Our work with thousands of medical practices gives us insight into the best and worst ways practices do things. We typically share lists of best practices, but today we are sharing a worst practices list, enjoy.
Here are 4 of the poorest ways we often see medical marketers ask patients for feedback. Each of these methods is ineffective, some are dangerous, and others are painful for you (and the physicians), but ALL of them are annoying to your patient.
1. Verbally ask
Most doctors want to focus on patient care and feel frustrated or even degraded by asking patients to provide reviews. While a doctor must worry about patient happiness and experience, she should not be responsible for
collecting or reminding patients to provide feedback. Beyond that, it is incredibly ineffective. How often do you forget to do something you don’t write down? If you are like me, pretty much all the time. Thinking that a verbal request by the front desk or the doctor will result in patient feedback or reviews is like thinking that asking your dog to stop barking when someone comes to your door will work. It won’t.
2. Signs in the office
They say humans must see branding at least 7 times in order to remember it. So, putting posters on the wall that prompt patients to leave reviews is about as effective as asking them, except the patient has to notice, read, and think about the sign at least 7 times in order for them to really even consider leaving a review. Out of sight, out of mind on this one.
3. Cards
The hope with this one is that the patient will type the (very long and seemingly random URL) address into their internet browser and leave a review at a later point (because they’ll totally remember to, right?) This method is too much work for the patient. When it comes to collecting reviews, don’t think some or little effort, think essentially no effort. This process is ineffective and does not result in many more reviews than having no card at all. Additionally, not having to throw away that annoying card is preferable. Both your patients and the trees you will save will appreciate you not making this mistake.
4. Tablets in the lobby
This one seems quick, fairly painless, and intuitive because patients can leave reviews while the visit is still fresh on their mind, right? Actually, there are some major problems with this one. First, patients aren’t paying attention and forget to logout ALL the time meaning that the next customer could potentially have access to confidential HIPAA protected information (as well as their social media accounts and Personal Identifiable Information (PII)–yikes!) Second, these tablets require the patient to log into their personal account (i.e. Google or Facebook) in order to leave a review and, well, when was the last time YOU remembered your Google or Facebook password? Both of those problems have workarounds that could make them worth it if not for this: Google often rejects multiple reviews from the same IP address. This means that most of those reviews will never even get posted to your practice’s pages because Google will flag them down. These problems render this method dangerous, expensive and ineffective.
In order to increase positive reviews online, you need to make leaving them as easy as humanly possible for your customers. This means reaching out to them through their mobile devices with extremely quick links that allow the customer to choose which platform they would like to leave a review on (because their iPhone does remember their passwords). That’s it, no hassle, no uncomfortable or belittling conversations, waste of paper, lack of privacy, or unnecessary work on the part of the practice or patient. SocialClimb makes the process even easier by automating everything for you so that no doctor, front desk person, practice manager, digital marketer, etc. ever has to lift a finger to increase their positive reviews.
Learn More about the right ways to ask for feedback! Contact us today.
