Does your business has an online presence? If yes, would you like to deal with it if you are the customer? Well, it depends on certain factors, right? But the most important factor is how’s your business’s online reputation? Are your present customers happy with your offerings or are they dissatisfied? And if they are dissatisfied then, what are you doing to turn them into happy customers?

Online reputation plays a huge role nowadays in determining whether the business will gain or lose in the market.

Similarly, for dental practices, their Google, Yelp, and Facebook reviews play a huge role in determining whether the practice is worth visiting for the patients or not.

The study says that if a practice has more than 100 Google Reviews their website traffic increases by 37%, and more the positive reviews you will rank higher in the search results.

But just getting reviews is enough to gain more patients in the future and loyalty from present patients?

No, it’s not.

You may ask, why?

Well, time to find out.

In the digital era that we live in, an online presence is without a doubt important and, the attention span of people is decreasing day by day.

According to a survey, the average attention span of a human is just 8 seconds. So how do you manage to stand out from your competitors?

You do that by responding to the online reviews you get from your patients. Because you see your patients are taking time out of their busy schedule to post a review about their experiences. Are they getting any benefits from doing this? Not at all. But, those reviews have the power to decide the fate of your practice.

So, Let’s Talk About Why It’s Important to Respond to Those Online Reviews?

1. Responding to Online Reviews Means That YOU CARE

When people search for your practice online, and they check your reviews on sites like Google, Facebook, Yelp, etc. they see whether you have addressed any negative review or you have just simply ignored it. They simply form an opinion about your practice through your responses.

So you must personalize your responses for every review that you get be it positive or negative. This shows that you care about your patients.

Now, you must be thinking is it possible or beneficial to respond to every review in a personalized manner?

Well, it is and, you will notice the difference.

2. Increased Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

So, what’s CLV?

Customer Lifetime Value is a measurement of how valuable your customer is to your business with an unlimited period as opposed to just the first purchase.

To simplify, let’s take an example. So if you have a patient who comes to your practice for the first time and has a positive experience and he decides to write a positive review on your Google business page about it. What are the chances of him choosing your practice all over again if you respond to that patient’s review immediately? The chances of him coming back for a check-up becomes pretty high, right? Similarly, the chances of him referring your practice to others automatically increase without you worrying about acquiring new patients.

But, the question is how do you know whether a patient has written a review about your practice on various platforms?

If you have a Google My Business account for your dental practice, which I am sure you have then you can download the application from Play Store as well as App Store and can log in to your account and get notified whenever someone leaves a review for your practice.

Similarly, for Yelp you can just log in to your account and go to the reviews section for responding to the reviews or you can simply download the Yelp for Business app to check the reviews you got from your mobile or tablet.

Guess what? You can do that for your practice’s Facebook page, as well. You can download the Facebook Pages Manager app from the Apple store or Play store to manage your business page.

So, the point is getting notification for reviews posted by your patients is easy but replying to them one by one is tough but it’s worth it.

3. Attract New Patients

Let’s talk about some stats, shall we?

91% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust their friends. 68% of people prefer checking online reviews before choosing a local service. 85% of people trust reviews from strangers. Therefore, it’s clear that the more positive reviews your practice has, the better it’s for you.

But when you reply to those reviews consistently, the prospective patients will see why they should choose your practice over your competitors. They will feel that you care about your patients and their feedbacks. As you gain more and more trust in the people, your practice will show up at the top of the search results when people search for dental practices.

It will also make it easier for you to ask them for reviews because they were the ones who chose your practice after checking your online reviews.

4. Build Trust and Enhance Transparency

As mentioned earlier, if a practice doesn’t have an online presence, it’s missing out on everything that it could have been. Henceforth, having an online reputation system is crucial for every practice. To be honest, it’s not possible to not get any negative reviews. Some patients might not like your services and they might give a negative review on various platforms. But does it matter? Yes, to some extent. If you think you need to get better you should focus on that. However, if you think the review was not justified and you are being honest about it then you can always give them a positive response.

In this way, those negative reviews won’t affect much when prospective patients look at your business page. The fact is, when there are dozens of positive reviews and just 1–2 negative reviews then people seem to not pay attention to those negative reviews especially if you have responded to each and everyone with honesty and transparency.

Most people will choose your practice if they see that you handle tough situations effectively. They will sense good things about you and will not hesitate to visit you.

How to Handle Negative Reviews?

Practices do get negative reviews and it’s important to respond to them and take them as an opportunity to grow. That’s where most of the businesses fail.

So how to handle those reviews and what are the steps that should be taken?

For starters try responding to those reviews, first, then, try reaching out to them personally to address their issues and fix it. Thank them for reaching out and tell them that you value them and if there’s an issue they can directly contact you.

Conclusion

Most practices tend to just focus on getting online reviews for their practices. But, it’s important to also respond to those reviews in a personalized and timely manner. If you focus on doing that, you will have an edge over your competitors and you will be one of the best if not the best in your city.

Online Reputation is essential for every business including dental practices without a doubt and, it’s up to you how you capitalize and make use of every review you get effectively.

If you want to manage your online reputation, you can look at our all in one patient engagement platform which helps dental practices to get more online reviews and, at the same time, notifies them to respond to those reviews without fail.

# Online Reputation
# Dental Marketing
# Patient Engagement
# PracticeeDilly