Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Negative Google reviews are part of practice life, but they do not have to derail a team or damage a business. With clear protocols and strong staff support, practice managers can use complaints to strengthen systems and culture. By Johanna Leggatt
It’s the sucker-punch that all vets, whether seasoned or just starting out, will receive at one time or another: a negative Google review from a disgruntled customer. You can run a thriving practice with highly skilled staff, but someone, somewhere, at some point in time, will pen something peevish.
Former practising vet Dr Emma Davis is the managing director and co-founder of Global Veterinary Solutions, a global business that coaches vets and practice managers on how to develop high-performing teams.
Dr Davis says complaints and poor Google reviews are part and parcel of running a small business and even the most successful practices will cop the occasional online rant. “Some will be warranted. Some won’t be warranted. Some will be expected. Some won’t be expected. It’s just part of business,” she says. Nevertheless, it stings to have your work derided publicly.
“Vets are often quite perfectionistic; they’ve got high expectations of their work, and they’re already giving themselves a bit of a hard time,” Dr Davis notes.
When a one-star Google review comes in, and it seems unfounded or unfair, it can be tempting to point out the error of the writer’s view.
Dr Davis’s advice? Resist the urge to take on the keyboard warrior. “It’s really important to respond to a bad Google review in good time, so that there’s a bit of your voice around it as well,” she says.
“But I wouldn’t ever fight or argue the point publicly or try and defend yourself publicly.”
Dr Davis suggests a restrained and non-inflammatory tone when responding. “You may write, ‘That’s interesting—and not as I recall it, but I’m happy to talk to you about it’,” she advises.
Dr David Tabrett, practising vet, managing director and CFO of Animal Referral and Emergency Centre (AREC), takes a similarly cool-headed approach to acknowledging bad feedback and adds that Google reviews are generally a poor marker of “what your clients actually think”.
He notes that while most Google reviews veer between extremes—one or five stars—his own in-practice surveys of customers are mainly four stars and above.
“Don’t look to your social media reviews as feedback on your system because the correlation to overall client satisfaction is weak,” he says.
When responding to negative reviews, Dr Tabrett doesn’t address the details of the complaint, nor does he openly contest the assertions online. “I always offer the reviewer the opportunity to talk to us directly,” he explains, adding that “about one in 100” will take him up on this opportunity, but it shows the practice’s openness to others reading the review.
If a bad review names a staff member or appears designed to damage the practice, Dr Davis says these cases may need to be escalated.
Some [bad reviews] will be warranted. Some won’t be warranted. Some will be expected. Some won’t be expected. It’s just part of business.
Dr Emma Davis, co-founder, Global Veterinary Solutions
“If someone’s going after someone personally and naming them, then you may have a case for defamation,” she says.
Her advice is not to improvise, but to involve the practice’s insurers and legal support early. “All vets should have professional indemnity, so talk to your insurer, put them on notice that this has happened, that you may need some support.”
Dr Davis adds that clinics may also benefit from a pre-prepared legal response. “It may be worth talking to your lawyer about having a stand-down letter that can formally warn a client that the conduct is serious and damaging.”
Where necessary, she says, practices should also be prepared to terminate the relationship by sending a clear but calm email along the lines of: “Respectfully, we ask that you select a different veterinarian to do your business moving forward.”
Dr Tabrett also takes a firmer line with reviewers that derogate individual staff members. He recalls how one staff member was dismissed online as an “unqualified student”, which he corrected immediately in his public response. “Not only is it illegal to hire unqualified staff but that reviewer has just taken away their six years of university and their five years of workplace experience and reduced it to a couple of words on a page,” he says.
“As business leaders and owners, we have an obligation to provide a safe workplace, particularly with regards to psychosocial safety.”
Crucially, Dr Davis says practice managers should not wait for a bad review to roll but draw up a standard operating procedure or a protocol for managing negative complaints. “Have all the team trained on that protocol as they join the business, so that they know that this is one of the components of the business,” she suggests.
That protocol should cover both the active management of the complaint and the internal response and, Dr Davis says, staff who are the subject of a poor review should be given the benefit of the doubt as a highly trained employee.
“If staff are yelled at or singled out for making mistakes, that is just poor leadership,” she says.
By following a clear protocol, the clinic has the opportunity to improve its processes—be it operationally or in the handling of complaints.
“At the end of the process, do a review of how the protocol worked,” Davis adds. “Have a bit of a debrief and see what you can learn out of it.”
Tabrett, for his part, draws a sharp distinction between noisy public Google reviews and direct complaints made by phone or face to face. He sees the latter as much more useful—these are logged in a file marked client feedback—because they can reveal operational weaknesses and lead to genuine improvement.
“This is where the real fruit comes for us to improve our business,” he says. “It’s rarely a complaint about money, but often a communication issue and the staff member will often do their best to resolve whatever the issue is and restore that client’s trust.”
