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Don’t just manage your reputation, grow from it. Use patient reviews to learn what’s working and where there’s room for improvement. This is a great opportunity to make changes and improve your practice.
Why are reviews important?
1. Helps patients build confidence in your practice
Unlike large, established companies, most potential patients don’t know what to expect from an aesthetic medical practice. They may be hesitant to hand over their money to you and place their wellbeing in your hands. That’s when reviews come in handy. These reviews legitimize your practice and give potential patients a better understanding of what you do and why you’re superior to your competitors.
2. Helps you see your shortcomings
Reviews, both positive and negative, can be used to identify any areas of your practice that could use improvements, such as customer service or procedural technique. Furthermore, you can use online reviews to win back lost patients. By knowing why they left can give you the opportunity to fix the issue, make amends, and sometimes even convince them to come back.
3. Helps you see where you’re excelling
At the same time, reviews can let you know exactly where you excelling. That may not change your day-to-day operations, but it can give you something to boast about when marketing your practice. For example, if your patients are constantly raving about your bedside manner, then use that as a selling point.
4. Helps with lead generation
Review aggregator sites like Yelp and Google have proven to be powerful resources for lead gen because many potential patients use these sites when conducting research. That’s why you need to have a great overall rating on Google and other review sites. These sites have become a breeding ground for leads. To get started, make sure that you fill out your profile completely, ask for reviews, and respond to each and every review.
How to use reviews to improve your practice
Active participation in reputation management platforms is a step in the right direction, but simply reading and responding to reviews is not enough. Review sites can be used as an extremely powerful tool in improving your medical practice, your procedures/treatments, and business operations. Every practice should take the time to aggregate their reviews into a spreadsheet to find common themes or major issues that can be improved upon.
Common themes can mean receiving great reviews on your procedures, but consistent complaints about your customer service. This is an opportunity to pinpoint exactly what the customer service issues are and make improvements to your patient experience.
Additionally, if you’re receiving consistent negative reviews about a specific procedure or treatment. There are a number of actions you can take if this becomes an issue such as improving your technique, making a personnel change to a practitioner that is more competent, or even eliminating the treatment or procedure from your service offerings.
On the other hand, if you receive even a single negative review that can be considered a “red flag,” this is something that should be addressed immediately. If there was a botched procedure or any issue that could have a profound negative effect on a patient’s wellbeing, don’t waste any time fixing the issue and remedying the situation with the patient.
Things like this can make or break a practice, which is another reason why it’s so important to be vigilant in monitoring reviews. If you don’t keep a close eye on your reputation, things like this can slide by and sink your practice overnight.