However, the internet can truly put a ‘spanner in the works’ when it comes to your reputation and how this affects personal referrals.
The vast majority of new patients who are referred to you will now ‘Google’ you as part of the process. This may be simply to find your telephone number, opening hours or address, however what they find when they do ‘Google’ you can have a significant effect on if they actually become a patient.
The public trust on-line reviews. It is well documented that restaurants, hotels and courier businesses have been destroyed by negative reviews. A significant study in the US earlier this year showed that 79 per cent of consumers trust on-line reviews as much as personal recommendations. So this particular subject is very relevant to the dental sector which relies on personal recommendations as its main source of new patients.
So what should you do?
The first thing is not to worry as the vast majority of dental professionals in Australia do not have any on-line reviews at all. To find out what appears on Google under your name, simply search your name and your practice name. If nothing negative comes up, then there is no need to panic, however you should set yourself a diary note to ‘Google Yourself’ at least once a fortnight as if something appears in the future you want to get onto it as quickly as possible.
If something negative does come up you need to take action. There are a number of places the public can place a review about services on-line, but the most used and indeed the most important is ‘Google Reviews’ which appears on your Google Map listing. Other places the public regularly place reviews include ‘Yelp’ ‘Hot Frog’ ‘Product Review’ ‘True Local’ and on your Facebook page.
The golden rule with negative reviews is to ‘respond and bury’. Firstly, assess the review and see if you can work out if the review is from a genuine patient or a competitor. This is easy if the reviewer has used their normal contact details, but many don’t and choose to be anonymous.
If you feel it is a genuine patient then you should respond publicly to the patient and offer them a solution to their complaint. This shows anyone else who reads the review trail that you take customer service seriously and look to resolve issues. Never ‘fight fire with fire’ on the internet as you cannot win this battle. Looking humble and caring even if you know you have done nothing wrong at all is a better look than challenging the complaint.
If you feel the negative review is not genuine then you can try and contact the website the review is on and explain that you feel the review is from a competitor and fake. Some websites will go to the effort of trying to get in touch with the person who posted the review and will actually remove the review if they do not get a response.
If a negative review stays on the internet and you have responded accordingly, you should then try and bury this as quickly as you can. If you have one negative review with five positive reviews about it, then your on-line reputation will remain good.
As much as possible you should be encouraging happy patients to post positive reviews on-line about you and your practice. Currently you don’t need hundreds of these, but just a few really genuine ones. You will intuitively know which patients to ask to do this. When you get a patient who is overjoyed with your work then this is the time to suggest they post a review on Google Reviews etc..
These reviews also help with SEO as Google builds up a Reputational Score on your practice over a period of time and this is one of the many things that can help your Google ranking.
If you have any questions regarding the topics in Marketing Matters or your marketing needs generally, please feel free to call the team at IDM – this stuff is our life and our passion, so we would love to answer any of your marketing questions.