Case Study : How to Build Great Online Reviews

The way people gather information, perform research, and make decisions has changed beyond all recognition over the last few years. What used to take lots of time and effort now can come down to a few clicks of a mouse.

Want to buy a pair of black trousers? No more poring through catalogs, Amazon can give you 30,788 results in just seconds.

But there is another change as well. Not long ago when you moved into a new area and you were looking for a recommendation for a doctor, for example, your experience would probably go a lot like this:

You ask your neighbor if they know a good eye doctor in the area.

“Oh, yes, I know this great one, I really love her. She was so nice and always took great care of me. Her office was in that building over by the bank. Not the new bank, you know, not that one, the old one that used to be down the street from the library.”

“Oh, great, what’s her name?”

“She was called Dr. Lin. I loved her. She retired about a year ago. Actually, that reminds me, I need to find a new eye doctor, so if you hear about somebody good can you let me know?”

Though it is always fun to chat to our neighbors, the internet has thankfully made this kind of conversation less likely to occur quite so often. You want to find out the name of a good practice in your area? Google it!

Case Study: La Paz Optometric Center

La Paz Optometric Center is an established optometric practice dedicated to their mission of improving the quality of life for people of all ages by providing the finest in vision care. La Paz has always been at the forefront of new technology both within their practice and in their interaction with the community at large. La Paz has a very strong presence on the internet, with their website, their active social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google Plus, as well as their Yelp Business Page.

I spoke to Dr. Aaron Sako and asked him what got him interested in first party reviews (such as those on Google and Yelp) and how those have affected the practice.

La Paz has always asked new patients how they heard about the practice. For quite a long time the answer almost always has been that they found La Paz “on the internet.” Then the patients are asked what made them decide to book an appointment with La Paz rather than with another practice that might have come up in the search. “90% picked us because of reviews and our website. Not only that, but we have new patients come in asking for particular members of staff because those people have been mentioned favorably in a review.”

Recently Dr. Sako attended a meeting of a study group during which there was a discussion on how to generate more first party reviews on sites like Google and some ideas were kicked around. After that meeting Dr. Sako got in touch with his contact at 4PatientCare and they discussed some of these ideas. Her response: “We can do that.”

So we did. We revamped our own Review Builder and the results have been outstanding!

How does it work?

Our Review Builder works by triggering surveys based on whether an appointment is returned to us as “Showed up.” Once we get that info we check that we haven’t sent them a survey in the last three days and then send them a survey email. We have the power to determine what patients get a survey and what patients do not in the new Review Builder system. But the main difference between this and other systems, and the thing that is really having the most impact, is that we have reduced the number of clicks a patient has to make to get to a first party review site. Every fewer click that the patient has to make increases the likelihood of their leaving a review.

The Survey

1. We send out an email to a patient within 24 hours of their visit to the practice. The basic idea is that we eliminate the barriers between the patient and the review by asking them a quick question: “How likely would you be to recommend La Paz Optometric Center to a friend or family member?” which they can answer on a scale of 0–10.

2. Then we make it as easy as possible for them to start typing and post a review if they give a positive response. If they select a 9 or 10, we send them directly to the Google review box. The practice can also choose to send them to Yelp if they prefer, or both Google and Yelp. Because we have reduced the number of clicks a patient has to make to get to a first party review site we are seeing a dramatic increase in the number of reviews.

If for some exceptional reason they choose a less-than-stellar number, they are asked a question along the lines of “How could we have made it a 10?” and given a chance to write in some feedback, which is sent directly to the practice. They are not prompted to leave a review on the first party sites unless they give a high score.

3. The practice then receives an email from us giving them that feedback so that they can reach out to that patient and work things out as best they can to keep them happy and coming back to the practice!

We are finding that this new Review Builder system has been working fantastically well in generating reviews on first party sites. “We are seeing lots more reviews, it is working great!”

The Results

Dr. Sako decided to give it a try and see how it affected their Google reviews in particular. Although they have been keeping track of their NPS (Net Promoter Score) for years it wasn’t helping them with their external marketing, and that was a large part of the reason why they wanted to try out the Review Builder. When they started with the new system they had had 3 Google reviews over the course of 4 years. This was something that they really felt needed some attention, and but there had never seemed to be a robust system in place that would encourage people to leave reviews.

La Paz was showing up well in Google searches but were still not receiving many Google reviews. They didn’t really push Google in their marketing, but concentrated more on Yelp and were getting a good response there. They have always want to stay ahead of the curve, and make sure that they are covering all bases. In keeping with that desire and also because they are very much aware of the way that Google affects the behavior of people searching, they were very interested in seeing the impact of the new Review Builder.

La Paz moved over to our new system and went from their 3 Google reviews in 4 years to 57 reviews in about 3 months! Compared to all of the other practices in the area, La Paz stands out from the crowd with a huge number of reviews and a very noticeable presence.

Seeing the Benefits

• Better SEO. La Paz is making a very strong showing in Google searches in their area.
• Competitive listing. They are really standing out from the crowd in comparison to other practices because of the much larger number of great reviews.
• Consistent incoming reviews. The Google reviews come out much faster and more often than any Yelp reviews they’ve ever gotten. Dr. Sako believes it’s because “Yelp filters out the reviews if you aren’t an established Yelper, whereas Google will let it stick.”
• Happy staff. I asked Dr. Sako if he has seen any other benefits. The one that has meant the most is the impact it is having on the staff. One of the things they track weekly is their NPS and any new online reviews. They are coming in more and more often now, so at every weekly meeting, they get to announce another 5 star Google review. For their team, it’s huge:

“It is a little celebration!”

We thank Dr. Sako and La Paz Optometric Center for their feedback and are very happy that they are able to have more and more little victory celebrations. We will be checking back with them soon (maybe we will be able to convince them to do a victory dance on video for us?)

If you would like to learn more about our Review Builder and how it can work wonders for your practice and generate the great reviews that you deserve just let us know!