Getting your patients to leave an online review of your optometric practice can be a struggle. The unfortunate truth is that most people only leave reviews when they have a negative experience, which may turn you off from soliciting reviews. However, online reviews are a big driver of traffic to your optometric practice. So, how do you entice more patients to leave reviews on your practice?
Below are some strategies you can use to encourage all of your patients to leave a review.
3 Tips For Getting Patients To Review Your Optometric Practice
Ask Them
Usually, there’s no harm in asking a patient to leave you a review--however different sites have their own rules, so check their policies. You can ask for a review in two ways, in person, and through email.
Since you and your staff spend a lot of time with each patient, you have a good opportunity to ask a patient face-to-face for a review. One article claims that if you ask for a review in person, you can gain seven to eight times more reviews than you would if you ask via email. To help you achieve this, you could assign your optician to ask each patient to leave a review about their experience. It’s important to ask every patient because you can learn a lot from possitive, negative, and even indifferent reviews.
If you or your team don’t feel comfortable asking for the review in person, you can also ask the patient in an email or at the end of their invoice.
Make It Easy
If you want your patients to take time out of their day to write a review of your optometric practice, then make the process as quick and simple as possible. Unless one of your patients had a really negative experience, they probably aren’t going to going search out all of your review pages.
Platforms like Yelp make it easy for your patients to find your review page by offering review badges that you can add to your website to make the process a little easier.
Respond
Each review, positive or negative, is a learning opportunity for you and your practice. When your patient takes time out of their day to leave a review, it’s important that you thank them for their review and respond to them. If you received a negative review, work with the patient to identify a solution that works for both parties.
By responding to reviews, it shows other people who are about to leave a review that you appreciate the feedback and that you care about their experience.
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