Vets came under the BBC Panorama spotlight last week.
So we took a look at the 'big six' (number of practices in brackets)...
- IVC Evidensia - (900)
- Linnaeus - (180)
- Medivet - (363)
- Vetpartners - (375)
- CVS - (387)
- Pets at Home (Vets for Pets) - (445)
...that now make up 60 per cent of the UK market (up from 10 per cent in 2015). We, naturally, focused on their approach to reviews, specifically Google reviews.
So what did we look for...
- Consistency of engagement - do practices invite reviews all of the time?
- Do practices respond to those reviews, again: every time?
- When responding to those reviews, are practices aware of the impact those responses may have on future patients?
- Do any practices use alternatives to Google reviews?
1. Consistency of engagement
A pretty typical pattern - about a review a month
Every practice we looked at invited its patients to write Google reviews. Sometimes. But not that frequently. What do we mean by 'frequently'? We have well over a decade of experience in examining review patterns, and one useful benchmark is the estate agency sector. A single estate agency branch that actively invites its clients to write reviews might expect to receive between 3 and 7 Google reviews a month.
Different kinds of businesses will have varying opportunities to invite customers/clients/patients to write reviews; veterinary surgeons will have at least the equivalent volume of touch points as an estate agency, but most likely far more that could reasonably lead to a Google review. So any veterinary practice with fewer than, say, 500 Google reviews over a five-year period will not have been consistently inviting reviews. That is fine (although potentially commercially damaging - see * below) as long as they are not cherry-picking happy patients to actively invite to write Google reviews (that would be in contravention of the CMA regulations and therefore illegal).
Commercially damaging*? A review score of 4.8 or more from 500+ Google reviews is proven to drive significantly more business through a business's door. That should be the first target for any business when setting its benchmarks for active review management. So, on the flip side, a score of 4.7 or less will mean a higher proportion of damaging one-star reviews and a correspondingly lower score, leading to fewer enquiries relative to the equivalent business with a score of 4.8 or greater.
2. Responding to reviews
This is where many veterinary practices fall short. Almost certainly for two reasons: the first being that their primary focus, quite properly, is on patient care, and the second is an all too human tendency, especially amongst those of us who predate Generation Y, to take letters, or at least emails, more seriously than reviews. Take a moment to read this review, written three months ago on Google, of a West London veterinary practice...
Now, we make no comment as to the veracity or otherwise of the facts of this particular case as voiced by the reviewer, but surely, from the practice's viewpoint, if for no other reason, a response would have been a good idea? Just put yourself in the position of the owner of a sick pet, desperately seeking help, and you read this. Quite. We always advise businesses to respond to every review, regardless of its content, and to craft their response with the audience in mind: both the reviewer and the future patients who will read their response.
3.a. Formulaic responses
These - and we found far too many in our research - can be more harmful than no response at all...
or...
Neither of these was an isolated incident
This kind of response, to someone whose pet has just died, whoever may or may not be at fault, gives the wrong impression, not only to the patient in question but to anyone reading the reviews of the practice.
3.b. The impact on potential - future - patients
We have alluded to this above. Individual negative reviews will be read. Scores are used as a shorthand for choosing important services, and veterinary services must rank very highly when it comes to people spending considerable time and effort researching their options, right up there with doctors, financial advisers and lawyers, but with an extra added layer of emotional involvement.
All of our experience with other professional verticals indicates that only when a business's Google score reaches at least 4.8 do potential customers relax and cease to mine down into the underlying reviews in any significant numbers. Anything below that and the business's negative reviews will be read, by almost everyone considering their service (and existing customers as well). Too many reviews of the kind used to illustrate the point above - as opposed to the 'receptionist was offhand' kind - and the searcher will pass on to the next option (and there is always a 'next option').
4. Alternatives to Google
This is a search for 'Vet' on Trustpilot...
As expected, the category is extremely wide, encompassing animal pharmacies, pet accessory manufacturers and even apps, with remarkably few actual veterinary practices. The good news is that veterinary practices have, on the whole, avoided using commercial review sites (fee-charging and far less visible than Google) and stuck with Google (which, aside from being free, has very high visibility and credibility).
What should veterinary practices be doing with regard to reviews?
1. Adopting a moderated review management system - moderation (having each and every review posted to the practice's own site and then checked, pre-publication, for factual accuracy and comments likely to mislead anyone relying on the review, is crucial for such high-value servicesBusinesses that adopt moderation score, on average, between 0.3 and 0.7 higher. In other words a business that scores 4.5 before moderation should expect its score to rise to 4.8 within the space of months of adopting a moderated system. The lower the initial Google score, the greater the potential for improvement, providing the business's core CRM* is intact.
*One really gratifying side-effect of adopting professional review management is the impact on staff relations with customers: it is invariably positive, with customers appreciating being asked for their opinion and staff being aware that that opinion will be invited, with the attendant knock-on impact on staff morale.
2. They should be responding to each and every review - for one obvious reason (it's polite) and one less obvious: it enables them to reinforce their marketing messages - 'thank you for your kind comments about [treatment], we pride ourselves on [. ]' and the mere fact of responding consistently warns anyone thinking of posting an inaccurate or exaggerated review that their review will be respond to, resulting in more 'honest' reviews.Responding to reviews will reinforce the results obtained by moderation: the business's score can only rise if the business responds to all its reviews.3. They should be setting targets - relative to patient throughput, for reviews on their own website and reviews on Google. A reasonable target at the outset is to obtain reviews on the practice's own website (great social proof, by the way) from 50 per cent of patients and then 50 per cent of those to Google.These targets have been consistently achieved - and exceeded - by businesses that follow our guidlines, no matter the vertical they operate in: 1000 customer touch points should equal 500 reviews to the business's own website and then at least 250 of those reviews copied to Google. To make life even easier we provide a guarantee of success.
4. They should be expecting results - in terms of hard cash as well as the warm fuzzy feeling management and staff will get from reading glowing reviews and being able to relax in the knowledge that factually inaccurate or misleading reviews will no longer make it into print.
Businesses that adopt professional review management invariably see upticks in all their new business metrics, from enquiries through their website and through Google search, to client retention.
