Patient reviews can be an excellent tool for marketing in the physical therapy industry; however, most review sites have very strict rules regarding how you can obtain reviews. You cannot offer your patients a reward in exchange for a favourable view otherwise it could be removed from the review site and your practice could even be banned. Similarly, you cannot pay someone to put up fake reviews for your services. However, there are still ways to solicit reviews from your patients without going against the terms of use of the review sites. Let's take a closer look at those methods.
In order to make sure that you abide by the rules, it is important to understand them. Most people are guilty of not reading the terms and conditions published by websites before signing up for them. However, this is where you will find detailed explanations of the rules and regulations that you are agreeing to. If you don't know what you are agreeing to the it can be difficult to make sure that you don't fall foul of the rules. Some examples of what to look out for in the fine print include :
Yelp – The terms state that they actually discourage business owners from soliciting reviews from their customers.
Google – For Google reviews, it is clearly stated that incentives should not be offered in exchange for reviews.
The majority of review sites are likely to have similar clauses in their terms of service agreements. It can be frustrating, but there is a good reason for including these terms. While you may simply be thinking about the benefits of getting as many positive reviews, but if you try to take a step back from it and think logically you will understand that reviews are only worthwhile if they are offering an honest opinion that hasn't been swayed by a free gift!
The key to successfully obtaining these honest reviews which are not going to be flagged up as suspicious is to be tactful when requesting them from your patients. The ideal situation is that you would be able to identify which of your patients already have an account on one of the review sites and already be writing reviews about the services they use, but that is not always the case. With that in mind here are a few dos and don'ts for asking patients to review your PT clinic.
Do make it really easy for your patients to leave a review. As an example, you could send out an email to all of the patients on your clinic's database who have a Gmail address asking them for feedback on their most recent visit with a link to your Google page.
Don't ever ask for a positive review specifically, as this is against the terms of pretty much every review platform. It is important to get an honest and genuine review.
Do make sure that you are offering the type of customer experience which will encourage positive reviews from your patients. Start by making sure you are offering your patients excellent customer service. Happy patients are more likely to offer you favourable reviews online. When you offer excellent customer service even if you are asking your patients to leave reviews, that experience is going to mean that they will naturally be more positive in their comments. If you want those positive reviews then you are going to have to earn them!
Don't offer anything in exchange for a review. This is something that is guaranteed to get you banned form the review sites. It is also a sure fire way to ruin your business' credibility.
Do make good use of signage in your clinic. While you cannot put up posters asking for reviews, what you can do is place signs at your patients eye line around the clinic telling them where to find you on Yelp or Google. This will encourage them to check out your reviews and perhaps leave one of their own.
Don't be too pushy. One of the biggest mistakes that physiotherapists do in their pursuit of online reviews form patients is that they are fat too pushy. Do not pester or harass your patients to give reviews otherwise you may risk annoying your patients and damaging your clinic's reputation.
Reviews are a huge part of your PT clinic's reputation management. They are also a great way to pinpoint problem areas so that you can identify training needs amongst your staff. Get in touch with PatientSites today to find out what else we can do to help with your brand reputation.