Why Your Direct Primary Care Practice Should Want More Reviews on Review Sites

The importance of responding to patients online could not be more prevalent as reviews continue to grow more than ever before. Aside from the fact that reviews from patients help others decide whether they should visit a Direct Primary Care practice or not, reviews are now more prevalent on search results pages—meaning a lot of eyes can see what is being said about your practice online.

With so many review websites out there, where does a physician even begin? Your practice may be afraid to manage customer reviews on review sites as you may not want to end up in one of these situations:

receive zero reviews
receive zero recent online reviews
receive negative online reviews
or, your practice simply has unmanaged online reviews across multiple review websites

Unfortunately, your practice is missing out. This lack of free online word of mouth is actually hurting your practice through inaction, because reputation drives conversion.

1) Business reviews and social posts help shape your company’s online reputation

In fact, one of the worst things you can do as a DPC physician is ignore your online reviews and social posts. As easy as it is to make a mistake when handling your practice’s online reputation, it can also be easy to recover if done properly (and with apology). While damage will inevitably happen, your practice can take steps to mitigate the degree of damage that can occur. The biggest mistake of all your company can make is not participating in helping to shape the conversation about your company online.

2) Business reviews provide valuable feedback for your business

While it can be easy for your practice to take negative comments to heart, it is important to recognize that reviews are constructive feedback. All in all, reviews are valuable feedback! They help your company gauge their performance and see how you can improve. There is always room for improvement and a lot can be learned even from positive business reviews. Through reviews, your practice can see which products or services you should be boasting, which needs work, and even discover which employees rock at customer service.

3) Your business reviews can now appear in search results

Search engines have caught on to the popularity of reviews and are now displaying them more prominently. So, if someone searches for your practice, there is a chance that reviews from review websites could be displayed on the search engine results pages. In Google’s markup—the annotated content that appears in search—of a company or product, business reviews and ratings can now be included in search results. In other words, when a user performs a search on Google, Google will find and possibly display review summaries from online business reviews and consumer ratings. Below is an example of how business reviews now showing up in search results.

How can Direct Primary Care physicians get more reviews?

There are a variety of methods your practice can employ to ask for more business reviews, including emailing patients manually, using surveys, asking patients to leave reviews with codes and review sites on their receipts, or utilizing review generation software to automate the business review process.

Three important review website management tips:

1) Remember to add or claim listings on the top review sites

It’s a good idea to add or claim a listing or business profile on the most popular review sites (unless your business doesn’t fit with the niche), correct your business’s listing information and start getting more business reviews!

2) Your business should keep asking customers for reviews

Asking the average patient for a review can be hard work. Granted, it is often easiest to get reviews from patients that are either really happy or really unhappy with the level of service they were provided. Your practice should always remember to ask as patients are busy creatures and will not remember unless they are asked or reminded to leave feedback.

3) Customers are more open to leaving reviews on review sites

Why not just ask for business reviews or testimonials on your business’s website? Well, asking patients to leave a review on your business’s website seems a lot more screened and inauthentic than simply asking patients to leave reviews on a trusted review site. Since the review site is a third party, it feels more open for patients to leave an honest, unbiased review.

Business reviews are here to stay

In conclusion, there’s no getting away from business reviews. The good news is that there are methods to get more business reviews as well as effectively managing reviews from patients. Also, businesses needn’t fear negative online reviews, as there are ways to negate the effect of negative reviews.

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Why Your DPC Practice Should Want More Reviews on Review Sites