +, Facebook and Healthgrades, and it’s a good idea to have a mix of positive reviews on all of them.
Online Reviews and Your Dental Practice
Online reviews are incredibly powerful. They can boost your business, or tear it down just as easily. It’s critical to manage them, especially when you get a bad review. Try to fix the problem 1st, then reply to the review online. After that, focus on getting as many positive reviews as possible so the negative review isn’t prominent.
At ClearEdge, we have effective strategies to manage your online reviews, and get your team on board with asking patients for reviews. Contact us today for help with this powerful business tool, and maximize your online presence!
