10 August 2023

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Trust is a strategic asset for positive patient reviews

By Davis Cussotto

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The dental office essentially falls under goods and services. Its characteristics are, in fact, difficult to verify before purchasing or “consumption.”

Despite this, the client or patient develops the ability to evaluate the service received and has a strong motivation to maintain the relationship because they are reassured by subsequent return visits.

Trust or reputation is a strategic asset for the practice as it has great economic value.

Reputation is earned in three separate ways called levers:

• team behaviors, or direct interaction of the patient with staff
• physical environment including location and furnishings, and the virtual clinic experience, and
• communication conveyed by social and other networks.

Reputation represents the evolution of word of mouth. It is achieved with user-generated content (UCG), i.e., text, images and videos that clients produce and disseminate. Team behavior and environment are under the direct control of management. The communication conveyed by the relationship networks and the UCGs can instead be managed only indirectly by paying great attention to the first two. Among the UCGs today, the patient review is significant.

The American Dental Association (ADA) revealed in a survey that 88% of U.S. dentists receive reviews online.

Here's how to manage the 5 steps to manage your online reputation, according to the ADA.

• Periodically monitor reputation by Googling the practice name in incognito mode to see what patients are seeing.
• Always respond to positive reviews by thanking the patient in person when they come to the office or respond with a text or voice message. Replying directly to the online review, according to the ADA, is an invasion of privacy. It reveals that the reviewer is a patient, and this should be avoided.
• How to manage negative reviews. In most cases, these are negative and, sometimes, false posts from people who are often not even patients. Respond online with phrases such as: “Our practice is committed to providing the best service to all patients. We encourage those who wish to discuss their experience to contact us directly.” Once this is done, breathe, grit your teeth and let the night pass. Possible strategies will be to respond in private with the person, professionally demonstrating the will to settle the dispute.
• How to remove negative reviews. If the post contains racist, religious, sexist defamation or fall into the categories of stalking or spam, you can request the site remove it. It’s a different situation if the review expresses opinions such as "the studio is ugly, and the staff is rude." Removal from the site can require a long time, the intervention of a lawyer and therefore significant costs. It may be better to postpone any action and simply work on the first two levers of reputation.
• How to encourage positive reviews. Give the patient leaving the studio a card with a QR code that refers to the site or the link with a text message within two hours of the end of the appointment. Add an additional sentence that says: "if you are satisfied with our services, tell others. Otherwise, please talk with us."

In January 2023, the ADA asked the Federal Trade Commission to help protect dental practices from dishonest reviews. Learn more about this action on the ADA website.