Reviews for 'sensitive' professions

'I would expect someone to write a review of their accountant or estate agent, but for their gynaecologist?'

It's not the first time someone has said this to us. Our response: it is even more important, if anything, that we provide an environment where people feel comfortable writing a review, especially in areas where they may not even feel comfortable asking their best friend or closest relative for a recommendation.

In the following example we are going to show you some reviews, written both on our client's website and on Google, by women about their experience of their women's health clinic. 

Reviews on the clinic's own website...

 

And on Google...

There are several important points to note:

• We don't insist on the reviewer using their full name, or even their 'real' name (see 'Sarah' and 'Sam' above) - they can choose a username that preserves their anonymity if they wish

• In spite of this we are pleased to see just how many people do use their real name (well over half)

• The quality of the reviews is uniformly high. They are not one-liners or the kind of 'Great service!!!' reviews you see commonly all over the web. The authors seem aware of just how helpful a thorough review can be

• There is a fall off between the numbers who will happily write a review to the consultancy's website and those that are prepared to copy their review to Google, but that is in line with our experience of other businesses

Conclusion

That review management is just as important for this kind of business, perhaps even more so. And within that review management our moderation system (many of you will know it as Resolution™) is crucially important. It is undesirable that people read factual inaccuracies in reviews of estate agents and insurance brokers - both for the business and for their potential customer - but how much more important that reviews like those shown above are not simply published ad lib, without first being checked for veracity?

Reviews and the medical profession - did our predictions come true?

We first wrote about reviews and the medical profession way back in 2014. So were we right? First lets look at what we predicted:

1. That reviews of medical services, be they general practice or specialist, would become popular with patients
2. That Google would become the vehicle of choice, both for those posting the reviews and those reading them
3. That practitioners that did not find a way of actively engaging with reviews would ultimately suffer, for two reasons: first, medicine is, by its very nature, a complex subject to review accurately and second, the motivation for a dissatisfied patient to write a review is so much greater

And all these led us to the same conclusion: that the medical (and associated health and caring professions) would do well to adopt a proactive attitude to reviews.

What has happened?

1.  Reviews becoming popular

Tick one. Reviews of medical services, of whatever kind, have multiplied over five-fold since 2014. GP practices that had one or two reviews then commonly have ten, twenty or even thirty now, often many more...

Four years ago this GP surgery had no reviews. Now, as you can see, they have over thirty

2.  It's Google all the way now

Tick two. The alternatives have faded away - simply because Google reviews dominate in search. 

Looking for a GP? 

...whether the potential patient conducts a simple search (top) or a map search (bottom) they are shown local surgeries with their Google scores prominently displayed.

Looking for a specialist?

An example of one that has begun to harness the power of Google reviews...

3. Those that have not engaged will have suffered

Tick three - in a very high proportion of cases. If your practice does not engage one of two things will happen (often both, one following the other)...

• you will have no reviews:

...fine, but not especially helpful for potential patients looking for reassurance before choosing a GP. Much more important, it leaves the field wide open for dissatisfied patients to very quickly dominate the impression created in search. It is so easy to go from looking like the practice above, to this...

...a surgery that had no reviews until a year ago!

So what do you need to do?

In a word: engage.

We are fully alive to the fact that we are asking you to put your reputation on the line by proactively inviting reviews, but we are advising you to do exactly that.

Managing that risk

We all recognise that those who feel they have been insufficiently well treated - whether that be by the hotel or restaurant of their choice or their medical practitioner - will be much more motivated to write a review than those who are happy. So we - and you - need a mechanism to balance that equation. That mechanism is moderation.

Moderation

Moderation is the process whereby a review passes through a 'safety net' (operated by HelpHound in conjunction with both the practitioner and the patient/reviewer) before the review is published - that safety net operates in the best interests of both the reviewer and the practitioner to ensure that the review is factually correct and contains nothing that might mislead the person relying on that review to make an informed choice. For those that would like to mine don into the fine detail of moderation there is a separate article here.

Results

No matter what our clients' professions, our ultimate aim will always be to have them scoring in excess of 4.5 on both their own websites and on Google. A 'perfect 5' is attainable in some cases, but it would be unreasonable of us to lead anyone to expect that at outset.

It may well be that some processes within the individual practice need tweaking to improve the business's CRM (a one star review complaining that the phone 'is never answered' has exactly the same impact on a practitioner's Google score as a one star review of a complex medical procedure) but HelpHound will always advise on that before going ahead and implementing any review management processes.

The next steps

Implementation is always planned very thoroughly indeed. No stage is implemented - asking patients to write a Google review, for instance - until the previous stage (asking for a review to the practitioner's own website, in this case) has been thoroughly tested and proven.

At HelpHound we support all our clients every step of the way, from first review to their ultimate goal (as described above). We act in exactly the same way as all your other professional advisers - just focussing on reviews as opposed to legal or financial issues.

Last, but not least, we have no contracts with our clients (apart from our terms of engagement) so we are fully aware that we have to deliver month-in-month-out.

Doctors - what happens if you ignore Google reviews?

This happens...

...maybe not straight away, but over time.


Why?

It is simple really, and its all down to a combination of human motivation and how we interact with the web. People are just more motivated to write negative reviews, often in the heat of the moment, and often putting the blame on the wrong agency.


The two reactions to this behaviour.... 

1.  Logical: these are just 17 opinions out of many thousands, of course some people are going to be unhappy/disappointed but this should not colour a prospective - or existing  - patient's view of the surgery (remember that most existing patients will see your reviews simply by the accident of them being in their eye-line when they look up your phone number/address/website).

 

   

 Reviews like this do get read - and do influence people - witness the eight 'thumbs up'. The fact that the review has not received a response from the surgery serves to further endorse the patients' opinion

2.  Emotional: "How can I possibly entrust my health and welfare to a surgery that scores so low (and/or has so many negative reviews)?"


The reality

Everyone reads reviews nowadays, and their reaction is likely to be a combination of both. 

No-one has to actively search for Google reviews, they are displayed in every search. In addition, many more reviews are being written - fourteen of the seventeen reviews of the surgery above have been written in the last twelve months. That pattern is not going to reverse itself any time soon.


The solution

Surgeries must engage - with Google. That does not mean abandoning any current patient feedback mechanisms, far from it, but it does mean incorporating modern professional review management into their interaction with patients.

Otherwise: dissatisfied patients will continue to post to Google, just in increasing numbers (as more and more people find they are able to write a Google review).

Preventing inaccurate or misleading reviews 

By sending an email or text to the patient asking them for a review to be independently verified and moderated by HelpHound potentially misleading or inaccurate reviews will be sent to the surgery so they can engage with the patient pre-publication, reviews will then be displayed on the surgery's own website and the reviewer then invited to copy their review to Google.

HelpHound

We are here to provide you with professional advice, and to design a review management strategy that dovetails with the way you operate your particular surgery, not shoehorn you into some 'off the peg' reviews solution.




Please feel free to comment on this article - link below - and subscribe - centre right - so you can be sure to receive every article as it is published. If you would like more information just email fiona.christie@helphound.com

Dialogue™ for the medical profession

More than ever before the medical and caring professions have to address the concept of reviews

First let's examine the current state of the reviews and the medical profession...

Specialist sites

If a business or service exists you can be sure that there will be review sites specifically targeting it, it's the nature of the web. Here are some examples:

From NHS Choices

From IWantGreatCare

General sites

A 'general' review site is one where anyone can comment on any type of business or service, from accountants to zoos. here's an example of a review on Yelp, the big daddy of them all...

Yelpers don't pull their punches!

Benefits

Everyone wants reviews: patients commonly search the web for them; they want to know what the existing patients of a given practice or practitioner think. In today's competitive environment practitioners welcome honest feedback as a way of attracting new patients, and, just as importantly, a way of gaining valuable insight.

Drawbacks

Not all reviews are written with the best of intentions: some are written maliciously (some have even been known to be posted by competitors)! Much more commonly, misguided (and potentially damaging) opinions are posted about complex medical issues without the practitioner being able to engage with the patient beforehand.

Is this really representative of the practice?

Right-of-reply

With reviews of hotels or restaurants the simple 'right-of-reply' which is incorporated into most review sites may be all that is needed to correct misconceptions. This is not enough for medical issues: they are far too important, for the patient in question and for the potential patient reading the review. There has to be a better way...

There is. All reviews at HelpHound are moderated (read by trained professional moderators) in a process we call Resolution ™, and any reviews that contain issues which should be addressed by the practitioner are first forwarded to that practitioner for response. 

People actively engage with this process and both parties find it rewarding, to the extent that over 99% of reviews that are written and subject to Resolution result in no final review being published. 

Administration

It's every medical practitioner's nightmare - more paperwork, more complex technology. How to keep track of the 47 sites where a patient might comment? The answer is simple: you don't have to. 

Invite all your patients to write a simple review, direct to your practice, once a year and/or whenever they feel the need...

What your patients' reviews will look like on your website - a mock-up with thanks to Abingdon Medical Practice

HelpHound will moderate them and we will publish them on your own website; we will also invite your patients to post their reviews to Google so you don't look like these GPs when future patients search:

Your prospective patients are looking for reviews - here (on Google) and on your own website, but only one patient has posted one review on one of these practices. What a lost opportunity to benefit for everyone concerned, practice and patients alike

To summarise

Dialogue brings you and your patients all the benefits of reviews and none of the drawbacks: it can only be good for you both.

• Great feedback, easily analysed 
• Positive comments to show to prospective patients
• Negative issues managed in private, benefiting both parties equally
 

Please contact Karen Hutchings (karen.hutchings@helphound) for more details.