In a field where trust and credibility are critical, so is maintaining a good online reputation. As your healthcare business competes locally to attract, acquire, and retain more patients, you need to show potential patients what they can expect if they decide to visit you. And there’s no better way to accurately convey the values of your healthcare business than through authentic, detailed patient reviews.
But just how much of an impact reviews can have on your business is another question. To begin to answer it, we need to focus on one key aspect of reputation management: review requests.
Drawing upon our recent analysis of over 23,000 GatherUp customers in our Maximizing Your Online Reputation study. We examined how businesses and locations in six industries — including healthcare — manage their online reputation. Here are three ways review requests can make a measurable difference in your local healthcare business. You can use this data to inform your review strategy and earn the reviews you need using the most effective methods.
1. Request reviews to increase review volume
The more reviews your healthcare business has, the better. When you have a large number of quality reviews from verified patients — and, ideally, more positive reviews than negative reviews — your average rating on Google will be higher. Review volume also impacts the impressions potential patients have about you, since the more reviews they can read about your business, the more information and confidence they have to make a decision.
In the healthcare industry, our data showed a high return when businesses requested reviews from patients. The healthcare businesses that didn’t send review requests had an average of 40 reviews per location. But that number jumped to 509 reviews per location — an 11.5X increase — when businesses did send review requests.
Furthermore, the increase in reviews is true for both first-party and third-party reviews. The healthcare businesses that didn’t send review requests had an average of 3 first-party and 37 third-party reviews per location. But those numbers rose to 443 first-party and 66 third-party reviews when businesses did send review requests.
The math is pretty cut and dried here: If your goal is to increase review volume for all types of reviews — and see the benefits that come with having a large number of reviews — sending review requests should be a top priority.
2. Request reviews to improve perceptions of your business
Here’s an interesting idea: Simply requesting reviews can cause your Net Promoter Score (NPS) and star rating to increase. Your NPS is a measure of how happy your patients are by how likely they are to recommend your business to others — using a scale of 0 (unlikely) to 10 (very likely). Your star rating is an average of all your reviews on Google, which gives people searching for healthcare businesses like yours a quick, at-a-glance idea of the quality of your business.
According to our data, when healthcare businesses requested reviews from their patients, they had an average NPS of 73, higher than the industry average of 58. They also had an average star rating of 4.6 when they requested third-party reviews, vs. 4.3 when they didn’t — a 0.3-point difference.
If the act of requesting reviews can have that much of an impact on the perception of your business, what’s really going on here? It appears that by asking patients for their honest feedback, it shows them you sincerely care about what they think. And if you care about what they think, you’re also going to strive to provide the best patient experience you can while making sure to fix any problems that are pointed out to you.
Asking for feedback, taking it seriously, and making necessary improvements go a long way with your existing patients. It not only turns them into promoters who actively recommend your business to others, but also inspires more patients to leave positive reviews that can boost your overall rating.
3. Request reviews through multiple channels
Requesting reviews is a rock-solid strategy for growing review volume, but the method of requesting reviews matters a great deal too. How you choose to communicate with your patients — whether it’s through email, SMS (short message service — a.k.a. texting), or a combination of both — can make a difference in review generation.
Our data shows that healthcare businesses received an average of 206 total reviews per location when using email only to request reviews and an average of 127 total reviews per location when using SMS only. But when using both methods to request reviews, healthcare businesses received far more total reviews per location — an average of 753.
In other words, healthcare businesses that used a combination of SMS and email for review requests received 492% more reviews than with SMS only and 265% more reviews than with email only.
This comprehensive approach of reaching your patients through more than one channel yields major results. Since the vast majority of people have access to their smartphones all day, it’s easy for them to receive and respond to text messages in real time. And for those who aren’t comfortable with SMS, getting an email works just as well.
Beyond review requests: Best practices for review success
Requesting reviews is at the foundation of online reputation management — and as we’ve shown with real numbers, it can boost review generation and volume and even enhance your overall business reputation.
But when the reviews start flowing in, you need to make sure you’re following best practices and federal regulations to get the most out of your review strategy. Here’s what to do:
- Respond to all reviews — good, bad, or neutral.
- Make sure you’re giving HIPAA-compliant review responses to ensure the confidentiality of patient and health information. There are many ways to respond to a variety of review scenarios without violating HIPAA.
- When in doubt, consult with legal counsel to help you better understand how HIPAA regulations apply to your specific healthcare business so you can craft appropriate review responses.
- Monitor third-party review platforms, such as Healthgrades or ZocDoc, so you can stay up to speed on where potential patients are getting information and respond promptly to any reviews posted to those sites.
- Market your first-party reviews — feedback you get directly from your patients — by posting them on your website. Just make sure to remove any identifying patient and health information first, or refrain from posting at all if removal of this information isn’t possible for some reviews.
- Familiarize yourself with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s new rule about review transparency and authenticity. Don’t buy or publish fake reviews or incentivize patients to leave only positive reviews.
- Use the feedback you get to deepen your understanding of the patient experience and make necessary improvements that will help attract and convert more new patients.
To learn how GatherUp’s reputation management platform can support your insurance business, request a consultation with one of our reputation experts today.
