Online reputation is a booming topic of conversation. Many dental practices are finding quite a bit of success in collecting online reviews from happy patients, and managing/hedging negative reviews from dissatisfied patients.
If done correctly, dentists can increase their online exposure through search engine optimization (SEO), earn the online trust of potential patients, and build a balanced presence on popular consumer review sites such as Google, Yelp, and Facebook, and industry-related review sites such as HealthGrades, RateMDs, and ZocDoc.
As per the recent survey, online patient reviews play a pivotal role for your dental practice. 90% of the online visitors looking for a dentist, base their decision on the patient reviews posted on trusted websites. Acquiring new patients is imperative for your business and it is essential the dentist make an effort to get their patient to review them and provide their dental appointment experience.
Your potential patients who are new to your services, will research you online and the first that can affect their decision is the patient reviews. Above all, many people have dental phobia, and it gives them an encouragement to visit the dentist after finding out other patients had an incredible experience at the appointment.
Have a look at the Local Patient Survey - chart below
Conclusions Drawn:
>> 88% of the online visitors looking for a dentist have read reviews to determine the credibility of the dentist (vs. 85% in 2013)
>> 39% read reviews on a regular basis (vs. 32% in 2013)
>> Only 12% do not read reviews (vs. 15% in 2013)
Nearly 9 in 10 visitors looking for a dentist have read online reviews to choose their dentist, and 39% do so on a regular basis.
Here a few reasons as to why getting reviews from your patients is so important for your dental practice.
1. It’s Simple and Free to Set Up.
The good news is that most review systems are free to set up. Most of the websites allow the dentists to list their practice and accumulate patient reviews online.
2. Credibility of Your Practice
Since 90% of people trust online reviews, it enhances your credibility as a dentist. It removes hesitation and helps the visitor chose his/her dentist.
3. Increased Traffic to Your Website
Listing your dental practice in local directories and publisher listing helps creating powerful backlinks to your dental website through high ranking and trusted websites such as yelp, foursquare, local pages, super pages, trip advisor will provide search engines, such as Google and Bing, with an indication that your brand is trustworthy. Being listed in high ranking websites also increases your trust factor with search engines.
4. Building Relationship with Your Patients
Online review sites are sometimes used by dental offices to stay in touch with their patients It is a good platform to get to know about what your patients think, and how you can continue to improve your service, and in turn, your relationship with your customers.
This can also lead to following up with positive feedback, negative comments or unhappy patients. This is crucial as it shows that you do not ignore your customers and care about their opinion, regardless of it being good or bad.
So How do You Get Your Patients to Rate You?
1. Ask Only Legitimate Patients to Post Reviews.
>> Fake reviews shall not work. They are easy to find out.
>> The real task is to get the happy patients to tell the truth in the right place.
2. Request -Don’t Pressure – Happy Patients to Rate their Experiences.
Request reviews from happy patients. Pressuring or providing incentive to your patients to comment publicly is a big NO. Such an approach also endangers the trust that physician-patient relationship share.
The best approach is simply to ask your most satisfied patients and if they like you they would be happy to provide their feedback and rate you as a dentist.
3. Allow Patients Constant Feedback Opportunities.
Give your patients a chance both to compliment and complain. You should be open to complain. Eventually negative comments from your patients will help you improve the quality of your service.
The goal is to hear them out before they can publicly express their complain and resolve it before it turns into a star rating for the dentist.
4. Make Sure to Answer Critical Reviews Publicly.
Despite your best efforts, some negative comments go online to public.
As unfair as such protests may be, practices still should deal with them.
From time to time when you can present supporting documentation, you may be able to convince the website publisher to remove untrue comments about your practice.
A review of a doctor on Google+ or Vitals.com is even more believable. So when a complaint shows up on one of these sites, the dentist should make an effort to answer it
5. Deliver Top-Quality Customer Service.
Deliver top quality customer service in your practice. This objective should be self evident. Sadly, we see plenty of practice cultures to the contrary.
6. Printed Instructions.
Other than your online website the process for the patients to post a review can be difficult. To increase the success rate for those that want to post a review, have clear written instruction.
7. Have Patient Fill it in The Waiting Room.
When the patient is waiting in your waiting room to see you, it is the best time to get them fill out a review. It’s fresh in their mind and they have some extra time. A great method is to use a tablet in your office and provide it to the patients. Google and others have an algorithm, which bans suspicion reviews that are coming from the same IP address within a certain time.
What Are the Most Powerful and Trusted Websites for Dental Patients Reviews?
1. Yelp
2. Health Grades.
3. Zoc Doc
5. vitals.com
Conclusion
Online reviews have become essential for any successful dental practice. They serve as a relatively inexpensive marketing strategy for attracting new patients, garnering the trust of future and current patients, and increasing your standing in local online search.
Building trust online is not an easy process, and it certainly doesn’t happen overnight, but the optimal time for dental practice owners to start cultivating a positive online reputation—and positioning themselves as local oral health care experts—is now. Those dentists who make the commitment today to foster a strong history of online patient reviews will create unstoppable momentum for their practices’ online marketing efforts for years to come.
If you have any questions, please contact us.
