Remember the SNL skits and movies Wayne’s World? Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey played characters promoting their public-access TV show with lines like “Two thumbs up….Excellent!” or ” Wow, what a totally excellent discovery— NOT!” We laughed like crazy in 1992 when they came out with their movie and place reviews. Today, all of our businesses and practices are reviewed and graded by anyone and everyone. Sites you may or may not have heard of such as Yelp, Foursquare, Citysearch, Merchant Circle and even mydochub.com all allow for reviews of businesses large and small. Joining them are the giants of the online world, Bing, Yahoo and Google.
We all know the saying, ” Satisfied customers tell three friends, angry customers tell 3,000″. There is even a book by the same name. The online world has made it a heck of a lot easier to tell those 3,000 of your experiences and more and more people are doing so. These sites are here to stay and will even proliferate as more people adopt smartphones and have the ability to comment right then and there from inside your practice or business. The search engines keep track of these reviews, so this is not something to be ignored. Hopefully your practice is receiving good reviews. However, what happens when you get a negative review?
When you get a negative review remember it’s virtually impossible to make everyone happy. Some customers make unreasonable demands. So, take a deep breath, relax, give yourself time before responding…maybe even sleep on it. Once you are past dealing with the review emotionally, consider responding in a manner that will not appear mean or vindictive, but instead with a willingness to try and solve the problem. Invite the complainant to contact you directly, so that 1) you can resolve the complaint to both your satisfaction, and 2) so you can show anyone who comes across the complaint in the future that you truly do care about what patients and customers think and feel.
Next get a positive review (or 2 or 3) to counter the negative review. Ask friends, other patients or customers to please write something positive. Do not rush with this process. If no one has reviewed your site in 2 years, and you get a negative review, what will it look like when suddenly there are 2 positive reviews days later…and then nothing again for weeks or months? Take your time and have someone upload one in a week or two and another in a few weeks after that, so it appears much more natural. Keep in mind, that review sites work like blogs. Older posts are moved down. The more positive reviews you get the higher your ratings, and the sooner the complaint looks like an isolated event.
Lastly, learn from the complaint, so you can improve and move your business forward. Party on Wayne…Party on Garth….
