Sometimes, despite your best efforts, a patient will have a less-than-positive visit and write a bad review. While critical reviews are never welcome, when one occasionally gets posted there’s no reason to despair.
Online reviews have been around long enough that more people discern they are only one person’s opinion—an opinion which they may or may not find valid. Recently I purchased a milk frother for homemade lattes. The reviews were mixed, and I was interested to use the clues to reveal the person reviewing the product.
When you receive negative online reviews, consider these 3 things:
1. Credibility:
Is the review unprofessional, and does it contain obvious grammatical and punctuation errors? If so, people reading the review will not see it as credible, and they won’t give it merit. This shouldn’t pose a problem for your business.
2. 80/20 Rule:
Making everyone happy all of the time is impossible, so expect to have a few negative reviews. In fact, if you don’t have a couple of complaints, beware. Some companies have been known to fabricate reviews, so a list of only stellar reviews can seem too good to be true and turn off potential patients. They want a realistic picture of how you handle difficult problems. It’s OK for your practice to have an 80/20 balance of good/bad reviews. Just make sure you take the time to respond to the negative ones.
3. Hire a company that generates reviews from your patients:
This is the best approach to swing the positives in your direction. Companies like DemandForce, SolutionReach, and Weave work for the optometry practice to generate hundreds of reviews from your patients. If your practice is functioning relatively well, you should be able to generate many more positives than negatives. The key is getting the satisfied ones to say something.
If you are the typical type-A CEO of your practice, negative online reviews can consume your mind. Instead of letting them get to you, work to proactively generate positive feedback surveys from your patients. When you have happy patients submitting credible reviews, the occasional negative ones will only be a small glitch in your smoothly operating machine.
