Feedback. It can help us grow and develop, yet many of us don’t like hearing it, especially when it’s about our work or our practice, something into which we have poured our blood, sweat and tears. We hear the word “feedback”, and, for some of us, the hackles go up, and the defences are raised. After all, who likes being criticised? But this is where the misconception lies. While feedback may sometimes involve negative reviews or comments, it’s far more constructive than pure criticism alone, and, don’t forget, it can be positive, too.

Why feedback matters

Whether you are a private dental practice or an NHS practice, feedback matters. There are many different forms of feedback, from Google and Facebook reviews to things like the NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT), which was created to help service providers and commissioners understand whether patients are happy with the service provided or where improvements are needed.

Fundamentally, feedback can give you invaluable insights that are essential to your practice in today’s customer service and review-driven world. It can also help you raise standards in your practice from a regulatory perspective. And while it may seem scary, there really is nothing to fear. In fact, embracing feedback could be one of the most proactive and positive decisions you can make for your dental practice.

Beyond word of mouth

Word of mouth has always been a powerful marketing tool. But in the digital world, that extends way beyond people simply telling their friends and family what their experience of a business or service was like.

In dentistry, patients have now become accustomed to searching for dentists or practices online and reading reviews from other patients as part of this process. So, if you are not embracing and learning from this form of feedback, you are missing a trick.

So, how can you overcome your fear of reading negative reviews and use this form of feedback to your advantage?

Having no feedback is worse than having negative feedback

You may find the above statement hard to believe but having no feedback because you are worried about people leaving unfairly negative responses is actually more damaging.

Your online reputation matters, and reviews are a big part of that. There is an expectation amongst the public, across all age groups, that businesses invite feedback, so if you have no reviews, it makes people suspicious. It’s all about “social proofing” – people want to see that others are socially affirming a business before they engage with them or buy their services themselves.

Understandably, everyone wants five-star reviews. However, it’s worth pointing out that while having no reviews can make people suspicious, so can only having five-star ones.

No matter how well you are doing things, there’s always going to be someone who has something to complain about. That one negative review should not define you and your practice, and you can learn from it.

Of course, there will be times when negative feedback is completely unwarranted, for example, when it comes from online trolls, but even those types of feedback can be managed carefully and appropriately and shouldn’t put you off getting any feedback at all.

It’s worth noting here that managing it doesn’t mean deleting it. In fact, deleting negative reviews is almost never the answer and regulatory expectations mean you cannot delete any review without very good reason and an audit trail to show why. You can show more about your values and integrity as a business by dealing professionally with an online troll than by complete eradication.

Responding appropriately shows you have taken what has been written on board and acted, where possible. That positive reaction to the negative feedback is gold dust for other people reading it because it shows you care. To add to this, you can even use your replies as an opportunity to boost your Google ranking by including keywords in what you write. This is because Google searches the replies as well as the original post.

Another reason there’s nothing to fear from feedback is that it can be used to help you cross-sell. For example, suppose your practice has received a number of positive reviews for a specific treatment. In that case, this can help attract more patients to book in for this same treatment (if appropriate) because people researching online will see your name come up.  ‘There is also an additional service we offer, which is actually more impactful and direct than relying on SEO. This is the ability to cross-sell additional services, whereby we create a bespoke package for the practice so that they can ask whatever questions they want during the online feedback process. So, if a patient is filling in a review to say what they think about, for instance, their visit to the hygienist, we can ask a question such as: ‘Did you know that we also offer tooth whitening?’ Typically, that kind of cross-sell questioning results in an additional £10k worth of requests each month for the dental team for follow up on

Patient feedback is a valuable opportunity for every dental practice and is nothing to fear. The positives of having feedback far outweigh the negatives, and even those reviews perceived as “bad” can be used to your advantage. By embracing feedback, you can elevate your customer service, attract more patients, boost your Google ranking, and build a solid online reputation.

What’s to fear about that?

(Kindly reproduced from article by John Pemberton & Philip Molden. Published in The Probe 22 August 2022)

Managing Director, John Pemberton, and Operations Director, Philip Molden, started Working Feedback in 2006 and, ever since then, they have been helping dental practices build the online reputation that their businesses deserve by ensuring that feedback provides a development platform rather than just reviews.