Six Tips for Reputation Management
Date: June 11, 2015Category: Author: David Hall
The importance of online reviews of your dental practice continues to grow. Our research shows that a slowly growing percentage of prospective patients are checking reviews before they make an appointment. Right now that percentage is at slightly more than 50%.
So how do you manage these reviews to help attract new patients?
Tip Number 1 – Ask for Reviews
As I mentioned in an earlier post, if I were still practicing dentistry, I would not use an automated tool to help me generate reviews. I would use the personal request. It’s more warm, so I believe it is received better. Furthermore, if you can get your staff involved in asking for reviews it makes them more conscious of the impression they’re leaving on people.
Let me tell a story to illustrate how this works. My wife wrote her first online review this past month. She decided to try a new professional carpet cleaner. At the end of the appointment, the operator asked her if she would leave an online review. Since she was pleased with the service, she agreed to do that. It was the personal request that got her to do that. I don’t think an automated request would have generated the same response from her. She liked the operator and so was receptive to what he asked her to do.
While Google will delete reviews that they find are traceable to an automated, electronic request, they actually encourage you to ask patients to leave feedback on Google (see Google’s statement on this).
Tip Number 2 – Ask Your Patients to Be Specific
The generic, “I liked this place” isn’t very valuable. What specifically did they like? Were you timely with their appointment? Was it gentle? Did they think the work looked beautiful? Were they expecting post-operative discomfort and pleased that they experienced none? All of these issues are important to people, so ask your patients to include them.
In particular, ask them to mention the procedures that were done. This will help people contemplating those procedures, but, more than that, this will affect your rankings for those procedures. For example, if several patients mention that you helped relieve their TMJ pain, this will boost your rankings for TMJ dentist.
Tip Number 3 – Don’t Overdo It
Some dentists feel like they have to have more reviews than anyone else in their market. You don’t. When you accumulate five reviews, Google begins to display stars by your listing in the local pack. Here is a listing from one of our clients who shows up #1 for Bedminster dentist. Since he has at least five reviews, Google displays the stars as part of his listing. This attracts attention to his website. Having at least ten reviews appears to give clients a rankings boost and this may also be contributing to his strong ranking.
But beyond the effect of reaching that threshhold of ten reviews, we are unable to confirm any impact on your rankings of having more than that. So get some quality reviews and don’t think you need a hundred reviews to compete.
Tip Number 4 – Respond to the Negative Review
A corollary to this tip would be “Don’t freak out over negative reviews.” An occasional negative review will actually make you look authentic. If you have, for example, 100 reviews and they’re all five star, I’m going to be suspicious that you’ve been manipulating the system. We know that no business makes every customer happy all the time. But what great businesses and great dentists do is that they respond to criticism and try to learn from it.
Here’s an excerpt from the business listing of a local car dealer here in the Phoenix area that has a reputation for outstanding customer service. You can see from their averages that they have a lot of five-star reviews. They have no automated system in place–their sales people and other employees personally ask their customers for reviews. And there are a small handful of very negative reviews. See how they respond to this most recent one:
There are three negative reviews from the past two years. They responded to each one in a manner similar to what you see here. For one, it sounded like the customer was a jerk, but the response was still polite, not defensive, and didn’t offer any excuses but merely extended an invitation to the customer to share his concerns more fully to see if they could either resolve them or at least learn more about what went wrong so they could avoid having that happen again. And by inviting the customer to take the discussion offline, they avoid getting into arguments online that could really turn ugly.
Tip Number 5 – Work with Yelp
Yes, we’ve heard a lot of complaints about Yelp’s practices. But, like them or not, Yelp is a very powerful player in the reviews market. Some people search for their dentist on Yelp and select their dentist almost completely on the basis of their Yelp reviews. Yelp is an interesting player, and their rules specifically forbid you from asking for reviews, though it is doubtful they have any mechanism for enforcing that if you use my recommended “personal request” technique. However, if your patient “checks in” to your practice with their Yelp app, Yelp themselves will ask them to leave a review. This is an excellent way to boost your visibility on Yelp. Or you can simply encourage more Yelp reviews by having a sign at your front desk like this one. Please note that if patients are searching for a dentist on an iPad or iPhone using Apple Maps, that search is powered by Yelp, which ranks businesses based on their Yelp reviews. Some practices do nothing more than simply ask their patients to check in. Post a little sign asking them to check in–you have nothing to lose.
And please note that some of the Google Reviews rules don’t apply for searching on Yelp. If you have thirty or more Yelp reviews, Yelp gives you a significant boost
Tip Number 6 – Link to Your Reviews from Your Website
People want to read your reviews. Make them easy to find. And increasing their visibility will help increase the likelihood that people leave more reviews.
Conclusion
In this digital age, your online reviews are your reputation. Good reviews will help your rankings, increase your visibility, and increase conversions of prospective patients visiting your website. Follow these six tips for effective reputation management.
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