Your Plastic Surgery Practice Received a Bad Google Review. Now What?

Evergreen, CO â€“ Your plastic surgery practice received a bad Google review. Now what are you going to do?

Should you ignore it and hope that no one will see it? That’s not likely to happen.

Consumers pay more attention to Google reviews today than ever before. And what they read could mean the difference between them choosing you or a competitor.

In fact, 86% of Google users admit that they are influenced by negative reviews.

To keep people from avoiding your business because of a negative Google review, there are a few steps you should take. But first, you have to determine what type of negative review you’ve received. Because the type of review will determine how you should deal with it.

Reviews That Are Incorrect or Unnecessarily Harsh

If someone has posted a review that’s considered incorrect or defamatory, you are well within your rights to have the review removed.

On its Legal Removal Requests Page, Google states two courses of action that you should take when a review bashes you or someone you work with.

Step 1: Reply to the reviewer directly

This is the lowest cost course of action and the one that is most likely to produce results. We’ll talk more about this in a moment.

Step 2: Obtain a court order demanding that Google removes the URL from the search results

This step is going to take some effort. If you can identify who the reviewer is, you can name that person as a defendant in a lawsuit. The mere threat of court will usually entice the person enough to change the review or take it down.

If you do go to court, you’ll have to subpoena Google to gather the reviewer’s information. Google does state in its support pages that it will remove reviews that contain foul language, hate speech and the like, but you’ll probably still have to get a court order to get Google to act.

If the reviewer created a Google account for the sole purpose of posting your nasty review, the information entered was probably false. But Google can at least provide you with an IP address via subpoena, and that’s usually enough to reveal the reviewer’s identity.

Negative Reviews That are Truthful

If you received a negative review and it contained some semblance of truth, as in your company or an employee dropped the ball, you don’t have to live with that single star rating staring you in the face every time you look at your Google profile.

One option is to flag the review for inappropriate content. By doing so, you are hoping that Google’s team will find content that’s against its terms of service. If such content is found, the review will be removed. However, if no inappropriate content is found, the review will stick, and you’ll have to find another means of having it removed.

Contact the Person Who Left the Review

This is Google’s first suggested course of action, and it’s a good one. Contacting the reviewer can oftentimes get the information changed, or the review deleted altogether.

When you contact the reviewer, do it out in the open for everyone to read, including new customers. You may find yourself not wanting to draw attention to the review, but by making the response public, you’re doing your business a great service.

First, responding publicly shows that you care. Responding also shows that you’re dedicated to making the situation right.

Be courteous at all times when responding to a negative reviewer, and never blame the person for anything. Assume all fault and offer a freebie, discount or refund to encourage the person to change their opinion.

If your organization has received a few bad reviews, look for the common ingredient. Why are all of these customers displeased? Then rally your employees together to fix the problems before they’re allowed to get worse.

If you can learn from the negative reviews, you’ll come to see them as constructive and not as detrimental to your business as you first suspected.

Gather More Positive Reviews

The best way to deal with negative Google reviews is to bury them under a sea of positive reviews. Contact your happy customers and entice them to leave a review of your business. With a majority of positive responses, those negative reviews won’t hold as much weight.

What About Yelp and Other Platforms?

If you received a negative review on Yelp or other business review platform, the advice is the same.

1. Contact the platform’s support services and see if you can get the review removed that way.
2. Talk to the reviewer out in the open and try to make the situation right again.
3. Take the reviewer to court.
4. Gather as many positive reviews as you can to bury the negative ones.

Like any business, your plastic surgery business is not immune to negative reviews. You can’t please everyone all of the time. But by being proactive with your negative reviews, you can get them changed or removed altogether. Then use the feedback you receive to make your business even better than it is now.

Take your plastic surgery practice to the next level by investing in Google SEO. Contact Millionairium and tell us about your business goals.