How to Respond to Negative Healthcare Reviews

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

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


How to respond to negative reviews

  1. Apologise and sympathise

    The first step towards fixing a problem is acknowledging them. Regardless of what happened, a simple sympathy for your customer’s experience goes a long way. Be very very very careful in admitting any liability. This could have long term legal consequences.

  2. Promote

    So your service wasn’t up to par the day this particular patient visited. If they’re what you are known for, why not reiterate that? “We are sorry to hear that you feel our service wasn’t up to par when you visited!”

  3. 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.

  4. 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 business name, location and category out of this. You don’t want your negative reviews showing up in search!

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 Digital Agency services to do it for you. Not only do we guarantee expertise, we guarantee it in a hurry: we can respond to reviews as soon as our software pulls them in!



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