Personal vs. Automated Patient Review Requests

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome back to this week's episode of podiatry marketing. With me, as usual, is my good friend, big Jim Mac. How are doing today, Jim?

Doing fantastic, Tyson. Excited to jump into another podiatry marketing topic with you today. Now just enjoying the summer here in Montreal and now things are good.

Okay. So, before we get started, did you do your homework? What is your word for the year?

Well, I might have like spilled it a little bit on the previous podcast, but I think it's kind of two words. In person connection is kind of my what I'm going for in 2024. Had the great opportunity to go to New York to a conference, go to the ACT Fast Conference in Florida earlier, the North Carolina State Conference, and be going to the American Academy of Pediatric Sports Medicine and, you know, giving some talks, but also just those hallway conversations with colleagues that I'm just meeting for the first time or reconnecting with some previous either classmates or residency colleagues has been really rewarding so far in 2024. I'm, like, excited to kind of finish off the year and maybe extend it a little bit into 2025 with these in person connections.

No. A face to face action.

Maybe someday I'll come to Australia. I know I that in order to fulfill that year of 2020 form, you have to swing down to to Cannes and see you and the and the family down there. Cannes.

We're in Cannes. Cairns. Cairns. It's always funny. Whenever Americans say Cairns, it always sounds like they're kicking the can or like can can.

It's quite interesting. Anyway, so what what are we talking about today?

So today is a common topic when I'm, you know, having kind of a an audit or I'm talking to folks about how they gather patient reviews. And there's really two ways to go about doing it, and there's some pros and cons to gathering patient reviews. And this is really based off the fact that patient reviews are really powerful, especially on Google and other platforms. It helps build trust. It's a signal to Google to rank your page higher based off of keywords that sometimes patients will leave in Google Ads.

But there's different ways to go about requesting these patient reviews. And there's definitely some pros and cons to both. Think I'm more on the side of more personalized or in person requests from patients. Either your staff member sees somebody having a good experience and either they ask them or you ask them on the kind of during the checkout process to would you like to receive an email or as an SMS message to share the great experience you had in our clinic? But there's also software is evolving to the point now where it is possible to send kind of automated patient reviews or request for review, which aren't necessarily the worst thing.

But I think there are some pros and cons to each of these that we'll kind of dive into today to say, you know, and maybe it depends on the volume of your clinic, what kind of staff you have. There's a lot of kind of variations about maybe why you would choose one over the other. I don't think one is necessarily, you know, I I prefer the personalized, but I think there there is room for automation depending on what the practice is like, but that's what we'll kind of jump into today.

Yeah. Must admit, I like that personal touch more than an automated approach, but I think it comes down to personality of the clinic, how big the clinic is, how busy they are, which is going to suit the best. Which one are we gonna talk about first?

Yeah. So first we're gonna jump into the kind of the personal review requests and just for a quick synopsis. What I mean is that maybe the patient had a great experience and you know that this is kind of a person who'd be willing to kind of share some digital word of positive digital word-of-mouth about you, your staff, the care they received. And this is where the pros are, You do get that personal touch, right? When you see that patient and you know that they're ready for it and you ask them straight out, not in a way that's any kind of pressure, but just asking them, you had a great experience with us.

Would you mind taking the time to fill out a review on Google for us to help other patients in the local area know about the great care we provide. And it's a little bit more personal. It kind of shows that you have a stronger relationship with them by asking them out front. If they say no, that that's totally fine. But, you know, it's a certain level of relationship and trust that you've built with that kind of personal touch is kind of the first pro of, you know, going for more like a personal review request as opposed to an automated one.

Well, I I think every person listening to this would have had a patient that sat down in front of them, you've done a review for whatever treatment you were planning or that you were doing, and the patient has just said to you, oh my god. I am so glad that I came in here. You did x for me, and now I can do this, and you have changed my life. And as soon as you hear that, it should be that is the perfect time to actually ask them to do a review for you.

I'll brochure.

A lot of people don't. They go, oh, no. I I feel weird asking them. Okay. They've just told you you're awesome.

So that it there's no better time than I think right there and then to say, do you know there's a lot of people out there who don't know that we do this? Would you mind? And you then run through how you would explain it.

Yeah. It just that that kind of approach, it just feels more human to me. Yeah. It it feels, you know, you're just not a number, you're just not a blast of an email. You you ask them personally and obviously, you're gonna send them an email request or an SMS, but there was that personal touch.

And when it's more human I think people are people want to connect with other humans, right? So it just adds a layer of trust and relationship that makes the patient feel special that they can provide something for you that after you provided them great care.

Yeah. And I've been to businesses where I've been totally wrapped in whatever they've done, whether it was a product or a service. And I've had them say to me, I go, oh, love it if you do a Google review for us. Go, yeah, not a problem. Thanks for I I'm I'm happy that they actually asked me.

Right.

They didn't think, oh, you're some turkey that's walked in their business and left again. They can they are appreciating the positive comments that I gave them, and then when they've said, oh, would you do a Google review for us? Not a problem. I go, okay. We'll email you something this afternoon.

And I usually always do it if they've asked me beforehand and then sent me the request. Yeah. But if I've just if I've mentioned, oh, this has been great. They go, oh, yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. And they say not then I get an email two or three days later. Usually, I don't.

I think this kind of relates to the the second point of the second pro of this approach is the you're gonna get higher response rates. Mhmm. People are gonna feel more compelled or just excited to leave a review when you when they're asked directly by a human being and not just a random email that shows up in their inbox. So not only are going to get higher response rates, but you're probably going get more thorough and helpful reviews with some of those keywords. Right?

So someone came in and had a great bunionectomy or a great foot surgery or a great pair of orthotics with you, they're more likely to mention those words in the review when you've asked for it directly as opposed to some generic kind of blanket email that they got that they didn't even know that you were going to send them a request for a review kind of out of the blue. So high response rates, but also, you know, and Google picks up on those those, you know, thorough reviews. You know, it's a paragraph about how great you are with bunion surgery. Obviously, you search for bunion surgery in a local area, you're more likely gonna jump up in the search results as having those positive reviews.

Yeah. It's better than when you see a review and it says, John is the best podiatrist in town, and I don't think it has John's mom, pretty much. Exactly. You know, just or or excellent service. Whereas compared to when you see a a paragraph or even a second paragraph written, you go, my god.

And and they go into detail of meeting the staff and the service they receive and how their life has changed and how their kids now go there or they take their parents there. Those are fantastic reviews. And they only come about if there's a personal touch.

No. For sure. And I will say sometimes it's better to get a four star review that has like a thorough like paragraph long written review along with it that, you know, talks about the procedure they received and they're happy. I'd rather have four stars than just a straight up five star with zero text or any kind of written paragraph in there because just yeah. It was five stars, but it was just something that someone did quickly because you asked them, not because they really wanted to share and provide that kind of positive digital word-of-mouth like we're talking about.

Yeah. Five stars. Excellent service.

Or just five stars, that's it. Like, that's all they do, just five star it.

First of and it was a really, really long review. And I'm reading through and I go, what an awesome review. Four stars. And I'm thinking, what what did they have to do to get the five stars? Because everything you said but that then comes across as a very genuine review.

Exactly. And you know they're a hard hard marker. They're probably a teacher.

Some people have really hard high standards and you're not always gonna get the five stars. Like I said, if you get those four stars with a good written paragraph, that's that's kind of what you want. You'll get a bunch of those five stars as well. But going on to the next Yes. I would say that, you know, you can kind of customize the ask.

Right? Like, so when you're just send out a blast email requesting a review, you can't talk about to the patient, you know, we're so happy that you had a great bunion surgery. Or, yeah, maybe these people need to be communicated a little bit differently. Right? So maybe it's, you know, when you're talking to an elderly person or talking to someone younger, the way you're going to communicate with them is going to be a little bit different.

And a one size fits all email blast is not always going to be customized enough to really connect with those people. So you want to make sure people feel valued, that they feel heard, but also you know, just when you communicate with them the way they wanna be communicated with in a custom way, it shows that you truly care about them as a patient and them as a person.

No. That's good. So there has to be some cons there.

Yeah, there's definitely some cons, right? So when you're asking for the patient, sometimes you'll get the biggest pushback you'll get is that, oh, it's kind of time consuming or I don't like putting patients on the spot and it you should never feel like you're putting the patient on the spot. This is a patient that you feel like maybe you're putting on the spot, then maybe it's not the right person to be asking a review for. That's true. But they can be a little bit more time consuming.

Instead of just an automated email blast, it does require you or your staff member to ask them. That's maybe, I don't know, fifteen or twenty seconds. It will all sometimes take a little bit of time for them to you know, when they get out to the checkout desk for your for a staff member that either at the you know, right after they leave or maybe they batch these things together to send out these personalized, you know, kind of requests after you ask them face to face. But it shouldn't take that much longer, but there is a little bit more time. And it is a process sometimes, you know, that that that a human has to be kind of in the loop to make it happen.

No. It I I the time, but I think it's worth it. I think the time you put into it is definitely worth it. And like you said, if you're if you're feeling uncomfortable with the person that you're asking, then you're probably not at that point in the relationship where you should be asking for a review. But if a patient's giving you really positive feedback, I don't think there's any better time.

Yes. You've gotta put some time in to do it. The other thing we used to do too as we walked out, I would then say the receptionist, hey, Barbara. By the way, big Jim here is gonna be writing a review for us. Now, put it under pressure.

Now, two people know he's gonna write the review. Exactly. So are there any other any other cons?

Yeah. Another con is that as you're kind of getting that workflow as far as asking the patient for a review during the right time, there can be some inconsistency. Like you just need to make sure that you're training your staff, the front desk staff, and maybe the staff that helps put the patient in the room or take them back out to the front desk to check out that you get into a good frequency and quality of the requests that you make. And that can sometimes vary. Maybe you have a new staff member who needs more training about that or maybe someone's kind of for sometimes we get busy in the office, but it has to be one of those things where you almost have a takeoff checklist.

And if someone expresses that they've had a great experience in the clinic or you know that they have and they're kind of winding up maybe their current treatment course, that's kind of the perfect time to go in there and be consistent about asking for them. Obviously, it's someone who's in pain that came into their first appointment and they really haven't shown an improvement. Like that's not what I mean about being inconsistent. You don't wanna ask every single person for a review. No.

You wanna make sure you hit them at the right time that's gonna lead to those five star well written reviews.

Yeah. And the other part too, like you said with the inconsistency is I've spoken to business owners and we'll we'll talk about reviews and they go, oh, no. I I ask patients all the time, yeah, at the right time, but my staff just won't do it. And that is like one of the cons because they might say that they're doing it, but they're never getting any reviews coming through. So it is that training is really important.

Yeah. It's super important.

What happens once your business starts growing? If if you start getting really big and busy, does it get even harder?

Yeah. There can sometimes be some scalability issues. You know, if you have if you're really short staffed or you're just trying to be like super super efficient, I think it's still possible to to do the personal ask. Maybe it's just you're you're the one that's asking. Maybe there's a checklist or there's something on your EMR that, you know, that flags the front desk person.

There's ways to improve the efficiency if you're scaling and you don't have a ton of staff. But, there can sometimes be if you're having turnover at your office, there can be some growing pains associated with that or just staffing pain. So it can be a bit of a problem. But like I said, if you're able to kind of create kind of an efficient system to ask for these personal reviews, the benefits can definitely outweigh know, I I still think you'll get better reviews from this system. But Yeah.

There are some ways of that you know, automated reviews can work for some folks, we're gonna get into those those pros and cons next. But, you know, I think, like I said, by by kind of asking the person, you know, you're you're showing that you're you're going out there. You you see they had a great result. They're happy. And you can kind of meet them where they're at, at a happy place instead of just taking a shot in the dark with some of these automated ways of doing it.

But I think I'm a big fan. If you have an office that really wants to show personalized care, asking for a personal review is kind of the a no brainer from my perspective.

Yeah. I think another point too is you can choose which patients you wanna ask the review from. So you might have Exactly. Yeah. Mary's walked in, and you've cut her toenails so good If that's not the type of patient you're trying to attract.

No. Exactly. It's a way to filter.

So what about the automated review request? What are the pros if it's all automated?

Yeah. So we talked a little about this in some of the, you know, there's it's almost like a mirror image of the personal in a way. So we kind of hit these home, but efficiency is one. Right? So when you have automated system set up, there's gonna be less of this inefficiency or inconsistency in granting requests.

If you're asking requests from everybody, it can be done in an automated fashion. They're gonna happen quickly and consistently without any manual intervention by you or your staff. So you don't have to worry you have to worry about that workflow. It's just something that's gonna happen in an automated fashion.

And I'm sure with most of the automated review things, you can probably still tick who it goes to and who it doesn't instead of it going to everybody. Like, so if you if you do still have some routine patients coming through, you can untick them so that they're not asking for a review from those patients.

Yeah. We'll get into that and some of the cons, but, yeah, there's definitely some some Damn it. Did get it. No. It's okay.

That's what we're all about. It's a it's a rolling conversation. We don't have to go point by point but I think that is a good point that you definitely if you're going to use an automated system you want to make sure that if you know someone had an kind of it's a patient where you don't want them to receive that request that there is kind of a fail safe there to to make sure that doesn't happen. But the next one I would say is that you can scale it up, right, without having to since it's being handled by software, even if you're short staffed, every single patient that comes into the practice, even if you have a large number of patients, you can assure that everyone receives a request. So no one's gonna fall through the cracks, you know that everyone has received a request which can be of benefit for sure.

Yeah. And it also too, I suppose if everything is automated, then everything is tracked. You you No. You can get some analytics from it.

Yeah. Exactly. When everybody receives a request, then it's, you know, it's much more clear about, you know, it wasn't that that random Wednesday when the staff got overwhelmed and didn't ask for requests. Right? That kind of throws off your tracking.

Like, hey. I thought I had, you know, two or three really satisfied patients that seemed like good candidates for review, but they just I don't know why they didn't, you know, fill out that request. So or that review or kind of respond to my request. So, yeah, it does help you in that way. You can track things a little more clearly when you ask every single patient or the majority of patients through automated systems.

It definitely is is definitely a pro.

Yeah. And like I said, and this is why I see the opposite of the cons to the personalized version too because you might have the best patient in front of you who's had the best experience, but you are running fifteen, twenty minutes behind, and you just wanna catch up. You're going you're not going to talk about it. You're gonna skip it. And that could have been the perfect person, whereas the automated version will do it.

It will do it for you.

Exactly. To to is human. Right? Yeah. So

Okay. So there has to be some cons there.

Yeah. So there's there's three cons we'll jump into. And the first is basically, know, it can feel a bit impersonal when you just get kind of an email blast, you know, after every appointment you go to and you didn't ask no one asked you if you wanted to you know, you had a good experience in person or, you would you be happy to fill out a review for us, people still I feel like like to be asked about those kind of or at least connects you with them in a way like, oh, yeah. Like, you know, Tyson asked me if I'd be willing to, you know, talk about how, you know, I had a great experience with him. So he asked me if I'd be willing to share that online and I yes, I obviously would would, but it's nice to be asked instead of just like getting blasted in email.

It's gonna affect the kind of response rates potentially. Right? Like

You get enough emails.

Right.

So I had it when I get one that you didn't ask for. And and it's just and every time you visit a business, get you get another one. You get and especially if you've already done a review and they haven't unticked it. You go, you like to do another no. No.

I don't go away. So what else? What other cons are there?

Yeah. So like we talked about in the previous section, you know, screening of these is something to be considerate of. There's kinda two levels of screening. You know, obviously, when you're asking people personally, you kind of know who you should and who you shouldn't ask. Yeah.

Sometimes there can be software that does a good job of letting you skip the automated request for review, but not all systems are like that. But if the staff is already busy and they forget to unmark that box or to opt out of sending that person a review, it can cause issues. It could also cause issues if you're trying to use software that basically prescreens folks. They call this review gating, and it's something that Google found is actually illegal by Google's terms of services. If you're only trying to get you know, you kinda, like, ask people, like, oh, were we a one out of five in your opinion if you only select the the fours or fives that kind of go through that first step, then in order to fill out a Google review, you'll get dinged by Google.

And sometimes it can really affect your your search ranking. So screening, there's there's no when you're not asking for it personally and you're utilizing some software that can be considered review gating, you can kind of run afoul of Google and their bylaws and it can sometimes cause issues for your search ranking.

Okay. What about costs setting up a like a automatic review system?

Yeah. I mean, it depends on you know, sometimes people have these built into their EMRs, but definitely there's ones that I've seen that, you know, with some other marketing tools built in. It's maybe, you know, 3 to $400 a month of a software cost for some of these different review or kind of some automated reminder type systems, which definitely can be some of it's beneficial. But like I said, you have to be aware that sometimes you're going to get less relevant reviews. You're not going to get people you're going to get a lot more than just five stars with no writing or three stars and no writing because people didn't opt in actually to receive this.

Maybe they did in your form that said you might be receiving an email from us. But you're not gonna get that kind of really relevant keyword rich review that really appeals to people when they go to look at your Google Business profile and your reviews and they're trying to decide between you and the clinic down the road, you want to have that paragraph that tells that comes from your patient's voice and from them about the great experience they had with you. No matter how great you call yourself on your own website, it means so much more when a patient provides that positive, you know, review and endorsement of you and the care you provide.

Yeah. Especially multiple patients. If multiple patients are saying the same thing about you in a slightly different way, and I've done that where I've read reviews where whether it's a restaurant or it is another service. You read multiple reviews that are saying the same thing, you sort of go, okay. That's not a coincidence.

It must be true.

Definitely. Mhmm.

For sure. Anything else?

I would say sometimes the last one is just sometimes being dependent on specific types of technology. Obviously, technical issues can happen within the system. So it will sometimes it can develop could disrupt your review request process. So you have to make sure that when you pick out your software vendor, if you're using an automated service, that it's something that has they'll tell you if there's going to be downtime or they have kind of a website that shows the uptime and downtime of their services and is very transparent because if you miss out on day of reviews, that could be three to five really positive reviews. So you want to make sure that when you're utilizing automated software that you're utilizing a vendor that's reputable and you're not overly dependent on them, and you can you can switch if the if they're kinda jacking up the prices or they're not providing great service, you can kinda move your reviews to a different service.

Yeah. So if somebody was just new to opening their own business, would you recommend do it all manually first, you know, asking for reviews until you get the the workflow on the type of reviews you're coming through, what you like, and then later on as they get busier, move over more to an automated sort of process.

Yeah. I think it really depends on the stage and the kind of clinic people have. Right? Like, you're early stage and you got some time on your hands and you're not totally booked and you really wanna kind of develop a a positive reputation and a kind of a caring reputation in your local community, I think it is good to have conversations with people about and personally request those types of reviews from them. If you're getting to the point now where you're just completely overbooked and maybe if you even get a one star or two star, you get another 10 reviews that day or 10 reviews that week that kind of push down.

The negative one, maybe you can get away with something more automated. If you're trying to keep your staff extremely lean still while growing rapidly, that might be a time to consider some automated reviews and requests. But yeah, it's kind of a different people like to run their business in different ways. And I think there's no there's not necessarily a right or a wrong here. I'm not you know, I like, you know, personally the kind of more personalized review requests.

But the same time, I understand if you're seeing a lot of patients, have you're trying to maintain kind of a strong staff but not like have too large of a staff, something like an automated review software system can make sense. Just make sure that, you know, it's a reputable reputable provider and that, you know, you do have some of these kind of safeguards kind of that come along with the software that aren't gonna get you in trouble with Google if you do a bit of, you know, screening of some of those reviews.

No. No. That that it's all really good advice and I think it's everybody knows they need them.

Everybody knows they need them. And I would say that, you know, as time goes on, you know, especially in 2024 when we're evolving with AI and all these tools that may disrupt Google search, you know, ChatGPT and things. We're not how is information gonna be served to us in the future? And I can guarantee you that that reviews, whether it be through Google or some other platform in the future, are going to continue to be extremely important because it's patients talking about providers. And that really provides high quality information you can't get from anywhere else.

Know, everyone's gonna say they're well, know, they're they had a high level surgical training or they they do the best orthotics in town. But when patients talk about you and the care you provide, that's what really puts you over the top when it comes to, you know, people selecting to come see you and seek out your care.

You know, I think everyone all you can do is think about the last time you went, you traveled somewhere and you were deciding on a restaurant that night. Did you look at the reviews before choosing which restaurant? Five restaurants to choose from, how did you choose that restaurant? And patients are doing exactly the same thing, which is why you need positive reviews.

Absolutely. And since since this podcast is about reviews, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, you're listening on Spotify, whatever your podcast player is, how about you just go in there, leave us five stars, you know, write some things about, you know, Tyson that you like, things, you know, the the topics you've enjoyed.

Yeah. Three stars now.

That's some words there.

But it's true. Everyone who's listening to this now, if you've been listening to this from the start, you're going all the way through, come on. Give us a bit of love. You're listening to it right now. Go to your platform.

If you don't know what to do, send us an email, and we'll tell you what to do. But just go through, push all the buttons, hit five stars, write a comment, write one star if you don't like it. But if you've listened this way, I think you'd be used to us by now. But it's true. It and that's why we've we've gotta keep doing it.

For sure.

Okay, Jim. This has been very educational today, so thank you very much.

My pleasure, Tyson.

Okay. And I will talk to you next week, and, hopefully, we'll have more reviews.

Yeah. Sounds great.

Okay. See you.

Bye now. Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDonnell. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.