Beta program invitation

“Where can I read reviews about you?”

This question was recently posed during a consultation between a prospective patient and doctor active on RealSelf.com. We thought this was a powerful indicator of how far consumers have moved past personal word-of-mouth, faith in doctor medical credentials, and before and after images when choosing a doctor. They want, and increasingly demand, real patient testimony before making a decision. And not just one person’s feedback, but that of dozens.

TRUST

It comes down to building trust, and just like consumers questioning the credentials of a 30-years-of-experience doctor missing from Google, people are uncomfortable choosing any professional who has no online testimonials (on independent websites) about their services.

In addition to building trust, these consumer testimonials (i.e. reviews) are critical to your search optimization. Google has made it a mission to show consumers a complete profile of information about professional service providers per location. It’s our opinion, and of SEO experts outside of the aesthetics industry, that Google provides top listings based on 3 factors:

1. Proximity to the business center

2. Ratings and reviews. Google is very keen on user generated content and loves user ratings / reviews.

3. Use of keywords in the business name / title and throughout the listing.

As you can see in the screen shot above, Google has made reviews a critical path to researching a doctor. This is no accident. The engineers at Google know what consumers click and optimize for it.

Not convinced on the power of social reviews? Read 9 reasons why they're critical to your practice marketing

Reviews vs. recommendations

An acknowledged problem that doctor’s encounter with review sites is that there is no way to verify the authenticity of reviews. Was the person actually a patient? Further, doctors have found it challenging to respond to negative reviews. Many doctors simply hate the idea that they’re being rated at all, especially when it comes to medical technique.

RealSelf strives to bring balance to the consumer demand for transparency and the doctor desire for accuracy and fairness. Our answer is RealSelf Doctor Recommendations: a free patient testimonials system that has several important features rolled out in phases.

Note: The beta trial will only apply a select set of doctors who participate in phase I activities. Phase II and III will be opened up to all doctors on RealSelf.

Phase I Functionality

1. Since the launch of RealSelf, consumers have openly posted about their experience with a cosmetic procedure (we call these “treatment reviews”). Within this posting, users are asked whether they recommend their doctor, to name them, and to state why they do/don’t recommend them. Personal attacks are not allowed in this text field

2. When a patient makes a positive recommendation, RealSelf currently shows a link from the treatment review to the doctor’s profile. This link is hidden and is only visible to registered users (less than 1% of visitors). The new Recommendations system will make this link appear for all users, thus driving significant traffic into the doctor’s profile page.

Here's a view of the new treatment review page layout when a doctor is enrolled in the recommendations program:

3. Positive recommendations will also get published to the doctor’s profile page along with a count showing number of times recommended by RealSelf visitors. A link will be added to the profile page that says, “Recommend Doctor _____”

4. The data representing the number of recommendations will also be used in RealSelf doctor directories so a consumer can re-sort the doctor listings (defaulted to answers posted by topic) according to most recommended by location.

5. RealSelf will feed the positive postings to Google Local, so they appear along with reviews picked up from other services like ratemd, vitals, yelp. This will drive better SEO performance for participating doctors and counter the random nature of reviews posted to these other sites.

6. Negative recommendations would get suppressed, only appearing on the specific treatment reviews to registered users. The doctor name, in these negative cases, will not be linked to his/her profile since we cannot verify the negative came from a real patient.

7. A doctor will receive an email alert when a new recommendation is posted to their profile. A known feature request is to provide doctors with a 24 hour advance notice prior to the recommendation appearing on their profile.

8. If a doctor finds that the positive recommendation is unacceptable, they’ll be provided with a simple tool to remove the posting from appearing on their profile. The suppression logic described above (#6) would apply. This function already exists on the site Linkedin for their testimonials feature.

9. RealSelf will build functionality that enables the doctor to easily add the patient recommendations back to their own website.

Phase II Functionality - Patient Verification

Consumers and doctors alike share a concern that reviews can be fabricated, positives as well as negatives. Both parties want greater accuracy and trust in the postings. We believe that Amazon and other e-commerce giants have addressed this problem better than most by verifying the person is an actual buyer. They still show other reviews, but clearly indicate those that are verified.

To replicate this RealSelf will provide you with a unique link to the recommendation form on RealSelf.com that contains a tracking code. The doctor can then use this URL in their outbound emails to past patients. When a patient posts a recommendation using this link, an icon will appear next to each posting that says “Verified Patient”. The doctor can also provide a patient with the code by printing it out on a postcard. The code should not be posted to the doctor’s website since any consumer could then access it.

If a consumer does not use this link, but asks to be verified, they’ll have to contact the doctor’s office to get affirmation that they indeed received services. RealSelf may display verified recommendations ahead of those unverified when listing them on the doctor profile (this will be worked out at a later date).

Phase III Functionality – All recommendations

Once RealSelf.com has demonstrated tangible practice marketing value from posting positive patient feedback, we hope to convince doctors of the value of posting all recommendations - positives and negatives. While no one wants to be cast in a negative light, showing all posting is the only true way to compete against Yelp, Angie’s List, and the dozens of other services that rate you on a scale and list you along with non-core aesthetic physicians (further muddying the waters on what is means to be a specialist in your field).

Why isn’t it enough to show just positive recommendations?

Because consumers don’t necessarily feel they’ve got the complete picture when all they see are positives. Consider your own online shopping behavior. If you read that a hotel had only 5 star reviews from 100 people, you’d probably think they cooked the books.

Human nature is also to seek out the negative, and move your way to positives. Thus, consumers now search Google using “Dr. ________ + complaints” or “Dr. ______ + problems.” As long as your RealSelf profile is nothing but positives you’ll continue to face problems with 3rd party rating sites.

Perhaps you’ll never be convinced that showing negatives along with positives is a good idea. That’s fine. Phase III is planned to be an opt-in service. Doctors who want it, can ask for it. Otherwise we’ll keep the profile functionality described in phases I and II.

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9 reasons to get proactive about social reviews/recommendations

1. Reviews have tremendous influence over the doctor selection process. Consumers seek out and demand feedback about physicians as witnessed by the surge in popularity of sites like Vitals.com and the RipoffReport.com. These sites are taking off in terms of audience because reviews are trusted by 70% of consumers (Nielsen, 2009). Online reviews are second only to personal advice from a friend as the driver of purchase decisions. ("Web users and web community," Rubicon Consulting, Inc. October 2008)

2. The absence of 3rd party testimonials about you should be seen as a problem. Reviews are now a mainstream activity and component of consumer research for any major purchase. Almost half of U.S. online adults read ratings and reviews at least once a month, and 19% post them. Nearly twice as many read reviews compared with 2007. (The Growth of Social Technology Adoption, Forrester, October 2008). Getting reviewed means you can become part of the consumer consideration set. Rather than your credentials and training, a key determinant of being considered is shifting to whether consumers can read unbiased patient testimonials and reviews about you and your practice.

3. Recommendations are a powerful form of free advertising. The Trust in Advertising survey of 26,000+ found that Consumer Recommendations are the most credible form of advertising. ("Social Media Marketing: The Right Strategy for Tough Economic Times" Awareness, 2008)

4. A doctor who embraces recommendations should anticipate generating net positives. Forrester research has found that 60 percent of online shoppers provide feedback about shopping experiences, and they are more likely to give feedback about a positive experience than a negative one.

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who believe in the value of and who promote patient feedback will reap the benefits of higher rating scores and reviews.

5. Recommendations offer excellent feedback that informs the practice on what’s working, and what’s not for patients. How many doctors systematically get feedback data to make course corrections in their practices? Few, if any, do what nearly all retail operations consider critical – garnering insights on how to deliver services and meet ever-increasing demands of customers from the customers themselves.

Patients can offer useful, subjective information about many aspects of physician practice such as communication abilities. The data gathered with the proposed recommendation system may help a practice: mitigate legal risks by early identification of volatile patient issues – thus, allowing delivery of swift resolutions; create a competitive edge for the practice; identify areas for practice efficiencies; create a deeper understanding of patient needs / wants; create ongoing (perceived) practice-to-patient dialogue; all leading to the potential increase in revenue.

6. Economic realities require finding new competitive differentiators. A September 2009 study by Forrester Research (“Affluent Online Buyers Are Negatively Affected by the Down Economy”) cites the finding that the recession has turned affluent online buyers, representing much of the aesthetic specialists target market, into cash-conservative shoppers. They are spending less, trading down, and researching purchases for good deals and prices. “Retailers that want to attract this segment will need to not only compete on the overall value of their products and services but also focus on making product and service information conveniently accessible to these customers,” states Forrester.

Not lost on any aesthetic practice is the rise of the “tire kicker.” Price-sensitive consumers have taken to shopping for procedures based on price just as they’d do for any other big purchase. To counter the commoditization of their services, board-certified aesthetic specialists need to create a point of differentiation that’s meaningful to consumers.

7. Testimonials should increase patient “conversion”. A major hurdle a consumer faces when selecting a doctor is developing adequate trust that what the doctor says is what he’ll deliver. Showing prospects that you are transparent and open to being reviewed by patients is a powerful means of addressing this concern.

8. A problem with review sites, in the aggregate, is they offer an incomplete picture of your services and practice. Due to fragmentation amongst the web (dozens of physician review sites), each doctor receives a statistically incomplete set of ratings. This exposes doctors to greater risk of harm from the one upset patient who has an agenda to besmirch the doctor’s reputation. It is one of our long-term goals to weed out the ‘harmful’ sites over time by stealing their momentum. These less reputable sites will still exist, but they will lack credibility.

A critical aspect to building any ratings is the network effect: ratings become more valuable and useful as more consumers visit and contribute. Embracing a review system that generates dozens of patient feedback points will establish a statistically relevant view into the practice and in turn the site will achieve the robustness needed to be a useful source of information.

9. Organizations will discover that embracing reviews (or, recommendations) is a far easier path to promoting key consumer message points – experience, skills, and training matter. Based on ASPS research and anecdotal evidence collected at RealSelf.com, it has been shown that consumers have limited interest in deciphering the nuances of board certifications or medical organization membership. Getting in front of the patient review trend will help the organizations prove out to consumers that indeed their membership truly advocates patient interests, not solely those of doctors.

FAQs about this program

What does Beta mean?

A beta release is the first version of our doctor recommendations system released to RealSelf.com. The purpose of a beta is to allow for evaluation, testing, and improvements. Beta level software is typically 60% to 70% complete, but may also include known issues and minor bugs. During the beta we will routinely communicate with participants and share results.

Will recommendations appear instantly in Google local results?

The pace at which Google indexes the recommendations and shows them within local search is outside of our control. We don’t look at this as a make or break for the service because eventually Google will recognize the information as valuable content. We have personal contacts within Google, so we’re confident that we’ll have a positive outcome.

How long will the Beta run?

A beta typically runs as long as needed, rather than by a specific schedule. Our expectation is that we operate it for 60 to 90 days before launching the service to all doctors on the site.

Who is a good candidate for participation in the beta?

1) You believe it’s important to increase the level of conversation on the web about your services

2) You and your staff will consistently reach out to past and current patients soliciting recommendations

3) You are ok with the fact that the software is incomplete; there may be some hiccups along the way. Nothing life threatening, just unexpected behaviors

4) Your patients are happy. Sending over unhappy patients probably isn’t going to achieve desired results.

How many doctors will be in the beta?

We expect to enroll 24 doctors, 14 of which are ready to go

How to do patient outreach?

Once we have confirmed interest in participating, we’ll send over templates and other materials we think will help with patient outreach. We can also provide postcards if that is seen as helpful.
 

Questions? please send Anastasia a mail at anastasia@realself.com