Sometimes, it’s hard to take your medicine — even if you’re a healthcare business owner. This is especially true when it comes to reading negative online reviews of your service.

If managed correctly, negative reviews can still end up being a positive thing for your business. If handled incorrectly, you can end up suffering. Writing for the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Vivian Lee describes the perils of reacting inappropriately to negative reviews:

Physicians do not always respond positively to the sudden exposure of sometimes negative reviews. Recent reports describe doctors and dentists who have felt compelled to post retaliatory and revealing responses that not only violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), but also threaten to undermine the fundamental trust between patients and clinicians.

Converting Negative to Positive

How can negative reviews benefit your business? By really listening to what the patients have to say, you can diagnose weaknesses in your customer service. Healing those pain points can pay substantial dividends in goodwill and word of mouth. In “Closing the Customer Feedback Loop,” published by the Harvard Business Review, the authors write that each point of contact with customers is the opportunity to create a new promoter for your business:

But which customer experiences matter the most? We have learned that the most important interactions are “moments of truth,” those relatively few points of contact that hold the greatest potential to delight—or alienate—an organization’s customers. As they mine the steady flow of customer feedback, companies should pay particular attention to these touchpoints.

A timely response to negative reviews is important. If a customer has a problem, you should get right to work on a solution that will satisfy them. This makes it much more likely they’ll be willing to change their review.

Reputation Management Tools

Properly responding to negative reviews is only part of the equation. A reputation management platform like Real Time Reviews can give you the tools to help generate positive recommendations for your business.

Using our Real Time Reviews platform, you can give your patients a quick and easy way to post reviews of your business at the end of their office visit. If they agree to recommend your business, just enter their name and number into the dashboard, and they’ll get a text inviting them to rate the experience. A couple of hassle-free steps later, and their 5-star review will go live on Facebook, Google, Healthgrades, Vitals, or other industry-specific platforms. No pain. No fuss.

At Real Time Reviews, we understand the challenge of dealing with online reviews of your healthcare business. Contact us today to learn how we can help.

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