As a dental practitioner, it’s critical to monitor your online reviews. When prospective patients in your area go to seek out a new dentist or specialist, they will come across your reviews online. They are able to see how other patients have rated you – both good ratings and bad. As a dentist, and business owner, you have to take ownership of your online reputation and it’s best to have a strategy in place to do so.
Getting Started
The best way to get started is for the business owner to write a review his or herself. If you’ve never written a review for a local business, take the time to write one for another business or practice. This will help you understand the process so that you can see what your patients go through when they are leaving reviews.
Get Staff Involved
Once you have gotten familiar with how to leave reviews, reach out to your staff to get them involved. If the staff knows that the doctor has already gone through the review process, they are more likely to get on board and join in. Ask the staff to leave a review of another business that they have dealt with in the past. Then they too will gain an understanding of the process.
Ask for Reviews
Now that everyone in the office knows how the review process works, different staff at the practice can ask family or friends who are also patients to leave reviews. This can be left to the hygienist, front desk, patient care coordinator, doctor, etc. depending on how the office is set up. Asking friends and family helps the staff get accustomed to requesting reviews without the added stress of asking new patients. Once the staff is comfortable, it’s easy to reach out and ask for help.
Incentive Staff
You can’t incentivize patients to leave reviews, but you can incentivize staff to ask more patients and to increase the amount of reviews you have on different sites. Make it a contest. Whichever staff member is responsible for the most reviews gets a $50 gift card to a local business, such as a manicure/pedicure salon, restaurant or spa. That way they will feel more inspired to ask patients who are happy with your practice to leave a review.
Managing your online reputation is an important part of owning a dental practice. It doesn’t take much work to get a review strategy in place and start boosting your local business!