Google reviews for dentists: asked for properly, and within the rules.

Because the person best placed to ask is holding instruments, and the person at the desk is taking payment. The moment of goodwill and the moment of contact are handled by two different people.

In most service businesses one person does the work and takes the money, so the ask happens naturally at the end. A practice splits that, and the request falls into the gap between the chair and the front desk.

There is also a discomfort that is real rather than imagined. Asking somebody to review an experience they may have been dreading feels different from asking about a haircut, and clinicians tend to avoid it for that reason alone.

What that costs a practice

• Reviews that stop.

  Most practices have a burst from years ago and nothing since, and Google weighs recency heavily.

• The wrong treatments reviewed.

  Whatever was being asked about at the time, rather than the treatments the practice most wants to be found for.

• Losing to a newer practice.

  A three-year-old practice with recent reviews routinely outranks a thirty-year-old one with more, older ones.

At the end of a course of treatment rather than after a single appointment, and while the patient is still in the practice rather than after they have left.

A patient who has just finished implants, orthodontics or a long restoration is at the high point of their relationship with the practice. A patient who has had a check-up has no particular feeling about it either way.

That timing is also what produces the reviews worth having. A review that describes finishing a real course of treatment does far more work than one that says the staff were lovely, because it names the treatment somebody else is searching for.

Moments that work in a practice

• The final appointment of a treatment plan.

  The natural high point, and the clinician is the right person to mention it.

• After a same-day emergency appointment.

  Relief is the strongest driver of a genuinely enthusiastic review.

• When a patient thanks the front desk unprompted.

  The clearest signal you will get, and the easiest one to act on.

The clinician names it once, in their own words, at the end of treatment. The front desk sends the link the same day. Neither works nearly as well alone.

What makes it awkward is asking cold at the desk, from somebody the patient has not been dealing with, about an experience they have already mentally finished. What makes it natural is the person who did the work mentioning it while they are still talking about the work.

The wording does not need to be clever. Naming the treatment is the only part that matters, because it produces a review that names the treatment, and that is the review that helps somebody else find the practice.

What to avoid

• Asking only the patients you expect to be pleased.

  Against Google's rules, easy to detect, and it puts the listing at risk.

• Offering anything in return.

  Also against the rules, including discounts and entries into a draw.

• Handing over a tablet at the desk.

  Reviews left from the practice's own network are often filtered out.

Make it one person's job with a weekly number attached, and reply to every review that arrives. Practices that do this pass practices that do it in bursts within a few months.

The reason a routine beats a campaign is that Google is reading a pattern over time. Twenty reviews in a fortnight reads as a campaign, which it is, whereas one or two a week reads as an ordinary busy practice, which is what you want it to conclude.

Replying matters more than most practices expect and costs nothing. Google counts whether a business replies, and a patient reading later sees a practice that pays attention.

Negative reviews are worth replying to calmly and once. The reply is written for everyone who reads it afterwards, not for the person who left it, and a measured response usually does more good than the review did harm.