Respond to Negative Reviews

Believe it or not, the same premise applies to negative review response as it does to positive reviews. How to respond to negative reviews impacts not only the reviewer, but all the sets of eyes that come afterward. Seeing a dental practice handle a particularly challenging review online suggests that management is proud of their practice, and willing to go the extra mile to maintain their reputation!

Make potential patients see the light with these four steps: apologize, promote, get offline, keep it simple.


How to respond to negative reviews

Apologize and sympathize

The first step towards fixing a problem is acknowledging that one occurred. Regardless of what happened, a simple apology and sympathy for your patient’s experience goes a long way.

Promote

The dentist was not able to calm the child. If that’s what you are known for, why not reiterate that? “We pride ourselves in our ability to handle patients of all ages, we’re sorry to hear that weren’t up to par when you visited!”

Move the conversation offline

Don’t open a can of worms. Keep the lid on tight by offering the reviewer the chance to reach out via phone, email or both.

Keep it simple

Avoid specifics and don’t ask questions. Those conversations are much better served in a space away from the prying public.

One last pro tip: leave your practice name, location and category out of this. You don’t want your negative reviews showing up in search!


Respond to Negative Reviews

Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? You can use software to pull in your reviews from all over the web so you can respond quickly. And if you don’t have time, seek out our reputation management services to do it for you. Not only do we guarantee expertise, we guarantee it in a hurry: we respond to reviews as soon as our software pulls them in!