Until recently, RealSelf did not allow providers to collect a review from patients or clients who were still at your office. Now that consumers are interested in having that option, we’ve updated our review collection policies to accept in-office reviews.
Keep reading to learn more about how this helps you, what you can do to jumpstart your review efforts, and why we now accept in-office reviews.
How this helps the community.
The easier it is for your patients or clients to share feedback, the more reviews you can get. And the more reviews you have, the easier it can be to build trust with new potential patients or clients.
For aesthetic consumers, third-party reviews are the trusted way to research treatments and providers. In fact, 73% of RealSelf users say reviews are a top influencer when choosing a provider.1 And on the provider side, we see that carry through: On average, providers with at least 17 reviews get 10x more email and phone contacts.2
While not all patients or clients will want to write a review from your office, now you and your patients or clients have the choice to start the review process when it best suits you. And that can lead to more trustworthy content on your profile, which helps local consumers make the right choice for them.
Updating your review collection process.
If you have a process in place for leveraging and collecting reviews, it probably looks something like this right now:
- Pre-consult: Suggest potential patients to read more about you via reviews on RealSelf.
- Pre-treatment: Ask patients prior to the procedure if they have any questions based on reviews.
- Post-treatment: Ask patients to share their story on RealSelf by writing a review at home.
Because you can start collecting reviews sooner, now you can integrate in-office reviews into your daily operations. Building in a review collection process helps provide a seamless and frictionless experience for patients taking time to write a review.
With a focus on the post-treatment phase, here are tips you can use to get more reviews before people even leave your office.
- Train your front desk team to ask if post-treatment consumers have a RealSelf account. If not, offer to help the patient set up an account.
- Give reviewers a private, quiet place to start their review. Especially post-treatment, a little harmony goes a long way.
- Provide refreshments so review writers can focus on sharing their story instead of hunting down something to snack on or drink.
- Hand out a complimentary RealSelf review card, available for order here. Handwrite a thank you note or shortened URL to your review page on the bottom of the card.
- Ask if reviewers want a reminder about team member names or other specifics they might to include in their review.
Why the change?
We’ve updated our code of conduct to allow consumers to write in-office reviews, without risking the authenticity of patient or client feedback that millions of aesthetic consumers rely on to make informed choices.
Feedback from the RealSelf community is incredibly important to us, and both providers and consumers have requested the option for patients to start a review right away. In particular, we’ve heard a shift in consumer opinion from not wanting the pressure of writing a review in-office to wanting to write a review while it’s top of mind. So we’ve updated our code of conduct to be inclusive of allowing in-office reviews.
As an added measure, we’ve made substantial technical investment, including multifactor authentication, to ensure reviews are being submitted by true, invested members of our community.
Want more best practices for getting reviews?
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Sources:
1. Survey of U.S. RealSelf community members, Aug 2016.
2. RealSelf internal data, Jan 2018.
