In the age of information, patients prefer looking up online reviews and ratings of TMS and mental health clinics before opting for a practice. If whatever they find about your clinic is mostly positive, chances are that they’ll pick you over your competitors. On the other hand, negative feedback, if not dealt professionally, might result in your TMS clinic losing patients.
To that end, in this article, we’ll discuss the right way to acquire reviews and ratings from your patients and how it can positively impact your TMS clinic.
Let’s get started.
How to Start Garnering Reviews and Ratings from Your Patients?
According to a survey, consumers read on average 10 reviews before feeling ready to trust a business. This reflects how it is necessary for a business to have a considerable amount of ratings and reviews, readily available to its regular as well as potential customers.
Here’s what you can do to monitor and provide access to online reviews and star ratings to your patients:
Enable Your Patients to Review Your Business
Before anything else, as an owner of a TMS clinic you need to make sure you’ve created your business profiles on relevant platforms where your patients can leave online reviews.
Some renowned review platforms include Google My Business (GMB), Facebook, Yelp, Better Business Bureau (BBB), TripAdvisor (not exactly relevant to TMS clinics, but worth mentioning), etc. As a provider of mental healthcare in the US, you should definitely get yourself listed on Healthgrades.
It is important to select a few reliable and sought-after platforms, based on their functionality, review guidelines, and relevancy.
You can also use customizable widgets and give access to subscription emails on your own website with increased visibility to acquire and display your patients’ positive customer feedback and customer experience.
Remember – in case of subscription emails, it is vital that you provide a preference center tool to give your patients the option to opt out of receiving emails and unsubscribe whenever they wish.
Engage with Your Patients
After establishing review pages on a few review sites, the next step is to manage them. Almost every online platform that allows customers to leave reviews and ratings also provide businesses with access to an owner responses function.
This gives you the opportunity to develop long-lasting relationships with your patients, enabling them to get their voices heard, needs satisfied, and their positive testimonials responded with gratitude.
At the same time, it’s crucial to know the right way to deal with negative feedback from customers in order to have a consistent, positive, and professional impression on any potential patient reading them.
Make sure to respond to negative reviews as quickly as possible and alert your customer services team (if you have one) to resolve their query or deliver compensations.
Most of all, don’t accuse, refuse, or blame the patient. Instead, accept responsibility, apologize, and communicate your commitment to the resolution of their problem.
Why Reviews and Ratings are Important for Your Business
The purpose of real-time feedback and ratings is to enhance user experience by empowering business consumers to have a sense of trust and confidence in their online purchasing decisions.
Here are a few reasons why reviews and ratings can have a significant impact your TMS clinic:
- They Help Cultivate Trust
Positive reviews from satisfied customers that highlight the best bits about your services can make or break your conversion rate.
These testimonials from regular and delighted patients help develop a sense of trust in your potential patients, which in turn can impact their purchase decisions and consider your services.
- Reviews and Ratings Tell a lot About a Business
Review snippets are the first thing your potential patients see when they look up your TMS clinic on search engine results page. A good rating can drive them to click on your review pages.
Next, the way you interact with your patients through on review platforms gives away a lot about your customer services, including your professionalism, level of responsibility, and care for your patients.
Therefore, it is not only important to maintain at least 4-star ratings, but it is equally important to display superior level of professionalism and excellent customer services to your potential patients through your customer reviews.
- They Can Impact Your Local Search Ranking
Reviews and ratings not only impact your patients, but also your local SEO (search engine optimization) efforts.
Among many other factors, Google’s algorithm mainly ranks local businesses based on three factors – their prominence, relevance, and distance/proximity.
Where relevance determines the similarity between your business profile and user’s search query, distance considers how far the searcher is located compared to your business. Prominence, on the other hand, reflects the overall popularity of your business.
This suggests that a strong and well-maintained online reputation will enables your TMS clinic to rank higher on local search ranking.
- They Show That You’re Willing to Accept Feedback
As much as one should strive to avoid them, there are is some silver lining to receiving negative feedback on review sites/product pages. As mentioned earlier, this is your chance to make the best of the situation and establish a fruitful relationship with an otherwise unhappy patient.
The way you respond to being called out on your shortcomings show potential customers the empathetic and trustworthy image of your business.
It shows that for you, a positive customer service takes priority.
The Bottom Line
In order for any business to survive in the digital age of eCommerce and social media – where trust is everything – it must risk its reputation by enabling and maintaining its business profile so that it can receive customer/product reviews.
Similarly, if you want increased conversion rates and a meticulous online reputation, it is important to ensure your patients have the access to leave reviews and ratings in the first place.
