Four Steps to Maintaining Your Veterinary Practice’s Good Name Online

Utilizing the vastness of the Internet to grow your veterinary practice can be a daunting task. You may even think having no online presence is better than creating an arena for your few crazy or never-satisfied clients to voice their displeasures with the world. However, word-of-mouth is now carried digitally and “online” isn’t just a passing fad. Online reviews are crucial to the success of your veterinary practice in 2015 and for years to come.

Luckily, there are steps you can take to minimize the risk of receiving bad veterinary reviews online and ways to handle those you do.

Effective Online Reputation Management Strategies

1. Wow Your Clients – This is a no-brainer. By striving to provide your clients with “world-class experiences” during each visit, you minimize the likelihood of any leaving your practice feeling dissatisfied, unheard, uninformed, or cheated. Training your employees in the art of customer service, especially your front desk team, is always time well spent. Train your staff to recognize happy customers and have them ask those clients to complete online reviews about their experiences.

2. Claim & Brand Your Listings – Having active veterinary social media profiles will help “push down other less desirable results” in searches. Creating compelling content for your website, blog, and those social media accounts will add to this. If your practice has been around for more than a year, Google, Yelp, City Search, and Yellow Pages will have already created business listings for your hospital. Be sure to claim these and ensure the information on them is 100% accurate and reflective of your brand. Add a personal photo of your practice or one illustrating your love of animals to each listing. Then, monitor these periodically for reviews.

Maintain your veterinary practice’s good name online with VetNetwork’s ORM plans.

3. Reply to Positive Reviews – If a client took the time to provide your practice with a positive online review, acknowledge him or her! Thank these reviewers for their continued business and maybe send them a “thank you” card (possibly with a discount on a future visit) – simply pull their medical records for addresses or to refresh yourself on what their last visits were like. Replying to reviews should be seen as an important extension of your practice’s customer service.

4. Identify & Reply to Complaints – First off, never divulge personal information about a client online and don’t bicker! Responding to complaints means issuing an apology and providing a path to resolution. Give the reviewer the hospital’s phone number and a name to contact. Do what you can to resolve or clear-up the issue via phone or email – not in the review thread. Also, performing routine searches for your practice name combined with “reviews,” “feedback,” or “ratings” is a good way to become aware of complaints you may not have seen. This is also achieved by searching for your hospital name with terms like “poor service,” “issues,” or “sucks.”

As an animal hospital owner, it’s important to realize the occasional bad review will happen – there’s no avoiding it. But, each offers an opportunity to make it right for the client and let the world see how you handle those situations.

Managing your online reputation takes time and dedication, something you may not have. The veterinary marketing experts at VetNetwork do have that kind of time, however. Custom veterinary online reputation management (ORM) plans are part of what we do! VetNetwork offers plans designed for your unique practice and your specific location. Subscribing to one of these affordable packages can help establish your good standing as an attractive, trustworthy provider of the excellent care pet owners expect for their companions. For more information, call us today at (800) 564-4215 or contact us online.

Source: iMedia Connection