Getting a negative review is not a fun experience, but it needs to be addressed. Here’s our step-by-step guide to responding:
- Take a moment and a deep breath. You do NOT need to respond immediately, though timeliness is crucial.
- Read the review, in full. Pick up on nuances.
- Investigate: Look up their chart and notes. Gather information from employees.
- Step out of defensiveness and into self-realization: Take a step back from the immediate need to defend your business. You are NOT answering this review to provide an explanation or defend your practice. Sometimes, doing the right thing for your business is not always the thing you want or feel is fair.
- Call them. Calling a disgruntled patient is the best course of action. Be a good listener and see if you can resolve the issue. If it gets settled, skip to step #8. If it doesn’t, or they don’t comply with step #8, continue through this list to craft your reply.
- Be an active listener: Acknowledge their review. Apologize for their negative experience. You are not apologizing for anything you did wrong, simply for their experience. Wording here is EVERYTHING! Provide additional context where necessary.
- Offer to make it right: Extend an invite for them to come to the office again. This might mean offering a full or partial refund.
- Gently ask for reconsideration, if appropriate: If a patient takes you up on making it right, try and subtly say something like, “I’m a small-business owner and reviews have a big impact on my business. I hope you can see my desire to refund the difference as a step toward making things right. I hope you will consider updating your review and rating to reflect that.” If said patient doesn’t do it, don’t push again.
- Be proactive: Be ready for a negative review and have a plan in place to generate positive reviews across multiple platforms such as Google, Yelp! and Facebook. Dilute negative reviews with positive ones. Stop hoping for reviews and ask patients who had a great experience to leave a review. Or, use a review generating platform like Podium.com.
Read this blog post on wonderistagency.com or contact Laura Maly at [email protected].
Any thoughts on this one? We had a negative review on Angie’s list. Just a one star stating patient would not return. Problem was that person was not our patient, did not visit our office on the date she referenced. Angie’s list people would not take it down, suggesting I contact person. Upon phone contact she stated that a friend of hers that worked at another office near ours suggested that she do this to help their office look better. She said she was too embarrassed to take it down. Angie’s list people stuck to their policy of never taking down a post. I don’t think it hurts us as we have other 5 star reviews, but this is upsetting as it seems anyone can outright lie and hurt a business.
Hi Dr. Guros! Wow, that’s a tricky one and also a pretty terrible thing to do to someone else’s business! Here is what I would do, it’s kind of a 3 part-er. I would call this woman back again and I would just be honest with her. I would say something to the effect of, “I honestly haven’t been able to get our last conversation out of my head. I understand you mentioned you were too embarrassed to remove the review you were asked to post but I’d like to explain to you how this impacts me. I am a small business owner and reviews and opinions of my patients are incredibly important to my business and to me personally. I did nothing to you to deserve this review and you are not a patient of mine. I would like to appeal to the person I think you are and ask that you remove this review as it is unfair and unwarranted and your decision to do this is now negatively affecting my business. I feel that I am justified in my ask and I hope that you can realize that despite your embarrassment, I’d like to understand my embarrassment at having a 1 star review stuck on Angie’s List forever from someone who doesn’t know me or recieved care from my practice.” If that doesn’t get the review deleted, I would then consider reaching out to the office that employs the woman that asked the reviewer to do this and ask the doctor to have a candid conversation about the employee and have the employee ask her to remove it. The last and final thought is to threaten legal action (a cease and desist?) and the easiest thing for everyone to do would be to pull it, though I would only say to do this if you feel really passionately about it. Happy to provide more information if need be. You can reach me at [email protected].