Your Reviews are Your Reputation
Date: May 16, 2014Category: Author: Lori Shepherd
What if your practice were nothing but its reviews? Do you think even YOU would go there? I mean really. Consider what your practice looks like to a stranger. There’s the one five-star review you received two years ago that you wish would stay at the top of searches, the sparkling review you had Aunt Mae write for you, who forgot to sign into the fake account you made for her, or that one pesky negative review that seems to always be listed first despite several attempts to drown it out.
So what did you find? Still willing to walk in your own front door?
If the answer is “no,” “maybe,” or even “my patients need to learn to spell,” then your practice needs some serious reviews management.
Well, I am your reviews professor.
Here is your reviews lesson:
QUIT AVOIDING ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ONLINE MARKETING TOOLS OF YOUR PRACTICE.
Let me elaborate.
Lesson 1: We will now be accepting candy from strangers
I can already hear you talking to yourself, “Well there is that one review, but that guy was completely unreasonable!” or there’s “She wasn’t even one of our patients!” The bottom line is nobody knows what YOU know about the reviews and unfortunately, they are going to trust the words of a random stranger more than they are yours. The reason they will trust this stranger is because leading review sites (rhyme with doogle and felp) are making them less stranger-like. How? By moving them in to the virtual house next door. With more personal profile accountability, review sites are digitally introducing reviewers to your patients with a warm basket of cookies, big sea-blue eyes, and trustworthy dimples.
Quit cringing, this is not a bad thing. You and your practice should really take comfort in the fact that reviews are being made more authentic on the web. It means unverifiable reviews will be taken less seriously (goodbye random shouting guy) and you will have the ability to respond to them (hello really intelligent thing you meant to say on the spot). When you start engaging yourself with your online fan/not-so-fan club, people will start to trust you as much as they do the random stranger because you will be moving yourself into the house on the other side with a bigger pool and a petting zoo.
Lesson 2: If you are considering using a reviews service, do your homework.
Find out exactly how your reviews are being obtained and exactly where they are going. Beware of sites that say they will take all of your reviews and spread them to other online review sites. If you remember, top review sites want reviews from users who log in to their personal account with that site. This means that it is impossible for them to authenticate the ones coming to them in bulk from a service provider.
Find out where they are pushing the reviews. Certain services own their own reviews sites. The site they are putting these reviews on is paid by their clients, Google doesn’t pay people for their reviews, trusting sites that do is counter intuitive. These reviews go mostly unseen anyway because they are not highly ranked on the search engines.
Be careful when putting reviews on your site. We actually don’t call it a “review” when a patient has a comment posted on your site – we call it a “testimonial.” Here is the difference:
1. You have editorial control over your website. People have a natural skepticism over comments that you are publishing yourself. Are they truly honest? Think of Facebook. Would you ever put up a photo of yourself losing a knife fight with a bear? Even if the answer is, ‘how big is the bear?’ you generally only put up the best to show that you are the best, even if you’re not. A review, to be trusted, needs to be published by an unbiased third party.
2. Once a patient has written a comment that you have posted on your website, they are unlikely to then go onto another independent review service and post additional comments. So by publishing testimonials, you are hurting your efforts to get genuine independent reviews.
Lesson 3: I’m making these lessons up; don’t do the same with your reviews
Beware of the guy nobody has anything bad to say about, getting five stars all the time should not be your goal. Your goal should be obtaining honest reviews that show who you are EVEN when reviews are not so positive. It shows that you take reviews seriously.
Don’t be afraid to be honest. People are getting more and more sympathetic every day, except for your significant other. They look great no matter what, remember that. Potential clients are getting good at looking at a bad review and saying, “that person was unreasonable,” and they are also willing to look past it if other reviews do not support that reviewer. Don’t underestimate the intelligence of your clientele by ignoring not-so-great reviews. RESPOND. Let potential patients know that you cared enough to reach out to them.
Be careful, and don’t get into a back and forth with an upset patient. If your rebuttal requires more than two well crafted responses, you may never please that person. This is also OK. You cannot, and will not, please everyone, it’s impossible (except for here at Infinity Dental Web). Keep up on it. Monitor your reputation, because that’s what your patients are doing.
If you have control over your reviews, don’t change or manipulate them. All your reviews will start to sound the same if they go through your screening process each time.
Lesson 4: All the extras I could not make up a lesson for
Don’t flood Google with reviews. If your review tactics are successful, spread them over all top review sites. Google will trust these sites as well (they’ll even tell potential patients to check these sites out).
Get current reviews! That one good review, from that one time will not suffice; you want to show continuity of good service.
Be a good business! This should be self evident, but businesses are still not putting the emphasis on customer service they should be. This does not mean set someone up to handle potential angry clients or creating a long answer message that you think somehow increases client morale (they don’t, they’re annoying). This means creating the atmosphere in your business that you want to see reflected in your reviews.
Take-away
If you’ve learned nothing from this lesson, remember this: take control of your online reputation by managing the most important thing that influences it: your reviews.