Tag: Online Reviews

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Doctors and Online Reviews

I read with interest an article in the Washing on Post on Sunday about how Doctors are combating online reviews by requiring patients to sign that they will not review the doctor or their services online in exchange for keeping the patient’s email address private from third party marketing use.

I found the article troubling, as I have used online reviews to select a doctor before and routinely review a physician online before scheduling an appointment. Of issue was what almost appeared to me to be blackmail – “don’t share your experience or we’ll sell your email to spammers”. Worse yet, was the closing paragraph where one physician reviewed stated that he/she routinely goes online and writes glowing fake reviews about themselves.

The importance of legitimate online reviews for both physician review and even for Google Places simply cannot be downplayed. As reviews become more important for online businesses and localized search results become more predominant in search results on Bing.com and Google.com I am expecting the search engines to roll out this year an authorization tie in to one of your social profiles to afford legitimacy. In fact, I feel that in light of this article clear identification and legitimacy of online reviews is overdue.

As to businesses and the physician in this case requiring a patient to sign away review rights for services to be provided, is simply draconian and worthy of boycott.

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Responding to Unfavorable Online Reviews

Getting a bad review online can be maddening, but don’t make it worse by responding without putting in a lot of thought to how your own response will be perceived by other future customers.

I have a client who had a very poor review. When you are in business, you can’t please everyone, but in this case the office manager shot off a rebuttal that when I read it, I just cringed. It made a bad situation much worse. It portrayed the office staff as angry, resentful, argumentative, and vindictive. OUCH!

Sometimes a bad review can be a wakeup call. When you get a bad review, step back and look at it, could it be truthful, or have a grain of truth to it? It is very important to take a careful look to make sure that there is not a change needed on your part such as a change in office policy, customer service, or staff retraining.

If you feel that a rebuttal must be made. Focus on the positive, express concern for a problem, offer special attention from top management to repair the situation. Encourage the reviewer to recontact the office for a refund, redo, or credit on future service. Don’t write a hot rebuttal that trashes the reviewer or accuses them of being unfair or dishonest. This will only work to hurt you and make you look like the review was really true based on your hot angry response.

You can’t fight unfair reviews, but you can work to soften the blow and maybe even become better by taking the review as constructive criticism. Just be careful in your response and work to repair a poor situation not to make it worse with your own comments.

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Google Explains the Name HotPot

Google sent me a note on Twitter when I tweeted about Google HotPot recently when I had blogged about it last week. Turns out there actually is a story behind this queer name they chose for their terrific new online review interface.

“Hot pot, the dish, is about community. You and your friends huddle together and add ingredients to a pot of boiling broth, creating a delicious soup to be enjoyed by all. Sometimes you take your own food from the pot, and sometimes you taste what your friends have added. This shared experience of gathering around a fire to cook and eat communally is a fundamental illustration of how we’ve come together to enjoy food from the earliest days of humanity.” Read the full article on the HotPot blog.

So it appears that the Google HotPot team is watching Twitter which that in itself is an interesting note. Okay I’m not sure I buy into the HotPot thing for food, who wants people double dipping into food you actually will eat, but the concept of sharing information on reviews, restaurants, businesses, hair salons, all makes perfect sense.

I like Google HotPot, it is similar to Four Square, but I like HotPot better as I can be at my computer updating Facebook and jot a note in HotPot. I don’t have to be on my mobile phone to write a review like you do with Four Square. The sharing aspect is cool and I am personally using it to write reviews for the local businesses that I use.

Even more interesting for me is that HotPot is integrated with Google.com and Google Places. So anyone who is in my HotPot group has their reviews shown on my Google.com searches and all HotPot reviews appear on Google Places. I think Google has a winner with HotPot, but here are a few names that I ask them to consider while they are at it: Stew Pot, Add to My Stew, Fondue It, Tell Me More, Crazy Spot. What weird and wonderful names can you think of? Just put them in comments below. Google appears to be listening.