How to respond to online reviews

Created by Genius Platforms Support, Modified on Thu, 23 May at 4:04 PM by Genius Platforms Support

Negative Reviews & Inaccuracies

Try to take complaints offline as soon as possible by encouraging the reviewer to contact your practice. You can briefly touch on the situation if you think it's appropriate but try to stay out of the details. When you bring details to a public discussion, this can work against you in a couple of ways. First, it will likely create defensiveness for the reviewer, making resolution of the issue less likely. Second, this demonstrates to onlookers - your current and prospective clients - that you care more about being right than reaching a resolution.

Defamation & Harassment

If you believe you are being harassed or defamed, we recommend that your first step be to contact legal counsel. If you have Employment Practices Liability insurance, those costs may be covered.

Removing Reviews

Review sites will generally remove anything that is considered to be spam, illegal or otherwise inappropriate. However, ‘inappropriate’ is defined differently in each platform’s guidelines - and whether or a not a review can be removed depends on their Terms of Service.

We encourage you to report/flag comments for removal if you believe they should be removed. The review sites will not generally “get in the middle” of a dispute by trying to make judgements about accuracy, but they may be more inclined to remove the review if you can provide context or evidence that supports your claim.

If the reviewer is persistent with their posts, our team will work with you to temporarily disable reviews until things have cooled off.

Vague Reviews and Star-Only Ratings

Google and Facebook both allow star-only ratings, and you may also come across reviews that lack enough detail to understand the scope of the problem. You should still respond to these reviews using the best practices for positive, neutral, and negative reviews.

No History of the Client

If you have no history of a reviewer, you should still respond and acknowledge that you'd like the chance to speak with them. Usually, the reviewer has left a review for the wrong practice and is happy to correct their review. Occasionally, the reviewer may be posting on behalf of a family member. Either way, these reviews can often be resolved if you initiate a request to speak with them.

Positive Reviews

Sometimes these get lost in the mix because it's human nature to want to deal with the negative ones. But responding to positive reviews has many benefits, including establishing rapport with those reviewers and the onlookers who are reading, who are your current and prospective clients. The more often you’re responding and the more timely those responses are, the better.

Tips

Provide a contact name and number in your response to all negative and neutral reviews.

Make it as easy as possible for clients to contact you and don’t assume that they should know your number or who to get in touch with. The easier you make the process for issue resolution, the more likely it is that you will have that opportunity.

For example: "We're so sorry that your experience did not meet your expectations or ours. We would very much like the opportunity to speak with you. Please give our Hospital Director [name] a call at xxx-xxx-xxxx."

Make your response personal and sincere.

The only thing worse than not responding to a review is responding with a “canned”, impersonal response that lacks sincerity - and this is true for both positive and negative reviews. Start by always using the person’s name if you know it.

If someone has poured their heart out to tell you how much they appreciate you, take the time to investigate who they are and then think about how you might be able to make them feel extra special. If someone has left a negative review, even if you disagree with some of the details, express sincerity in wanting to work through the situation with them, if that’s possible.

There are only so many ways you can say the same thing, so it’s okay if some of your responses are similar in nature. But actively look for opportunities to make it personal.

Respond to 100% of your reviews - 100% of the time - and in a timely manner.

Treat your reviews the same way you would treat a phone call to your practice by incorporating review responses into your daily routine. Get back to the person with a response within 24 hours - sooner, if possible - and ensure you respond to all of them, even if they are ‘just’ a star rating.

Treat every review as an opportunity - even the negative ones.

If you listen with the intent to understand, you will be presented with opportunities to be a better business because of it.

Reviews can:

Provide an opportunity to expand your relationship with the reviewer, as well as anyone else who is on their journey to learn more about you.
Teach you about your clients and their real needs.
Help you identify problems with your business operations.
Strengthen your culture. Look for things that have gone right and who you can thank for it!