Say, for example, you met Gladys last Tuesday. You tested her hearing aid, answered her questions thoughtfully, and felt as though you had a positive connection. You even looked at photos of her Labradoodle! But this morning you woke up to a scathing review where Gladys eviscerated everything from the chairs to the temperature to the artwork in the lobby. Thick-skinned or not, this one stings a little. 

The good news? We humans instinctively know we’re prone to exaggerate an unsatisfactory experience. We also know that some people have a curious overabundance of negative experiences – which is a post for another day! As such, the question is never, Does this practice have negative reviews? The question is, How does this practice respond to negative reviews?

Why Do Patients Leave Bad Reviews?

Psychological motivations aside, there are some common factors that lead to negative audiology practice reviews. Knowing what sets people off can help you avoid less-than-glowing online reviews. 

• Long wait times: Sometimes, a moderate wait is unavoidable. Acknowledging the wait and offering a sincere apology can go a long way toward making the patient feel seen and valued. 
• Billing errors: Billing errors equal backlash. Even if the mistake was on the insurance company’s end, your practice may bear the brunt of your patient’s online ire. 
• Disregard for their feelings: Patients may not have expert knowledge of their condition, but they are experts on their personal experience. One of the most common motivators for a negative online review is that the patient felt disregarded or dismissed during their visit.

Other common reasons for negative reviews from patients include:

• Canceled appointments
• Insufficient time with the audiologist (or feeling rushed)
• Issues with parking
• Issues with accessibility
• Issues with the front desk staff

Should You Flag or Report Negative Reviews?

When you receive a negative online review, your first impulse is likely to report, flag, or challenge it. While these reactions are understandable, they aren’t always viable. Most review platforms (such as Google, Healthgrades, or Facebook) have particular – and stringent – rules for removing reviews.

Typically, you can only flag or report a negative review for the following reasons:

• The author of the review is not your patient. Looking over the review, it’s clear this person has confused you with another audiology practice (or another business altogether).
• The review is spam or contains irrelevant or off-topic information. For example, If the review concerns parking in a fire zone and receiving a pricey ticket, you have a good case for removal.
• The review is inappropriate, vulgar, offensive, or includes sensitive personal information about a staff member.

A negative review doesn’t have to spell disaster if it doesn’t meet any of these qualifications. Though it’s no one’s favorite pastime, crafting a thoughtful and professional response is an art – and it can leave a positive impression on potential new patients. 

Before responding to patient reviews, please remember…

1. 93.5% of patient complaints are a result of a miscommunication. Given that you work with patients who are already under duress, the chances that they didn’t absorb everything you told them or may have forgotten to mention something to you is high. Miscommunication happens all the time. The key is determining the misunderstanding and eliminating the communication gap.
   
2. Don’t take complaints personally. Think of them as helpful red flags to remind you to improve your communication systems. Just because you told a patient to do XYZ doesn’t mean they understood. See if getting patients to explain their patient care instructions back to you. This improves compliance and reduces patient problems.
3. Don’t get defensive or mad When you respond to a patient. That won’t win the patient back or help you attract more patients. When practices allow emotions to take hold when responding to reviews, positive or negative, it’s common to disclose patient information and violate HIPAA.

How to Respond to Negative Reviews

Say you have a negative review that isn’t going anywhere. It happens! The truth is, it’s an opportunity disguised as a threat. That’s because your response has the power to impress, instill trust, and inspire confidence. 

Consider the following when crafting your reply:

• Don’t give defensiveness a foothold in your response. You may be more than justified, but potential patients want to see you take the high road and exude professionalism. 
• Write with an empathetic tone. When in doubt, lean even further into empathy. 
• Don’t be afraid to admit that the feedback represents a growth opportunity. Readers will appreciate your humility, and the reviewer will likely feel the same way. 
• Make things right where possible. Describe in detail the steps you’ve taken to remedy the situation and invite the reviewer to speak with you further to pursue a resolution. 
• Thank the reviewer for their feedback. This one might sting a little, but your willingness to acknowledge that all feedback can inspire improvement will make a strong impression.

Friendly reminder: When responding to negative reviews, you’re still bound by HIPAA. Remember to avoid discussing particulars or divulging protected information, even if the patient has already done so. Suggesting the conversation be moved to a more personal format, like a phone call, is never a bad idea.

Review Ignorance Isn’t Bliss

When it comes to negative reviews, an “ignore-it-into-oblivion” approach is tempting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Pain avoidance is natural, but an unanswered negative review causes even greater damage to your online reputation in the long run. 

A good rule of thumb is to reply – and reply promptly – using the tips outlined above. You can close your response by offering to continue the conversation in a more private setting. Often, cooler heads prevail when the discussion transitions from online to in-person or over the phone. 

Negative Review, Positive Results

No one wants a slew of negative reviews. But the occasional complaint can actually improve your online reputation. Here’s how: 

• Nobody gets things right 100% of the time. Customers know this! That’s why a couple of negative reviews can boost your credibility. There’s nothing more suspicious than a spotless online reputation, and people know it. 
• A poor review can be an essential wake-up call. That pesky negative review might be just what you need to implement a critical change. One person’s gripe can be the catalyst for better one-on-one connections and a vastly improved patient experience. 

Lastly, it’s important to remember that negative reviews aren’t always forever. Sometimes, after the patient has taken everything into consideration, they will remove or amend their review. The single greatest determining factor in whether this change of heart occurs? Your response.

Engaging with bad reviews can be distressing, but turning a negative into an opportunity for improvement can also be immensely satisfying. Another aspect of human psychology worth mentioning? Ultimately, people long for cooperation and resolution. Sometimes, they need a little nudge. 

Managing Bad Audiology Patient Reviews: You’re Not Alone

If you’re overwhelmed by the thought of managing bad audiology patient reviews, you’re not alone.  Negative feedback, especially when it feels unwarranted, is disheartening and frustrating. Luckily, professional reputation management can help support your audiology clinic in this uniquely sensitive area. 

MedPB offers reputation management services that automate a good deal of the process, from helping you generate reviews to expertly responding to negative feedback. Please reach out to us today to learn more about how we can help take the sting out of bad reviews and even turn them into a sweet-as-honey opportunity for growth.

Of course, these days, barely anyone remembers the Macarena. It didn’t have a lot of what you would call staying power. No one could predict that back in the 90s. When the Macarena started, no one knew how long it would last or the impact it might make.

That’s kind of where we are with Artificial intelligence (AI). Everyone’s buzzing about it, but it’s hard to know whether AI will be a reliable tool…or fizzle the same way the  Macarena did. That’s a bit frustrating, especially when it seems like AI could save you valuable time and energy. In healthcare, it’s essential to be careful when using AI because it can get you in trouble.

Should You Use AI Review Collection in an Audiology Practice?

AI is supposed to be all about saving you time and energy–and taking over your most tedious tasks. For many in the audiology field, the most logical place for AI to start seems to be handling your reviews and reputation management.

In theory, these AI programs will be used to reach out to patients, ask them questions, and offer responses in a way that helps generate positive reviews (and respond to negative ones). In theory, this is all good–it will save you the time to pour over your thoughts–or ask patients to leave reviews later. 

On the surface, this makes sense! But the more you dig into it, the more drawbacks become apparent. To understand those drawbacks, you need to know how AI works–because the name is misleading. There’s no accurate intelligence behind AI. Instead, “AI” uses a sophisticated algorithm to generate an output. This algorithm can use new data to spit out new results (the process is called “machine learning”)… but essentially, AI uses a vast dataset to drive a robust algorithm that generates results.

This means patients who enter data into your AI review software may unknowingly plug their audiology experience–including private details–into a database you have no control over. Additionally, there’s no way for AI to know it’s in a “healthcare” setting–and private information shouldn’t be discussed.

This can lead to serious concerns about patient privacy and HIPAA.

You Can’t Ignore HIPAA

Any medical or audiology practice operates under a law called HIPAA. I’m sure you’re very familiar with this already. (For the nonaudiologist readers, the idea is that HIPAA exists to protect patient’s private information.)

HIPAA will, in one form or another, cover audiology practices and any contractor the audiology practice employs. So, your handy marketing agency is also required to protect patient information (or else you might be on the hook for possible consequences).

This pertains to symptoms, treatments, personal information, and more. (If someone types, “Your clinic helped treat my hearing loss” into your AI-powered review system, you might have a HIPAA violation–especially if that chatbot is not HIPAA compliant.) 

AI Review Software May Not be HIPAA Compliant

A significant issue with AI Review Software is that most AI review platforms are not HIPAA compliant, which means that your AI may follow its algorithm and try to discuss a patient’s experience (symptoms and all) over your review software–in a public space. You can quickly see how this would become a HIPAA violation. For example, an AI chatbot may ask a reviewer: “Tell us about your negative experience.” In response, the reviewer starts talking about how their symptoms weren’t addressed, which could quickly lead to problems.

The trouble is that AI is pretty decentralized. If there’s a HIPAA violation because your AI partner isn’t following the rules, your clinic will likely be on the hot seat.

How to Handle Negative Reviews

For most industries, handling reviews is a very similar experience. But AI needs help with audiology because, as a medical field, how you take reviews is pretty specialized. Here are some excellent tips to keep in mind when it comes to HIPAA and reviews:

• Avoid discussing any patient information in reviews. This means you should never refer to specific times, specific symptoms, treatments, or other identifiable information.
• Keep things pretty general: Your responses should be focused on public information that doesn’t touch on patient information. 
• Make sure to get written permission for any correspondence: For example, if a patient posts a negative review, ask permission to email them to discuss their concerns. Exercise caution, however–the less you can say over email, the better.
• Respond privately: Look for a way to respond to any unhappy patients in a one-on-one setting. For example, you can ask if a phone call or follow-up appointment is an excellent way to communicate with a sick patient.
• Make sure your staff knows how to handle negative reviews: It’s one thing for you as an audiologist to understand HIPAA–but it’s equally important that your team knows what to do with negative feedback–and how carefully to tread.
• Make sure you constantly monitor reviews: You don’t have to personally check your thoughts daily (that way, madness lies). But you can set up notifications and automated processes to ensure you stay on top of reviews. 
• Develop and establish a robust social media policy: Sometimes people say mean or nasty things on social media–you should have a policy that details how you or your team will respond (while respecting HIPAA).
• Talk to your legal team: Like many laws, HIPAA is complicated. This means it’s a good idea to talk to your legal team before making any changes to your policy. And keep your legal team in the loop when it comes to your review policy.

Of course, artificial intelligence isn’t going to know anything about how to respond in a way that preserves patient privacy. It won’t learn these best practices. And that could put your practice at risk.

What Does a Good Review Response Look Like?

So, let’s say a patient comes in for a hearing test and leaves a review that says, “This audiologist gave me a faulty diagnosis. They said I have hearing loss when my hearing is just fine.”

• Bad response: “Hi, when you came in for our appointment, we noticed you had symptoms consistent with hearing loss. All of our tests also indicated you have hearing loss. So, that’s the diagnosis we made.”
• Good response: “Hi, we’re sorry you don’t feel you had a good experience with us. We’d love to discuss this over email or phone so we can do everything possible to make the situation right!”

Do you see the difference? Both responses may be factually correct. However, the “bad” response violated HIPAA by discussing the patient’s symptoms. An untested or unsupervised AI might respond with a wrong answer, as that might make sense for other industries. 

Audiology Reputation Management Done Right 

Of course, just because you may want to avoid AI for reviews doesn’t mean you should prevent automation entirely. There are plenty of ways to introduce more automation into your reputation management strategy–and this can save you both time and money without the need for risky AI solutions. 

This means you can have a robust–and lasting–reputation management strategy that helps keep patients happy–and brings new people into your audiology practice. 

If you want help making this happen, contact us at MedPB–and we’ll get started on your reputation management solution!

The simple truth is that even though 99% of your current and past patients rely on you and think highly of you and your practice, most of your potential new patients don’t know how qualified and helpful you can be. They may not have met or talked to your loyal patients about your services.

What happens in a reputation vacuum?

Most people are skeptical, and they don’t fully trust your practice… yet. This is where online reviews can make a difference. When your website gets a steady stream of current patient reviews, prospective patients see them and pick your practice. Your phone could be ringing off the hook. Chances are, you have already purchased patient review software, but it’s not working…

The problem is that most online patient review and reputation management software is a scam. It doesn’t work to generate new patient reviews. It doesn’t help you attract new patients or get your phone ringing, even though you have a great reputation with your current patients.

How can you tell if your online review software company is scamming you?

Ask yourself the following questions:

• When you first signed up for the review management software did the company train your team on how to use the software?
• Then did the online review software company check in with your team after a month to retrain the team if you weren’t getting results?
• Are you getting great results from your reputation management software, 10 or more new patient reviews each month?
• Does your review software company meet with you each month to review results and show you ways to continue to improve your online review collection process?
• Is the reviews software setup with your CRM to automate the patient review request process?
• Does your online review management company guarantee results?

If you answered no to two or more of these questions, it’s time to fire your review software or at least start talking to other providers.

At MedPB, we guarantee our online review software.

If you aren’t sure, you can try it for 90 days and if you don’t get any patient reviews you get your money back. How can we offer this kind of guarantee? Our online review software works because we do 3 key things:

1. When you sign up for review software at MedPB, we meet with you to train your team on using it, however many times you want to meet or until you get results.
2. Then we meet with you monthly to review results and work with you to keep your new patient leads growing
3. Most importantly, at least in audiology, our online review software works automatically for any practice that uses one of the top CRMs, specifically Blueprint, CounselEAR and Sycle.

Get more patient reviews with an automated collection process

Here’s how the automated patient review collection process works with MedPB’s Online Review Builder.

1. At the end of the patient visit you let the patient know to watch for a followup email from your practice – asking for their feedback. No worries, you’re not actually asking for them to give you feedback, then and there.
2. When the patient leaves, in your CRM (Blueprint, CounselEAR or Sycle) you note the visit was completed
3. This triggers your CRM to message your Online Review Builder to send an automated email sequence to the patient asking them for a review.
4. The patient gets the automated emails. If the patient responds, it stops sending the next in the series.
5. The patient is directed to complete a testimonial on common review platforms, like Google.
6. MedPB’s Online Review Builder checks daily to see what reviews have been posted by your patients and pulls them together on a summary page you can include on your website.
7. Google notices you have a steady stream of new patient reviews, which gives you a higher trust factor and improved rankings on Google
8. Which in turn gets more new patients calling and more new patient reviews.

How does this work in reality?

MedPB practices who have the automated version of our Online Review Builder are guaranteed to get a steady stream of new patient reviews. In other words, it works every time!

How one practice used MedPB’s Online Review Builder to more than triple patient reviews.

Case Study:

Audiology Practice in the Southeast
Started using Review Builder on May 7, 2022. In 2 and ½ months, with MedPB’s automated review solution, got an average of  31 new reviews per month.

Online Review Builder is an easy and automated way to get more reviews for your medical practice. More reviews means more new patients.

Want more new patients calling? Let’s Talk

One helps you pay the bills, the other—a patient’s trust—can help you build your future.

Obviously, every medical practice needs to get paid or you’d be out of business. But the same is true with trust.

If patients didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t be in business in the first place, and you’d never attract new patients. Which tells you what?

Trust is the new currency in today’s marketplace, and it’s more important than ever in helping you grow your practice.

Why is trust so important?

When a prospective patient goes online, searching for a provider, most people start by reading the patient reviews. If you have hardly any reviews on the various social media sites, Google, Yelp, etc, or if you have more negative than positive ones, what’s going to happen?

The prospective patient, one you are more than competent to help, is going to go to one of your competitors, based on the reviews they read, regardless of how great your practice actually is or what all your patients say to you in person.

Trust and your online reputation is everything.

Top­notch reviews, in conjunction with word-­of-­mouth referrals, provide the winning combination and work to attract new patients to your practice. Obviously, it’s not something you want to leave to chance.

How can you protect and manage your online reputation so it helps instead of hinders?

Step 1 – Find out what your current online reputation is.

Get your Review Score and find out what you need to do to improve it.

Not sure? Note the following:

• 83% of consumers say online customer reviews influence their purchase decisions.
• A word­-of­-mouth recommendation is the primary factor behind 20% to 50% of all purchasing decisions.

So yes, trust and reputation are key to growing your practice.

Ask yourself:

1. How do you want patients to view or talk about your practice?
2. What types of reviews are patients giving your practice?
3. Where do you want your practice to be in 5 or 10 years?

Achieve more. Talk to us.

What do you do?

Do you randomly choose one from a list of doctors? Not likely.

Most doctors start by asking other doctors they know who they recommend. You ask the people you know and trust who they’ve seen and trust too. Right?

So what do your patients do?

They do the same thing, they look for a doctor they can trust. And while you may be the best orthopedist or doctor in your speciality in town, until a patient has a reason to trust you – well they don’t. Without that trust they won’t call your practice, schedule an appointment or put their health in your hands.

Sure, you may have been practicing medicine for over a 100 years, be up to date on the latest science and have eight thousand satisfied patients, but until you give patients social proof they won’t and don’t trust you.

No trust, no appointment.

Recently a longtime friend called looking to tell me her son had broken his ankle playing soccer, and she had found the names of several orthopedics online. Before she chose one, she wanted to know which of the ones she’d found online I had seen when I had shoulder surgery after a fall.

We talked about the surgeon I had used, his bedside manner was, and if I would see him again. After our conversation, guess what my friend decided to do?

Yes, she called and scheduled an appointment with my surgeon. Why?

Because a personal recommendation from a patient is one of the fastest ways to build trust with prospective patients. When a patient trusts you, and tells someone else, they are transferring their trust to the prospective patient and paving the way for that person to schedule an appointment with you. And while personal recommendations are the most powerful, patient reviews on your site work can work wonders too.

You can’t always ensure your prospects will get a personal recommendation for your business, but you can use patient reviews to promote your practice. Reviews from people who have used your services are one of the most effective marketing tools available to convince potential patients of the value of your and services.

Getting direct referrals works to attract new patients and convince them to schedule an appointment. Depending on how vocal your past patients are, direct referrals will only generate a limited number of new patients.

Patient reviews can be an even better way to attract a steady stream of new patients each month. While a review doesn’t have as great an impact as a personal referral, you can collect dozens of them and use them again and again without wearing out your relationship with past patients. That means you can use them to attract even more patients than you would through personal referrals.

Including patient reviews in your online marketing is one of the best ways to instantly establish your credibility and get more patients.

How to Collect Reviews for Your Practice and Get More Patients Calling

What are the two problems with collecting great patient reviews no one tells you?

First of all – it’s just plain uncomfortable. Most people find it awkward at best asking patients for positive feedback, so they avoid asking. If they do get do get reviews, they are all over the web–on Google, Facebook, Yelp!, and other review sites, not on their website where they are most likely to convince patients to make an appointment. And unless you have a full-time person updating your site and actively monitoring the web for posts, this is not an effective way to leverage the power of reviews.

Ideally, you want to collect enough reviews so you have 20-30 recent outstanding reviews for each of your services. This kind of volume requires a system that works.

You can set up an automatic reminder asking patients for their feedback. For example, your email system can send it out automatically after a visit. A handful of people (roughly one out of a hundred) will respond to your email or snail-mail feedback requests. Depending on your volume of sales, this may provide you with enough reviews to convince new patients to call.

A far more effective way to collect compelling reviews is to use an online review-building service that not only reminds them to offer a review, it helps them do it right away, on the social media platform of their choice. Best of all, it automatically posts the best positive reviews to your website where new patients can see them. How much can reviews grow your business?

One of the hidden benefits of using a proven online review builder is that it always gets (and records) your customers’ permission to use their reviews in your marketing. Your reviews are even more bulletproof and more believable, because they are public and include your patients’ full names and the cities and states where they live.

Online review builders also take any burden of proof off you. Let your customers sing your praises. It’s much more believable.

Want to know the easy way to attract more patients using reviews?

Talk to us

In a word, it’s trust.

Until a patient experiences the quality of care you provide, they may not trust you.

So, how can you overcome this barrier to growing your practice?

It’s simple. Get the people who already know and like you—satisfied, existing patients—to transfer their trust to new patients in the form of online reviews.

When people look for a new doctor on the Web, they are looking to see what other patients like them think of the practice. When they find a practice with no reviews, they are immediately suspicious of the quality of the practice, just like many people are when they see a restaurant with nobody in it.

According to research, 84% of people trust reviews as much as they trust their friends. Just like other types of consumers, patients now check online reviews sites—such as Yelp, Google, and Facebook—to see what their peers say about a practice before they book an appointment.

Almost Everyone Reads Reviews

There’s a reason Forrester Research calls this “The Age of the Customer:” Online peer reviews have a huge impact on consumers’ purchase decisions. In fact, 72 percent of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Reviews Are Trusted

That’s why reputation management software is so important for marketing your practice. Positive reviews help build credibility and trust, encouraging people to pick up the phone. But too many negative reviews, and potential patients may look elsewhere.

Reviews Are Influential

The fear of this type of negative feedback may scare some practitioners away from soliciting reviews altogether. But the truth is, most online reviews are actually positive: For example, a majority of all Yelp reviews are four-star or better. The problem is simply that unhappy patients complain to more people about their bad experiences than happy patients rave to others about good ones. And this can negatively affect your reputation management.

Good Reviews Are Under-Represented

In other words, your practice already has a wealth of patient goodwill. You simply need to tap into it by encouraging satisfied customers to write online reviews. The more reviews your practice receives, the better its online reputation will become—and the more new patients will pick up the phone to schedule an appointment with you.

Good Reviews Are Waiting to Happen

Earning reviews will also make it easier for new patients to find your practice online. Businesses that are reviewed on credible, third-party sites such as Yelp and Google appear closer to the top of the page in search engine results. If patients also see four or five stars next to your practice’s name, they’ll be much more likely to give you a call.

Now that we’ve seen the importance of online reviews, how do you get them? The first step, of course, is to ask. Encourage satisfied patients to share their experiences on your website.

This sounds simple—but for most practices, just asking isn’t enough. There are often too many steps the patient has to take to get a review posted once they leave the office.

The key to getting a steady stream of patient reviews is to make it easy for your patients by doing some of the work for them. To do this, you’ll need reputation management software and a review funnel.

Solution: A “Review Funnel”

MedPB’s Online Review Builder can help make this whole process easier. It offers an automated, proven way to get patient reviews and bolster your practice’s online reputation.

Every day, ORB checks multiple review sites—from major platforms such as Yelp and Google to local and specialized sites. Then, it automatically publishes snippets of new 4 and 5-star patient reviews to a single page on your practice’s website. An aggregated score is also published at the top of the page, so visitors can gauge your practice’s reputation at a glance.

ORB is easy for patients to use, as well. They simply visit the review page on your website, choose the platform they want to post to and write their review.

As the reviews start to roll in, designate someone in your office to monitor them. Make sure they respond to any negative feedback, and that they promote the best reviews on your website and social media.

Monitor and respond to reviews; amplify your latest and greatest!

If you’re ready to tap into the power of patient reviews, check your online presence and reputation today!

Achieve more. Talk to us.

We walked by one restaurant where the menu looked sumptuous but when we looked in the window, we only saw 3 customers in the place. So we kept walking and ended up in a restaurant that was packed with patrons.

Have you ever done the same thing? Made an assumption about a restaurant based on the reviews posted or the number of patrons inside?

We do it all the time. We “judge a book by its cover” without really knowing much about it. The same is true when people are looking for a new audiologist, orthodontist, or medical provider of any kind.

When potential patients search on Google and see a practice with no reviews or only a handful of reviews, they keep looking. They’re hoping to find a practice with a lot of positive patient reviews and a 4 or 5 star rating.

I know it’s not totally logical for prospective patients to ignore your practice and not even bother calling to ask questions based on the absence of reviews, or a small number of positive reviews, but it happens every day.

How can you improve your online reputation?

1. Ask for reviews. It sounds obvious but most practices don’t do it, either because they are uncomfortable asking patients for a favor or they don’t want to get negative feedback.
2. Use an automated system to prompt patients to leave reviews. This makes it easy and takes the awkwardness out of asking for them in person. Here’s the review builder system we recommend: Online Review Builder

You work hard to provide superior patient care and you want prospective patients to know about it.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to have your happy patients say a few words about the great experience they had by leaving a review online. With the right review building system, you could quickly close the reputation gap and have your online reputation match the quality of services you provide.

Start improving your online reputation today. You can attract more patients right away — patients who’ve picked up the phone and scheduled an appointment because they read your great reviews online.

Achieve more. Talk to us.

Should it be a new website, SEO, PPC or… automating the collection of online reviews or…?

Less than two years ago when we provided 50 medical practices we work with an easy way to automate online review collection – we had no idea if it was worth, well, anything. Which was why we just gave it to our top paying clients to test it and see if it worked.

Sure we showed our clients how to ask for reviews and how to use the automated software to make it easy for patients to provide glowing reviews. Then for the next few months we pretty much ignored the whole project, until…

Practice owners, well at least the ones who spent 3 minutes a week using the software told us two things. First they told us, it was working to get more patient reviews. No surprise, that’s what it was supposed to do. But then they told us something else we hadn’t expected at all.

Our clients told us, they were getting 2-3 more new patients calling each week, or another 8-12 new patients a week. Which could have been a happy coincidence, but medical practices told us people were calling from their town and nearby towns, saying they’d read the reviews and wanted to schedule an appointment.

Our clients were calling us excited to share the news, which given the cool demeanor of the medical professionals we work with, was a surprise too.

Eureka!

At that point we realized we had a marketing system that trounced the competitions, one that actually was easy to use and worked to get more new patients calling. For some practices, it’s created a nice bump in revenue, for others collecting online reviews has literally doubled their revenue.

No, that’s not a typo.

Why collect patient reviews? Here are 5 compelling reasons:

• Glowing reviews improve your credibility, they help build trust so new patients are more likely to call your practice and schedule an appointment.
• Positive patient reviews make your medical practice stand out in a sea of choices. Seriously who would you pick if you saw a handful of practices listed in Google, the one with 25 great reviews, the one with 3 reviews, or worse yet, the one with zero reviews?
• 70% of consumers look at online reviews. Yes, in the current review economy where you can sort your purchase options on Amazon by reviews, almost everyone relies on online reviews.
• Reviews can improve your website rankings in Google. To be honest we did not know this was going to happen, but once our practices started getting a steady stream of new reviews, Google noticed and more and more started showing up higher in Google and even in the top 3 featured listings.
• All of the above results in more new patient leads and reviews can help you grow your business. Unless your practice is just a part time hobby, this should be the most important reason to use an automated system to collect and manage patient reviews.

In the last 22 months, we’ve helped medical practices collect over 27,583 reviews and generate thousands of additional new patient leads with this reputation management technique. What did we learn about how to get online reviews from patients? To help you get started, we’ve listed the top ideas you can use to grow your practice below.

Lessons Learned

Plan

• Set goals – If you see 40 patients a week set a goal of asking 40 patients for a review. And don’t be disappointed if each patient doesn’t provide a review. Not everyone will, but the more you ask the more you’ll get.
• On average we see a response rate of 25%, which means if you ask 40 patients, you should get 10 reviews or more using a few secret strategies we’ll reveal below. Do this for a few weeks, and your practice will stand out online from the competition.
• Get your staff on board – If you want your staff to ask for and help collect and respond to patient reviews, give them a clear reason. Clarify the value of patient reviews. Get them to evaluate the cost of not having reviews, and letting your competition come out on top. Get them to do the math and map out how much a positive review is worth.
• Put one person in charge – You know what happens when no one is responsible for a task, right? Nothing happens. Anyone in the office can manage patient review collection. Just get one person to volunteer to set monthly goals, make sure the ask strategies listed below are used, and track results.
• Set aside time – Once your team is trained on the ask process, it only takes 5 minutes per week to use the Online Review Builder (link to service page). That’s 5 minutes to bring in 2-3 or more new patients!
• Automate review collection – The real secret to having success in getting glowing patient reviews is to use a proven automated system, one your team has been trained in using and that works seamlessly to get more patient reviews and more new patients.

Ask

• Good reviews are waiting to happen – 90% of U.S. consumers read reviews and only 6% write them. Which suggests 90% of your patients value reviews, and if you ask many will be more than happy to write reviews.
• Do you know how to get more patient reviews? You ask! Whether you do it in person, by handing patients a card, or by email you have to ask. No asking equals no reviews. Keep asking, and over time you’ll get a steady stream.
• Set the expectation – Let your patients know your goal is to provide them the best care on the planet and you’ll be asking them for feedback. Let them know when they walk in the door in your waiting room, you’ll be asking them to review the care they get.
• Use a proven script and email template – Getting patients to provide reviews is much easier when you use a tried and true ask script and pre-tested emails, ones that motivate patients to respond. Of course not everyone responds to the same request, so we provide variations to use – and the email ones are all automated.
• Avoid bribing patients – To get more positive online reviews from patients, you can’t just offer a reward. Doing that can get your review pages taken down or even your primary website taken down. 99% of people are happy to share positive feedback as their way of saying thank you for the care you provided. In addition, it’s human nature to validate any purchase by telling everyone else about it, including the choice of a medical professional.
• Ask in person – We know this is tough for some people, to ask for feedback face-to-face, but if you’re the more extroverted type, use it to ask patients as you complete their office visit to pull out their smart phones and provide a review. And have your front desk staff do the same, ask patients as they check out to provide a review.
• Ask with a card – If you or your team don’t like asking patients to provide you with a review, makes you feel uncomfortable, just hand them a pre-printed card which tells them what to do and where.
• Ask with your website – The biggest obstacle to review collection is online ask systems that are too complex and take too much time. Add a review page on your medical practice’s website. At the top provide simple instructions and links to it’s easy for patients to provide feedback. Getting patients to post online reviews is that simple. Just walk patients through the steps to get their review live on Google, Yelp and Facebook.
• Ask by email – With the Online Review Builder software, you have two ways to ask patients for a review. You can download your list of patients who visited your clinic, save as CSV file and upload into Online Review Builder. Takes 3-5 minutes once a week. Better yet, if you work with one of our partner CMS providers, like Blueprint Solutions, you can just sit back as each week it automatically uploads your patient list and emails them, asking for a review.
• Ask again – Persistence pays off with email. Not every patient will respond to the first email. Which is why we include 3 proven ones as part of the Online Review Builder system.
• Of course you could get lucky like one medical practice that was getting started using the software. He loaded 10 patient names into the email request system, within days he had 8 glowing patient reviews, a five star rating and top Google ranking.
• On average the response rate with using our request cards in the office combined with the email autoresponder system is 25%. Ask 20 patients and on average you’ll get 5 patient reviews. Do it again and you’ll get 5 more.
• Never stop asking because old reviews aren’t nearly as powerful as fresh reviews. 73% of consumers feel that any review older than three months is longer relevant. Which means even if you already have 20 patient reviews, it should be part of your reputation management strategy to keep asking and collecting fresh feedback from patients.
• Simplify the ask process – Using a proven automated review collection system, like Online Review Builder, is the key.

Track

• Use the dashboard to monitor performance. Each week, take a few minutes to see how many reviews you got, who provide a review and didn’t. In the rare case you had a negative review – you can deal with it right away.
• Check to see who has provided a review and who hasn’t to track what’s working and what isn’t. If you’ve been diligent about adding patient names and email addresses into the system, you could see reviews in just a day or so. Either way it’s motivating for your team to see them come in.

Respond

• Respond to positive reviews. When a patient takes the time to post a review for you on one of the social media sites, it’s just common courtesy to thank them. It’s a great reputation management that gives you one more way to connect and build strong patient relationships. In, turn you’ll generate more referrals.
• Respond to all patient reviews – even the negative ones. With Online Review Builder, if a patient gives your practice a less than stellar review, it automatically sends it to you instead of posting it out on social media sites for everyone to see. The right thing to do, is thank the patient for their feedback, show respect for whatever frustration they are feeling. Then get them on the phone or into your office and resolve the issue. 95% of the time it’s a communication issue that just needs clearing up. Find out more about responding to negative reviews here

Celebrate

• Take a few minutes at the start or end of the day to read the glowing reviews to the team. Which is a great motivator to the team to keep providing stellar patient care and collect even more reviews.
• When you reach your patient review goal for the month celebrate! Take your staff out to lunch and read them all. It’s a great morale builder.

In the time it took you to read this post, our Online Review Builder software, helped collect even more glowing patient reviews – helping them stand out from the competition. Isn’t that what you want to do too?

Managing your reputation used to be simple. You provided top notch patient care and word spread in your community. You built your reputation with professional, quality care and satisfied patients. Today, with more communication happening online than offline, that’s not enough.

Whether you like it or not, you now have two personalities or brands to maintain; the real life personality that your office staff, patients and community sees AND your digital personality or brand.

That’s right, when people search for a medical practice online, they don’t see the smiles of satisfaction of the patients that leave your office. They see your practice stacked up against your competition and, more and more frequently, will decide whether or not to call for an appointment based on what they see online.

Here are 12 ways you may be putting your medical practice at risk:

Ignoring your online reviews.

99% of your patients may love you and your team. But in today’s review economy, if you don’t have great reviews online, potential patients will view you with suspicion and look elsewhere to get their medical needs met.

Having only a small handful of reviews.

Most medical practices see at least a 20-30 patients a week. When a prospective patient sees only 3 or 4 patient reviews listed for your practice, it makes them question your credibility.

Featuring outdated patient reviews.

If you only have reviews from years ago on the social media review sites or on your website, it makes patients wonder if your reputation has gone south and sends them to your competition.

Trying to get reviews manually.

Asking for reviews should be easy but most practice owners find asking for reviews awkward and distracting from patient care. Its essential to automate the process.

Giving up on patient reviews too easily.

Ask 10 patients for an online review and yes, it’d be like Christmas all over again if you got 10 glowing reviews. You aren’t likely to get 100% of your patients to respond. But if you have an automated way to ask every patient you saw last week for a review, within a month you could easily have 12 to 20 reviews.

Worrying about getting a negative patient review.

Even the best medical practices have an unhappy patient from time to time. The key is to have a system which sends you their feedback so you can address their issue before it gets posted on a popular social media site and becomes a permanent part of your online reputation.

Not giving your patients a voice to give their thanks.

When you ask a satisfied patient for feedback, you are doing them a favor. Seriously — when you help a patient return to good health and improve their life, they want a way to let you and other people know. Asking for a review gives them a way to do this. Also, spelling out what they like about your practice increases their loyalty to you.

Underestimating the power of a positive review.

Establishing trust and credibility is the first step to attracting patients. When prospective patients see a positive review, they are much more likely to call. Practices using our Online Review Builder report getting 2 to 3 more new patients per week. That’s 100 to 150 new patients per year!

Missing out on the infectiousness of reviews.

When you have a steady stream of positive patient reviews and ask a patient to add their review, what happens? The positive tone of the reviews is infectious. Patients are more likely to add another great review, helping you stand out as the go-to medical practice in your town.

Losing ground in the search engines.

The more often the search engines find your practice mentioned, the more likely they are to give it a higher ranking, making it easier for patients to find you. Ignore patient reviews and you’re committing SEO suicide.

Procrastinating when your reputation is at risk.

It’s easy to put aside the decision about which reputation management software to get. After all, you’ve got patients to see (at least for now). Procrastinating is a HUGE mistake, unless all your competitors are hiding under a rock. If they’re as smart as the average practitioner, they’re moving forward, collecting reviews, and strengthening their digital brand. Don’t get left behind.

Not making your online reputation a TOP priority.

You get it that your reputation is what drives patients to your door and keeps them coming back, right? Then you’ll understand the importance of building and maintaining your online reputation, too, given that’s how more and more patients are finding you.

And one more!

Missing out on positive feedback for your team.

This won’t bring you in new patients, but it’s huge. Everyone likes getting positive patient reviews. A steady stream of positive feedback will re-energize your staff and motivate them to provide even better patient care. Try it! You’ll be amazed.

What’s the best way to begin improving or building your online reputation with patient reviews? Discover the top rated Online Patient Review Software here.

Achieve more. Talk to us.

What did Rebecca do to start pulling in patient reviews? She put the task in the hands of her capable front desk staff. She showed them how to upload the email addresses of patients who had had recent appointments in the Online Review Builder software. Then she watched the reviews pour in. That’s it.

In just one month, this simple software solution generated 12 patient reviews. Now Gomer Hearing stands out online, head and shoulders above the competition.

Want to pull in a steady stream of glowing patient reviews so your practice stands out?

It’s amazingly simple. Just use the Online Review Builder system and get results like Rebecca — or better, if your practice is larger or you have many locations.

Have a question about how to get more patient reviews and attract more new patients?

Achieve More. Talk to Us.