According to a Nielsen Report, reviews posted online on sites like Yelp, Google, Health Grades and Vitals have become a trusted source of information for consumers looking to make buying decisions with 70% of consumers saying the trust what is written.
What does this mean for medical practices and businesses?
A few years ago medical practices and businesses could ignore online reviews since many consumers didn’t trust reviews. Additionally review sites weren’t frequently visited. That is no longer the case. Reviews are displayed right along with search results. Yelp results are now displayed right within Yahoo searches and Google features their own reviews within search results.
How to ensure your medical practice or business is featured positively
Since online reviews are so important and trusted, having a strategy to manage and promote positive reviews is necessary.
- Be sure to know what your customers or patients are saying. Monitor your reviews manually or through a third party tool like Reputation Health’s monitoring solution
- Respond to reviews in a positive and constructive manner. Don’t make the matter worse. In medical practices be sure to keep in mind HIPAA regulations.
- Encourage positive reviews from customers or patients who are happy. Creating reminder cards, sending emails or other methods to remind your customer to provide a rating are critical.
- Look for trends in any complaints and solve the core issue. If customers are complaining about an employee, a procedure or another aspect of your business solving the issue once and for all can eliminate future complaints and help resolve the initial complaints.