How To Get More Reviews On Autopilot
Getting patient reviews is a requirement for a successful medical practice nowadays. But many doctors fail to ask for them consistently and regularly. Here's how to change that for good.
Jul 23, 2022 •
Did you know 77% of people use online reviews when looking for a new doctor?
And patients who had a negative experience are 20 times more likely to leave a review than patients who had a positive one? According to Yelp, more than 4 out 5 negative reviews have nothing to do with the medical care! But they affect your overall rating just as much.
Which is why smart doctors make a habit of intentionally asking for reviews.
If you read that line and thought: “I always ask for reviews but never seem to get them…”, then this essay is for you.
You get reviews by making it easy for patients to give you one!
I often receive good service at places I frequent.
Yet I rarely review these places online. Why? Because I’d have to pull out my phone, search for them in Google, leave a rating, and then write a review. You see, it’s not that I don’t want to review them; it’s just too cumbersome.
And your patients feel the same.
So here is how you can make things easier for everyone involved, and you can set it up in a few hours and forget about it:
1. Claim your profile on Google, Yelp, Facebook, Vitals, Etc.
Claim and verify your profile on these sites. It’s very easy and you must do it in order to respond to your reviews, add contact information, photos, etc.
2. Set up an Off-Boarding Automation in your marketing platform
Don’t leave it up to memory. Automate the process by adding it to your marketing platform.
I use Ontraport and set up an automation that triggers as soon as a patient completes their visit. It sends them an SMS with the direct link to a Google profile and asks them for a review. It also sends them an email with the same link and two or three examples of other reviews patients have written so they can customize these and not start from scratch.
After testing it out extensively with our and our clients’s patients, we’ve learned to ask for reviews only in one profile instead of sending the link to Google, Facebook, Yelp, Vitals, etc.
3. Monitor all review sites and make sure to respond to every review
Most negative reviews have nothing to do with clinical outcomes — they are related to wait times, problems with insurance, expensive copays, billing issues, etc.
For extra points, we send a personalized message to those who took the time to leave us a review.
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