You have worked so hard to build your clinic, create a good name in your community and provide exceptional care for your patients all to have a negative review of your clinic take you down.

As you probably know, a bad customer experience will spread far faster than a good customer experience.  In fact, studies have indicated that people will tell 7 people about their bad experience that they may have had with your clinic, whereas people who had a good experience will only tell one.

But it gets worse.

Before blogs, forums, article sharing sites etc., when there was a complaint about you, it would perhaps linger for a few days or perhaps a few weeks and then it would die down.  However, now with the internet, negative comments and reviews about your clinic can last years… and years… and years.

Since more and more people turn to the internet for their research (e.g. finding what people have to say about your clinic), if you have bad online reviews, you can bet that your clinic is going to suffer.
To make matters worse, statistics indicate that 72% of internet users trust online reviews – whether the reviews are legit or not.


Here are the TOP 4 ways survive and protect yourself from negative online reviews.

1.    Bury The Site – This is great approach because by “burying” the site, you not only get rid of the review, but at the same time, you’ll also enhance your online presence.

Burying a negative review (which has been posted on a site of some sort) requires you to build “Mini Sites”.  These can be Wordpress sites or blogs that are between 3-5 pages in size that are then optimized for the keywords that are used to bring up that negative feedback.  Most likely the keywords are going to be your clinic’s name and your name.

The objective of building Mini-Sites is to have your sites begin to rank high on Google searches and by doing so, you’ll push the site that contains the negative review down (i.e. lower in search engine ranking).  If you get the review down into the 2nd page of Google, you can pretty much be rest assured that no one will find it (as typically no one really looks past the first page of Google).  In fact, 80% of the clicks are done with links above the “fold” – the last part of the screen that you can see without scrolling down).

The benefit with developing these Mini-Sites is that it will give you that much more online presence and you’ll dominate the pages when people are looking for you.  In addition, it’ll make your clinic look superior (i.e. the leader in your community).

2.    Gang Up On The Negative Posts – If you see a negative online review ask your star patients to reply to that post.  Having multiple positive reviews will squash a negative review and those that read the bad post, will pass it off as just a person with a grudge since you have so many of your patients defending you.

3.    Contact The Person Directly That Created The Negative Post – If you know who the patient is that posted the bad comment about your clinic, call him/her up and talk to the person about it.  DO NOT get confrontational when you call.  If you do, their defensive walls will go up and you’ll get nowhere.  In fact, it may cause that person to throw up another harsh online comment.

When you call, be empathetic… but overly empathetic.  Remember, all conflicts can be resolved and all parties involved can develop a good solid positive bond.  It’s all in the approach.

When you have addressed that patients concerns and you have come to a mutual understanding and are back on good terms, ask the patient to kindly remove the post.  Chances are they will.

4.    Encourage Your Patients To Complain To You BEFORE They Take It Online – it’s better to nip the problem in the bud rather than let it fester and explode in your face.

But, first and foremost…

Make sure that your patients take ownership of their condition and how their body reacts to treatment.  All too often chiropractors don’t have their patients take ownership and when the patient doesn’t get better, who do they blame? You.

Secondly, make sure that your patient knows that you always want to hear if they have any concerns or complaints while under care.   If they share their concerns with you, you can diffuse and address them and not have your disgruntled patient take it to the masses. 

So, how do you know if someone has posted a comment about you or your clinic? 

EASY and it’s FREE! It’s called “Google Alerts” and all you need is a Gmail account.  Google Alerts (just Google it) will email you and notify you if anyone has posted anything on the net regarding your clinic.  All that you have to do is sign up and enter the keywords that you want Google to look out for.  It’s that simple.

If you want to get an edge on your competition and find out what they are doing on the net or what others are saying about them, you can have Google Alert you of any posts that have been made online regarding your completion (posted by either them or by someone else) simply by entering the keywords associated with your competition (e.g. their clinics name).

Lastly and a shameless plug, if you want to start your clinic’s online presence right and drive massive numbers of new patients to your clinic, we at Promodocs have developed websites for chiropractors and have incorporated exclusive Promodocs Enhanced Website Features that will drive more new patients to your clinic than you ever thought possible. 

So, if you’re looking for a new chiropractic website for your clinic, we encourage you to check out our site to find out how the Promodocs’ team of  chiropractic website developers  have set a new industry standard and why our sites are so powerful in building your clinic or call toll free at 1-800-652-0592 today!