When Will You Start Getting Online Reviews for Your Dental Practice?
The answer to when you should start getting online reviews for your dental practice is simple: today. Right now. This moment. Whether you're a brand new practice or have been established for decades, there's no better time to start building your online reputation than immediately.
Why Start Now?
Every day you wait is a day you're missing opportunities. Potential patients are searching for dental practices online right now. They're reading reviews and making decisions about which practice to call. If you don't have reviews, or if your reviews are sparse or outdated, you're at a significant disadvantage.
Research shows that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. When potential patients see multiple recent reviews praising your practice, it builds immediate trust and credibility. This trust makes them more likely to choose your practice over competitors.
Google's local search algorithm considers the quantity, quality, and recency of reviews when determining search rankings. More reviews mean better visibility in local search results. Better visibility means more potential patients discovering your practice.
For New Practices: Start on Day One
If you're opening a new dental practice, start requesting reviews from your very first patients. Don't wait until you have "enough" patients or until you're "established." Every patient interaction is an opportunity to build your online reputation.
Getting that first review can feel daunting, but it's crucial. Once you have one review, the next becomes easier. Patients are more likely to add their voice to an existing conversation than to be the first to speak up. Your goal should be to get your first 5-10 reviews as quickly as possible.
Don't be shy about asking friends and family members who are patients to leave honest reviews. As long as they're genuine patients who have experienced your care, their reviews are legitimate and valuable.
For Established Practices: Better Late Than Never
If you've been practicing for years but haven't actively sought reviews, don't worry. It's not too late. Many established practices discover they're sitting on a goldmine of satisfied patients who would happily leave reviews if asked.
Established practices often have an advantage: a large base of existing patients. You can quickly build your review profile by implementing a systematic review request process. Within a few months, you can accumulate enough reviews to compete with practices that started earlier.
Google and other platforms value recent reviews more highly than old ones. This works in your favor. Even if competitors have been collecting reviews for years, you can still compete by generating a steady stream of fresh, recent reviews.
How to Start Today
Ready to begin? Here's a simple action plan you can implement immediately:
Make sure you've claimed your business profiles on Google, Yelp, and other relevant platforms. You can't collect reviews if patients can't find you.
Generate direct links to your review profiles that you can easily share with patients. These links should take patients directly to the review form, not just your business profile.
Brief your entire team on the importance of reviews and teach them how to identify opportunities to request them. Make it part of your standard checkout process.
Begin requesting reviews from satisfied patients today. Send text messages or emails with direct review links to recent patients who had positive experiences.
Once you've gotten started manually, implement automated review request software to ensure you're consistently requesting reviews from every patient without adding work for your team.
Set Realistic Expectations
While you should start today, understand that building a strong review profile takes time. Not every patient will leave a review. In fact, only a small percentage will. That's normal. The key is consistency: keep requesting reviews from every satisfied patient, and over time, your review profile will grow.
Most practices see review response rates between 5-15%. That means if you request reviews from 100 patients, you might get 5-15 reviews. This is why it's crucial to request reviews from all patients, not just a select few.
The good news is that review generation tends to build momentum over time. As you accumulate more reviews, patients see that others are leaving reviews, which makes them more likely to do so themselves. Your review rate often improves as your total number of reviews grows.
The Bottom Line
Stop waiting for the "perfect time" to start collecting reviews. That time is now. Every day you delay is a day you're falling behind competitors who are actively building their online reputation. Your satisfied patients want to help you succeed. You just need to give them an easy way to do so.
Start today, be consistent, and in a few months, you'll look back and be grateful you didn't wait any longer.
PracticeDilly makes it easy to collect reviews consistently with automated requests, direct review links, and tools to monitor your online reputation. Get started today.