How to get more Google reviews for Veterinary practices: Our big how to guide

How do I get more Google reviews for my vet practice?
 
It may be an old cliché, but with reviews it’s 100% true: if you don’t ask you don’t get. 
 
Think of the restaurant analogy. Unless you’re somebody who proactively reviews as a habit, the chances of you leaving a review for a particular restaurant are pretty low – and if you do decide to make an out of character decision to do it, it usually isn’t going to be positive!
 
But if the owner was to come to your table after your meal and explain that reviews were really important to local businesses, and that if you could find the time to leave one he and his team would be especially grateful, how likely would you be to say no? 
 
In practice, we know when a consult or procedure has gone well. Every time someone comes in with a thank you card or flowers, we should be asking them to leave a review.
 
However, people in our industry often don’t enjoy salesy conversations. We can be quite awkward like that. 
 
So the second way of generating reviews is to automate the process, sending texts or emails requesting reviews after every consultation, saying something like “please help other pet owners to receive the best care for their pet by leaving a five star review of the service you received with us”, including a direct link to the review service.
 
We talk about conversion. The number of people who see your practice’s listing on Google and decide that your vets is the best place for their pet and book an appointment online. The more reviews you have, the more trustworthy you look, the more people convert to become clients. 
 
You may worry that if you ask for reviews from everybody, are you going to receive more negative reviews? 
 
The reality is, with an exception of a very small number of practices, people absolutely love what you do, and they’re so grateful for the compassionate care you offer their pets.
 
Your goal should be 100 five star reviews – to start with. That’s enough to show a consensus opinion. 
 
Of course among those you may get the odd negative review. But that will always be the case, regardless of whether you’re working to maximise your reviews. 
 
The solution to pollution is dilution. And I refuse to apologise for the rhyme. 
 
If you proactively ask clients to leave reviews, you will flood your page with positive feedback, which puts any unfortunate negatives into context. 
 
There is an argument to say that 4.8 or 4.9 as an average rating is more believable than five, so the odd bad review actually might not be such a bad thing!


 
Now we have more vet reviews on Google – what do we do with them?
 
Replying to reviews can feel like groundhog day. You have one hundred to reply to. How do you stop every response sounding exactly the same? How do you avoid brain fatigue? 
 
Nevertheless, it’s critical that you reply. Why? Because of our friend Google once more.
 
Google likes to see you getting lots of reviews – but they also like to see lots of replies from you. They value an engaged business, and you get marked up by the algorithm for replying. 
 
Not to mention that if a vet practice is actively replying, it looks to the browsing pet owner as though their reputation is important to them, which shows that they care. 
 
As some nuts and bolts advice, nominate one person in the practice to handle replies, and get your settings sorted. You can receive a notification every time a review is left, or just if a question is asked or depending on the score. 
 
Decide what email these notifications are sent to, and what you receive notifications for – and make sure that the person who will be handling reviews agrees!
 
Reviews are like a spectator sport. So when you’re leaving a reply, on one hand it’s obviously for the person who wrote the review, but on the other it’s really for the benefit of all of the people who are going to be reading through them. 
 
The worst thing that you can do is template a response and use it time and again. Not only will that annoy the people that you’re responding to, but it will be blatantly obvious to all of those that are reading through. It’ll look like you can’t be bothered.
 
You’re not allowed to talk about specific cases or clinical information, it’s against RCVS guidelines. But we should be trying to make responses as personalised as possible.
 
If we recognise a client and we know the name of their pet, absolutely use it. People like to hear compliments about their pet – so use this to your advantage. Tell people that their dog is a real character, that their cat is beautiful😻.
 
If a pet has had a procedure or is feeling unwell, you can ask for a picture when they are back on top form, which is both nice and thoughtful, and another tick on Google’s algorithm, as it is seen as even more engagement.
 
Using emojis is great because it helps to communicate personality, which is essentially the aim with this whole exercise – show the world 🌍 how great you and your practice are and how much you care about your patients 🐕🐈🐇 .
 
The more personal you can make it the better. For people scanning through reviews, it looks great if you’re on familiar terms with as many of your clients as possible, because that’s exactly the service they want for their pet.
 
With bad reviews the aim is to take the conversation offline, as you don’t want to air your dirty laundry in public. 
 
Invite them to call the practice to talk through their concerns. If you already know about their unhappiness, you want to use this opportunity to show anyone who comes next that you take it seriously, and that you’re in a process of dealing with it. 
 
Reference that you’ve had a conversation directly with the client already. A classic example would be “we’re sorry you’re unhappy about how you were treated in the practice, we have spoken to you about it and we hope that has allayed your concerns”. 
 
This shows that you take them seriously without admitting or accepting responsibility. 
 
Remember that you can’t delete reviews, which is why it is always about racking up positive reviews to dilute any negative experiences.