OptiCall is often the go-to resource to help elective medical practices deliver the patient experience that gets 5-star reviews. But hey, we recognize not everyone wants to be at the top, drive more new patient visits, or generate more revenue. Here\’s a quick list on how medical practice can get some 3-star reviews (or below):
1. Make Patients a Low Priority
The best strategy for getting sub-par or poor reviews is to fundamentally believe patients don’t matter. Once you master this, make sure you create an office culture where everyone makes patients their last priority so that every aspect of your business will be impacted – operations, hiring, investments, and ultimately bottom line.
2. Hire Terrible People. And Treat Good People Terribly.
You can really set yourself up for those \”not so great\” reviews if you hire staff with no experience in customer service, no people skills, negative attitudes, and poor references, so you’ll want to start there.
But sometimes you get people in your practice who actually want to do a great job. They really care about patients and delivering a great experience. But that will only help boost reviews.
If you’re wanting to take your practice to an all-time low, treat good employees terribly. This will lower company morale and create a toxic culture. Here are a few things you can try:
- Overload your staff with office tasks that take them away from spending time with patients.
- Make roles and responsibilities extremely vague. Make sure no one knows what they do and thinks their job is someone else’s responsibility.
- Discourage any training or learning whatsoever…or even better, tell them what to do, then change your mind, and tell them to do something completely different.
- Put the most highly-irritable, impatient, or even careless employees in positions with the most patient interaction.
- Ensure no one is motivated. Don’t pay them well, recognize good work, or even tell them their job is valuable. All of those things could risk them becoming better employees.
3. Deliver a Poor Experience
Once you’ve created a horribly toxic environment, you can start assessing how to make every aspect of the patient experience horrible.
All those bad review you’re trying to get? Make sure those are at the top of Google and Yelp reviews.
From there, make it extremely difficult for them to learn about your practice. Have an old website that has outdated information, broken links, and poor design to really send the message that you just don’t care.
Ensure it’s nearly impossible for them to contact you. Don’t list your phone number or consider burying the “Contact Us” page so deep within your website, they become so frustrated and just give up. If they somehow find a Contact Form to get in touch, make sure their information gets completely lost in the system. Hey, ignorance is bliss, right?
And finally, if they call you, let the phone ring several times, put them on hold, or even better – let the call go to voicemail and don’t call them back. This will ensure they’re never, ever going to contact you again. Like ever.
The Real Truth
All jokes aside, no one wants bad reviews. In today’s world, where Uber and Airbnb do not allow driver\’s or hosts to stay on the apps with anything lower than 4 stars, you don\’t event want mediocre reviews. You always want to strive for the Gold Standard.
While you may think your practice couldn’t possibly be guilty of any of the poor tactics listed above, you may be surprised. Sadly, many practices either aren’t aware of where their practice is falling short or they’re unsure how to fix it.
That’s where we come in. When we conduct our free lead conversion assessment, we\’re able to determine whether a customer reaching out to your practice would move forward based on the experience they received or if there\’s a risk they\’d be calling another practice. Let us help you identify blind spots that could be the reason you’re not getting the new patient volume you want. Request one of our free practice assessments to get a full report with actionable steps you can take starting now.
[contact-form-7 id=\”3302\” title=\”Free Practice Assessment_Blog\”]