Online Reviews Dos & Don’ts

Here are some quick tips to get you started with online reviews:

• Do let people know you want to hear their opinions and are active on these sites.
• Don’t spam your patients with requests for them to write reviews. You don’t want your otherwise happy patients to feel like you are just a money-making business only interested in using them to drum up more business. Remind patients gently and with gratitude around the time of an appointment and that should be enough.
• Do listen to the feedback that you receive – if a patient complains about the lack of waiting room reading materials, you can remedy that pretty quickly. Or if your receptionist is getting positive feedback, you can let her/him know to keep up the good work!
• Don’t offer incentives for patients to write reviews, such as a free cleaning or discount. This is against Google’s policy for reviewing online and could lead to a penalty.
• Do monitor the reviews and respond quickly to any negative comments.
• Don’t tell your patients what they should say in reviews.
• Do encourage patients to be honest and share their own thoughts.
• This is obvious, but don’t write fake reviews or pay someone to write reviews for your business. Not only is this against the rules, it could also severely damage your business’s reputation.

Is there something we missed? Let us know!