If you run a dental clinic, you know the power of patient feedback. Obviously, you need all the positive reviews you can get to attract new patients and establish a professional reputation. On top of that, tuning in to feedback can help take your practice in the right direction. 

Even if you already make every effort to provide an outstanding quality of care, you can lean on input and reviews to improve the patient experience. Follow these six steps to leverage patient feedback for growth. 

1. Collect Feedback

Sourcing comprehensive feedback should be your first step in improving the patient experience. Take this opportunity to reach out to active and inactive patients with a request for input if they haven’t left a review already. 

To get meaningful feedback, you can: 

• Encourage patients to complete a quality of care survey after each appointment
• Ask patients to leave online reviews on your website or Google My Business page
• Send follow-up text or email messages to patients and invite them to provide feedback
• Use an easy automated online review tool by Dental Intelligence

Pro tip: Be specific. Instead of simply asking patients to rate your quality of care, include points like the treatment process, comfort levels, and waiting times. 

2. Analyze Insights

Now that you have a solid body of patient feedback, it’s time to extract useful insights for your practice. It’s gratifying to know your average rating is 4.9 stars, but you want to dig deeper by exploring what your patients like about your service and what concerns may crop up. 

Use the available feedback to answer the following questions:

• What aspects of dental care do your patients consistently praise in their reviews?
• What are some recurring concerns that may harm patient experience?
• How do your leading competitors’ online reviews compare to yours?

3. Capitalize on Your Strengths

If some sides of your practice garner constant positive patient feedback, see if you can use these elements to reinforce your brand and advertise your unique selling points. 

For example, suppose reviews applaud you for addressing dental anxiety with empathy and sensitivity. In that case, you might highlight these reviews on your website and capitalize on marketing your clinic as a place that provides dental care with minimum stress. 

4. Recognize Pain Points 

No dental practice is flawless. Patient feedback can act as a mirror showing you concerns you need to address if you want to grow and gain an edge over your competition.

Be honest and ask yourself:

• What are your patients’ chief complaints? Do they express dissatisfaction with procedures, follow-up protocols, or waiting times? 
• How valid are these concerns?
• What could you do to resolve them? What have you done so far to address these pain points?

5. Respond to Concerns

Reputation management should be high on your list of priorities, along with efficient appointment scheduling and dental office communication. Once a patient expresses concern about any aspect of their care, make sure to give this patient your full attention, address their complaint, and invite them to tell you what, in their opinion, you could do to improve their future experience. 

Ideally, you want to catch and resolve negative patient feedback before it goes online. This is easier to do when you’re using the online review tool by Dental Intelligence. However, remember that every dental practice will have some negative reviews. The key is responding to them openly, quickly, and professionally to show that you’re committed to improving your quality of care. 

6. Build an Action Plan

Use insights from patient feedback to build a business plan for the next quarter, year, or couple of years. You may work with a business consultant to create an actionable plan based on patient input. Additionally, we recommend that you:

• Prioritize resolving any potential liability issues, like patient safety concerns or cybersecurity breaches
• Start with changes you can make quickly and easily or changes you were already preparing to implement
• Commit to improving the patient experience by addressing points that crop up most often in negative reviews 
• Brainstorm strategies that could cement patient loyalty (like introducing more innovative procedures, including convenient payment plans, providing more flexible office hours, etc.)

Gain Useful Feedback and Boost Patient Experience with Dental Intelligence

Measuring patients’ satisfaction levels and managing patient expectations is easier with smart solutions by Dental Intelligence. Improve patient experience, save time, streamline processes, and get meaningful patient feedback with our analytics and engagement tools. Ready to see how it works? Request a demo today.