Dr. Len Tau gives guidance on how to respond to negative reviews in a positive way.
Dr. Len Tau discusses how to soothe the sting of a negative review
No matter how much we try, negative reviews are inevitable. Every practice gets them. It’s only a matter of time. And with how hard we work as dentists to serve patients well, negative reviews can sting.
Naturally, many dentists fear that each negative review will cause them to lose patients or turn away potential new patients. We all know how important reviews are to attracting new patients to your practice. Customers care about them. Almost 80% of consumers trust them as much as a personal referral. But that doesn’t mean one or two negative reviews will destroy your practice.
While it’s possible for a potential patient or two to be turned away by a negative review, one or two negative reviews hardly ever cause that result. In fact, what you do in response to negative reviews is much more likely to impact your patient base than the negative review itself.
So what do you do when you get the inevitable negative review?
Don’t get emotional
Pause, take a deep breath, and relax after you receive a negative review. It’s hard, I know. It can ruin your breakfast to see someone leave a negative review about a practice you work so hard at. It’s especially hard when the review is scathing, unwarranted, unfair, or even an outright lie. No matter how wrong the review is, you need to pause.
If you get too emotional, it can impact how you show up in your practice. It can impact how you treat your team. And it can impact how you and your team treat patients who come to your practice that day. And that can cause other patients to have poor experiences and lead to more negative reviews. It’s natural for a negative review to ruin your breakfast, but don’t let it ruin your lunch. And don’t let it impact how you show up to your practice that day.
Avoid the natural reaction to respond to the review right away
I have been very vocal about not publicly responding to the review. It can often be a recipe for disaster. The worst thing you can do is respond and get into a public back-and-forth with someone who was just upset enough to leave a negative review. If their review was unreasonable or wrong, there’s no predicting what else they’ll say in response to you if you reply publicly disagreeing with them. Even worse, dentists have inadvertently violated HIPAA in their responses to negative reviews. If you do respond, remember, you are not only responding to the reviewer, you are responding to everyone who will visit that review site in the future. Would your response make it more or less likely for patients to want you to be their dentist?
A much safer approach is to try to take the conversation offline. Contact the patient to try to correct the problem. Taking the time to personally connect with the patient who left the negative review will show you care and are looking to help resolve their concerns. Frequently, when you reach out personally, the patient will even take the bad review down or update it to make it positive.
Never try to get legitimate bad reviews taken down
If a review violates the rules of a platform, it’s possible to get a review taken down. However, many professionals, including in dentistry, have tried to take this concept way too far by requiring clients or patients to sign away their rights to reviews to the practice or by suing the reviewer in court for defamation or some other cause of action.
While those professionals might technically have the right to sue or own the reviews and get them taken down, it inevitably backfires and causes what’s called the Streisand Effect, a social phenomenon caused when someone tries to hide, remove, or censor negative information and it backfires, causing more attention to be paid to the negative information. It started when Barbra Streisand sued a website owner to get a photo of her residence removed from their website. Before the lawsuit, the image of her house had only been downloaded six times (two of which were by Streisand’s attorney). But the attention from the lawsuit caused the image to be seen more than 400,000 times.
The same thing happens when a dentist sues a patient about a review. Your lawsuit will bring press, and not the kind you want. Who wants to go to a dentist who sues a patient?
Focus on getting positive reviews to push down the negative ones (but don’t buy the positive reviews).
A steady stream of recent positive reviews will have a much greater impact on your practice than one or two negative ones, especially as time passes.
The best defense to negative reviews is a good offense. If you get a negative review, renew your focus on earning and asking patients to leave you positive reviews. A steady stream of recent positive reviews will have a much greater impact on your practice than one or two negative ones, especially as time passes.
However, make sure your positive reviews are legitimate and avoid buying them. Not only is it against the terms and conditions of most review sites, but it’s obvious to most people who will see your reviews that the reviews are from people who never visited your practice. Just ask patients for feedback after their appointments. After they tell you or your team members how wonderful their experience was, ask if they’ll be willing to leave you a review when they get back home or to the office if you send them a direct link to do so easily. Then follow up and send them a link to your page by text (preferable) a short time later for them to follow through on their promise to do so.
Continue those efforts until generating a steady flow of positive reviews is the norm for your practice. Then any negative reviews you receive will be quickly pushed down by all the positive things your patients have to say about you. When you do, having a few negative reviews among the positive ones can actually be a good thing, as it makes it clear to people reviewing it that your reviews are, in fact, real.
Negative reviews don’t have to define your practice. Read “The four imperatives of review syndication” by Diana Friedman to optimize your online review syndication strategy and achieve the most value for your practice. https://implantpracticeus.com/reviews/.
Len Tau, DMD, has dedicated his professional life to improving dentistry for both patients and other dentists. After purchasing the Pennsylvania Center for Dental Excellence in Philadelphia in 2007, Dr. Tau practiced full-time while consulting with other dental practices, training thousands of dentists about reputation marketing, leading the dental division of BirdEye, a reputation marketing platform, and hosting the popular Raving Patients podcast. He recently authored the book Raving Patients and the soon-to-be-released 100 Tips to 100 Reviews in 100 Days. In October 2021, Dr. Tau sold his dental practice but continues to practice 2 days per week while commuting from Parkland, Florida, where he has resided since October 2020. Dr. Tau lectures nationally and internationally on using internet marketing and social media; reputation marketing to make dental offices more visible and credible; and how to increase case acceptance. To reach Dr. Tau, email him at [email protected]
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Each one-hour virtual webinar moderated by MedMark Media is equivalent to one continuing education (CE) credit. Credit is available to all who register for the webinar and successfully complete a ten-question quiz through our publication’s online system.
Registrants can attend the webinar live at the specified date and time by using the GoToWebinar join link provided by email from any device with an internet connection. Using a laptop or desktop computer is recommended for best viewing the presentation. If you are using a mobile phone or tablet, we recommend using the GoToWebinar app instead of the web browser to improve ease of use for the webinar’s platform. Registrants will also have access to watch the replay at their own convenience through a link emailed to them within 24 hours of the specified live date and time which is hosted on our publication’s website.
If registrants would like to ask a question or receive further clarification, they can type their questions or comments in the question box of the webinar system. The moderator reminds the attendees multiple times before and after the presentation to use the question box. Questions are addressed at the end of the presentation for at least ten minutes. If any questions come in that are not able to be answered live in the time available, we give the question along with the registrant’s email address to the presenter for them to follow up directly.
Registrants will have to either sign in (previous webinar attendee) or sign up (first-time webinar attendee) for our CE quiz system on our publication’s website. Registrants of all CE webinars are allowed this account free of charge. The ten-question quiz is linked on the replay page below the video as well as available directly through the CE dashboard once the registrant is logged in.
Once the quiz is successfully completed, there is a button to download a PDF of the certificate. A copy of the CE certificate is also emailed to the address on file for the CE account. To ensure the deliverability of emails about CE credits, please:
Check the spam/junk folder in your email account for the email.
If the registrant is having trouble accessing either the live webinar, replay, CE quiz or certificate we are available to help by email, chat, and phone. We can provide simple steps with screenshots on how to navigate to and complete the Webinar CE quizzes.
Legal disclaimer: Webinar expires 2 years from the live date. The CE provider uses reasonable care in selecting and providing accurate content. The CE provided, however, does not independently verify the content or materials. Any opinions expressed in the materials is those of the presenter and not the CE provider. The instructional materials are intended to supplement but are not a substitute for the knowledge, skills, expertise, and judgment of a trained healthcare professional.