Positive reviews about your practice make your prospective patients feel more satisfied with making their decision to visit your dental office for the services you offer. However, things may not go as expected and the patients get disappointed with their experience.
Many businesses out there are afraid of letting anyone publicly criticize their services because they fear the consequences. And that’s understandable but negative reviews aren’t that bad.
Negative reviews make you look more reliable. A study found that about 68% of customers trust reviews more when they see both positive and negative ratings. However, you might question what is the best way to respond to negative patient reviews. Simply respond to the reviews, that’s all that you need to do.
We got some tips for you for responding to negative reviews-
1.Respond on time
You should promptly respond to negative reviews as ignoring them isn’t a good option. Timely responses make the viewers seem like your practice prioritizes patient experience, trying to improve them, and are prepared to do anything that it takes to resolve any patient concerns.
2. Show sympathy
Regardless of your fault, in your response, you should recognize the issue and apologize. By doing this, you are outreaching patients with a positive message and at the same time, your sympathetic response will be meaningful to the patient.
3. Avoid canned responses
You are making a huge mistake if you are using templated responses to reply to all the reviews. To the readers, it might look like you don’t value or take your customers seriously. On the other hand, personalized replies to the patient reviews emphasize your concerns about the patient feedback.
4. Offer an Explanation
Often you could have valid reasons that might have upset the patient. Thereby, giving explanations in such scenarios makes the readers aware you have looked into the problem that gives context as to what might have happened.
5. Keep the conversation offline
Especially in an online setting, it’s sometimes difficult to break through patients. The customer might be infuriated even when you apologize and show sympathy. At this point, you should not let the conversation turn into them trying to fight with you publicly. The solution here is to tell them you would like to resolve the issue and they can call your office to get detailed information.
6. Thank the patient for their feedback
You can thank a patient even for negative feedback. Though they might have criticized you can always learn and adjust to negative feedback, gradually bad reviews won’t remain consistent as before. If the patient encounters the same bad experience again then you are going to lose them for sure. When they mention specifically and make you know what didn’t go well, you can use it to improve future visits.
7. Do not request to delete reviews
No business or practice is ever perfect. If there is no negative rating or feedback written for you then customers might suspect censorship. If you handle the situation properly, there is a chance that the patient might remove/delete it afterward.Even if they don’t delete it, viewers can notice how much you cared about the patient to make things right.
Customer Review Software
Sometimes things go out of control and some patients may have a bad experience during their visit to your office. It is important to keep an eye on both positive and negative reviews and respond to them on time. Controlling all such review management tasks is made easier with the help of review generator technology. You can use our business reputation management software that helps generate new reviews, monitor customer reviews, block fake reviews, and boost your online reputation.
