As dentists, you know the ins and outs of oral healthcare. Show your patients your expertise when you craft an online presence that speaks for your team’s remarkable skills. We live in a day and age where how your business appears online is just as crucial as a healthy smile.
Patient reviews wield colossal power, shape perceptions about your practice, and influence potential clients. Managing your online reputation is an art. This guide will cover five essential strategies that you can implement when it comes to navigating public feedback.
- Review response strategies
- Identifying patient review themes
- Response guidelines
- Monitoring online feedback
- Implementing a consistent review system
Join us on this journey, where we will craft a digital reputation that mirrors the excellence of your skill and efforts as a hardworking dentist. People are talking, and potential partners, current patients, and future clients are all tuning in. Get ready to listen and respond!
#1: Patient review response strategy
Navigate the digital landscape with aplomb when you give yourself some direction. That means crafting a detailed patient review response strategy and using it at every turn. Studies show that over half of the people who leave reviews do, indeed, want to hear back from the business they were addressing.
A well-structured strategy ensures consistency in promoting positive comments and addressing negative concerns with empathy.
Use:
- Set aside weekly or monthly times for your team to delve into public and internal reviews.
- Set roles for everyone involved in the project—delegate, delegate, delegate!
- Established guidelines and preapproved language that maintains your polished image and meets the patient’s expectations.
- The development of responses to common scenarios that you can use when responding to patient reviews.
Your patient review response strategy doesn’t have to be set in stone, but it should be very clear and well-organized from the outset. As your team learns more about responding to patient reviews, you’ll likely have to tweak your strategy, and that’s a good thing!
This process demands growth and flexibility. The potential to use those skills and the power of patient review responses is ten times bigger when accompanied by an established strategy. Take the opportunity to foster patient trust in your expertise and enhance your reputation with intention .
#2: Pinpointing themes
Discern recurring patterns in your patient reviews. Your team will become empowered to craft better responses when you identify common themes. Creating actionable plans based on the tangible themes you find increases insight into patients’ needs, demonstrates responsiveness, and shows commitment to processing and understanding patient reviews in a focused way.
Here are common categories to consider:
- Communication and explanation: Patients may mention the clarity and consistency of treatment explanations or how well-informed they feel about procedures.
- Wait time and scheduling: Look for any reviews that mention appointment scheduling, follow-up info, or wait times spent in your practice.
- Staff demeanor: Building interpersonal relationships really matters in healthcare settings! Use this category to adjust behavior with additional training or to reward stellar service performance.
- Cleanliness and comfort: Reviews that fall under this section are easy to respond to in ensuing actions. Be the change people hear, see, and feel.
- Results: Positive or adverse comments are a pervasive theme in dental work. Reviewing and responding to this feedback can help you provide the best quality care possible.
- Equipment: Patient reviews may cover feelings about what your practice is using. When you sort reviews into this category, you can gain insight into what equipment your practice may want to invest in.
Position your practice as one that actively listens and adapts to patient feedback as you recognize themes throughout the reviews you receive. This will help you create appropriate responses that improve your online look and build trust.
#3: Response guidelines to patient reviews
Refine your online presence with response guidelines your team can utilize. Patient feedback is a critical part of a practice—don’t let this opportunity pass you bybecause you weren’t sure how to respond.
Consistency and professionalism in addressing diverse feedback is essential. That’s why you should create best practices before responding to patient reviews.
These guidelines can and should remain relatively flexible because that shows you are actually listening and processing the patient’s unique needs. 
Still, following a general template or guide will help your team craft the most effective patient review responses. Your responses should not be generic, or else it will look like they are pre-scripted or written by a bot Follow a few rules of thumb and continue to grow your guidelines as the reviews flow in.
Some good general rules for responding to reviews:
- Express gratitude for positive reviews and negative feedback alike. You’re here and responding as a way to learn.
- Acknowledge concerns directly.
- Tailor your tone to match the language and sentiment of the reviews. This personalized touch increases effective communication.
- Provide information on next steps and how your practice is addressing the issues raised.
- Apologize when necessary and offer solutions to how patient experiences can differ during their next visit.
Adhere to patient review guidelines and let them develop as your expertise grows. This encourages patients to share their experiences. Responding to reviews in a professional and planned manner enhances your practice’s credibility.
People may live online but still crave that human touch or attention, especially regarding their oral health.
#4: Monitoring online feedback
Let all that remarkable technology out there work for you, when monitoring public patient reviews! Google Alerts, social media listening tools, and review platforms are good ways to keep an eye on online feedback received.
This also, very importantly, allows you to respond in a timely manner. Attention spans are short, and you should always strike while the iron is hot to show you are really on top of gathering patient reviews and investing in responding.
Monitoring means timeliness, which can also mitigate potential negative impacts.
Create a calendar as part of your patient review response strategy, and include weekly or even twice weekly times to sweep the web for all public reviews. You may want to do this even more often, depending on the volume of public feedback you receive.
Additionally, monitoring helps your practice identify trends, make proactive adjustments, and tailor communication strategies for better outcomes. You can also address these things when you respond to public patient reviews. Monitoring means more knowledge, and knowledge is power.
#5: Implementing a consistent review system
You won’t be able to respond to reviews using all this blog’s awesome advice if you’re not getting them in the first place! Use an automated email or text messaging system asking for internal feedback promptly after a patient’s visit.
Don’t be shy about sending reminders, but don’t be annoying, either. Asking for an 
internal review first, often as part of a follow-up communication or scheduling their next appointment, is a great way to receive initial feedback.
From there, positive reviewers can be asked to post their words to a public site. Google Reviews is a leader in the space, as are Yelp, Facebook, and Instagram. These platforms are easy to use and allow you to respond directly to reviewers using the strategies outlined in this blog.
Negative reviews received in this first step can be stopped from appearing online when you talk to unhappy patients directly. Or, if they go straight to a public platform without filling out the first internal review, you must respond there professionally and kindly, and apologetically if necessary. Offer solutions, and don’t be afraid to reach out directly. Unhappy patients may be willing to remove negative reviews once they understand you are working to improve just for them.
One last tip—pre-set surveys that cover what you want to know more about or an already created questionnaire make it easier for patients to review your practice. Leaving a blank box where they can share their testimonials is great, but doing some of the work for them by creating a rating system immediately will get you more feedback.
How Intiveo Fits In
Intiveo’s highly customizable patient engagement software can help you manage public feedback like a pro. Automated reminder systems and personalized follow ups help patients keep your practice and their oral health in mind. You can also use Social Reviews tools to ask for reviews, prompt patient feedback, and ultimately increase your positive online visibility.
Since what we build is already automated and quickly tailored to your needs, your team can spend more time and emotional investment in actually responding to reviews.
When patients take the time to share their thoughts, you should respond. This builds trust and patient loyalty. Intiveo is just here to make that process a little easier!
Streamline the development of your online presence through patient review response strategies. Learn more about how Intiveo can help you do just that when you book a meeting today.
