Take this self-assessment for online chiropractor reviews

Is it time you paid some serious attention to your online profile and chiropractor reviews?

Recent studies have proven that businesses lose massive revenue from patients switching service providers. The culprit? Unsatisfactory patient experience.

Dissatisfied patients typically tell 9-15 other people about their experience; some tell 20 or more. A negative patient experience is the reason 86% of patients quit care with an office.

How do they tell other people? In the past it was simple, they just used their mouth. However, with Google, Yelp and Facebook, they can now type-out their experience one time and tell hundreds or even thousands.

Review facts

• Half of people won’t even bother to make an appointment if your review average is under 4 stars.
• Reviews over a month old are basically worthless — as are generic chiropractor reviews that don’t address a potential patient’s specific problem, pain, or need.
• People want the entire patient experience to be top-of-the-line. If it’s not, they’ll go somewhere else.

We have arrived in a time where patient experience may be more important than the service. It is now with utmost importance for companies to sell an experience. And of course, this all begins with patient relationships.

Large corporations fall under great pressure to beat their competition with customer experience. While companies with little to no competition such as utility providers or cable companies are often the culprit of the worst customer support.

Patient experience is more than adjustments

In health care, specifically chiropractic, while every chiropractor thinks that they are the best or their technique is the best, what the patient sees, feels, and experiences are what will actually define their patient experience and their opinion of you and you practice.

Make no mistake, patient experience is more than the adjustment you give.

From online scheduling, the first call to the office, directions to the office, appointment reminders, outside of your office, inside the office, your staff, etc., all have a part in patient experience and satisfaction.

Statistics and current market trends:

1. 86% of buyers will pay more for a better brand experience, but only 1% feel that vendors meet expectations.

2. 77% of patients believe it takes too long to reach a receptionist and patients will wait on hold for an average of 11 minutes before hanging up.

3. Patient satisfaction ratings for text communications are often higher than all other support channels, likely because of the speed and conversational nature, with chat being the preferred support channel by Millennials.

4. Artificial intelligence will be a mainstream customer experience investment in the next couple of years. 47% of organizations will use chatbots for customer communications and 40% will deploy virtual assistants.

Survey your patients

Only by surveying patients in a non-confrontational way can you learn from the truth about how they actually feel about you, your team and their experience with you.

How often should you ask? We have found that asking every 30 days gets the most response. How should you ask? We have found that asking via email is ok, but via text you will get a much higher response. What do you do when they answer that they are not happy? Pick up the phone, immediately, get to the bottom of why they aren’t happy and fix it.

Take the self-assessment

Take this self-assessment of your practice — pretend you are a person looking for a chiropractor in your town:

1.  Google “chiropractor” and the name of your town. Do you show up in the Top 3 maps section? Do you show up in the Top 3 organic listings? If not, let’s get real you do not exist, to hundreds of people looking for your service every month.

2.  Go to your Google My Business listing. Do you have hundreds of reviews? Do you have at least a 4.8 star rating? Do you have recent reviews? Do you have consistent review week after week? These are the things going through consumers’ minds when reviewing your chiropractor reviews.

3.  On Your Google My Business listing and your website, can new patients schedule online? Nearly 80% of consumers prefer to schedule online, do you really think you only service the other 20%?

4.  Can patients, especially new patients, text your office? This is the preferred communication method, the texting app is the most used app on smart phones – period.

5.  Can patients give you feedback in a non-confrontational way? Most people have decent manners or are simply too shy to tell you issues to your face unless they are completely angry at you. But make no mistake they will have their “revenge” by not referring, not coming back, or leaving you a negative chiropractor review. 

Most of you will be saying that “my patients are happy.” But let’s sniff-test that — how many referrals do you get on a monthly basis? If it’s not at least one referral for every 10 patients you saw that month, then they aren’t as happy as you think. What about the number of inactive files you have vs. active?

Feedback and online chiropractor reviews

So yes, you need a good marketing plan, website, etc., but if you ignore patient experience in a real and monitored way, you are losing huge on the front-end marketing and wasting even more on the back end.

Every chiropractor should have an automated, non-confrontational way to get feedback from patients. Which would then ideally sort them by happy vs. not happy, and automatically either ask for reviews, or ask how you could have done better to make them happy.

If you respond to the unhappy, you can take action to make them happy, thus salvaging the relationship or at the very least defusing the potential 1-star review and bad word of mouth. If they respond happy, capture that with Google, Yelp or Facebook chiropractor reviews for hundreds or thousands of patient patients to read.

MATT PRADOS is the founder of ReviewWave.com, a chiropractic automation software that is in a category of its own called “patient experience engine.” He helps thousands of practices get hundreds of thousands of reviews and drive new patients to their office that pay, stay, review and refer.