How to turn negative reviews into a positive

29 August 2022 | | Blog, Marketing

No practice likes receiving negative feedback, but negative reviews don’t need to be daunting. It all comes down to the way you approach them. You can then quickly change the things you’re not doing as well to improve your overall performance.

In order to deal with negative feedback, you need to know when and where it happens. As part of your ongoing management with Dental Design we will inform you of when you receive a negative Google Review so that you can deal with it as soon as possible.

You can also use a social media monitoring tool like Hootsuite to check for negative mentions of your practice online across multiple platforms.

How to respond

It’s essential to have a system in place to deal with negative reviews. It’s said that 45% percent of consumers are more likely to visit a business if it responds to negative reviews.

It’s also very important to respond to reviews promptly. Don’t let a bad review go unaddressed for days, or even weeks as that sends a clear message to patients.

Reviews are usually short and may not go into the exact details of what happened at their appointment. Some reviews are unclear and leave out important details. For example, what day it occurred and what steps were taken to resolve the issue.

Start each response by thanking them for taking the time to make you aware of the problem and offer to make amends to anyone who leaves a justified negative review. Always address the problem, and share relevant contact information so you can attempt to resolve the issue.

It may be true that the negative experience was not your fault, but don’t lay the blame on the patient. Focus on what you are able to do to fix the problem.

If you need any help with responding to a review then get in touch with your account manager and we can help as best we can.

Reporting reviews

While some reviews are constructive, others may be more of a rant without much substance. The best way to deal with this type of review is to report it to the platform. On Google, you can flag reviews and ask them to remove the negative comments (However, this can often be a hard task).

Learn from reviews

A negative review is an opportunity to learn and use the feedback to fix that mistake and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

If you’re able to resolve the patient’s issue to their satisfaction, consider asking them to update their review to reflect that. Seeing that you were able to turn a complaint into a satisfied patient will improve your reputation online and make people trust that their concerns will be addressed if they were to join your practice.

Handled well, negative reviews can be a prime opportunity to connect with patients and improve your day to day operations at the practice.

Build positive Google Reviews

We can help you free up your time so that you can focus on delivering great patient experiences, resulting in positive reviews and increased traffic.

Our review building service, EasyReview Pro, provides an easy and automated way to gain more reviews. Our ‘Autoreview’ option sends emails to patients you have had an appointment with that day, resulting in an excellent rate of new reviews, with no need for face to face contact.

If you would like more information about this service, please contact us on 01202 677277.

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