This article was written by Craig Daly, Vice President of Enterprise - Healthcare Division for Podium, the leading interaction management platform for local businesses. Prior to Podium, he spent the last 6 years helping take a 50-person customer experience tech company called Qualtrics to over 1500 employees globally today. His experience has been hyper-focused on helping brands big and small create and attract a fanatical customer base by understanding clearly what it is their customers care most about. 
Consumers are more likely to trust a peer review than any other source, often consulting reviews before buying a product or making important decisions about their health. If you’re ready to generate more patient reviews and acquire new patients, here is a checklist to help you get started.
- Become familiar with review sites.
Patient review sites are typically compiled with public information from the government National Provider Identifier (NPI) Registry. The review sites you choose to manage will vary based on your healthcare practice. Here are a few to be familiar with:
- Claim your Business on review sites.
Your listing is compiled from public information, so patients are already leaving reviews of your practice whether you’re aware of it or not. Claiming your business on each review site enables you to add in helpful information like your specialties, a unique bio, your philosophy to patient care, accepted insurance, a profile picture, and more. And, with a claimed listing, you can respond directly to patient reviews.
- Ask for reviews via text.
Text messages have a 98% open rate and 95% are opened and responded to within three minutes of being delivered. And 9 out of 10 customers prefer to interact with a business via text message anyway.
In Monument Healthcare’s case, implementing a text-based approach to review requests helped them connect with more patients, collect more reviews, and show up better online. In just eight months they doubled their five-star review rate, increased average review ratings by 26.4%, and received 6.5x more reviews per month.
- Ask for reviews via email.
Emails may have a lower open rate than text messages, but it’s still a digital solution that patients crave over traditional methods of communication. Almost half of all emails opened are opened on a mobile device. And 66% of people check their phones 160 times a day. Email is a platform people are familiar with, can navigate easily, and can follow through with the links and calls to action. And since 77% of people are willing to leave a review if asked, it’s always worth asking.
- Automate the patient feedback process.
Timing matters in the ask for patient reviews. Review requests are most effective post appointment, when the patient experience is still fresh. Automating texts or emails directly to the patient to ask for feedback and/or a review keeps the process simple and straightforward for patients and staff.
An automated text or email can be an important touchpoint in patient engagement and customer communications. And 73% of patients want to be asked for feedback a few minutes to a few hours after a care event anyway.
To see how Podium can help you manage your online reviews across multiple sites, automate your requests, and acquire new patients, check out a free Podium Reviews Demo.