In short
- A reply to a review isn’t for its author. It’s for the next hundred people who read it.
- Name a person responsible, a response time and a simple structure. Then make it a routine, not an emergency.
- Never reveal details about a customer - especially in a clinic - and never buy, filter or reward reviews.
Many owners treat reviews like a school grade: you enjoy the good ones and suffer through the bad ones. But a review is really the start of a public conversation. The next customer reads both the review and your reply. From the way you reply, they form an idea of how they’d be treated if something went wrong.
Why it’s worth the time
A study of tens of thousands of TripAdvisor reviews (Proserpio & Zervas, Marketing Science, 2017) found that after hotels started replying to reviews, they received on average 12% more reviews and their ratings rose by an average of 0.12 stars. The authors suggest that when a business replies, it changes both who chooses to write a review and what they write.
And Google is where most reviews are read: in BrightLocal’s 2025 survey (US consumers), 85% of respondents said they use Google to read reviews of local businesses.
Who replies, and how fast
The most common problem isn’t the tone of replies but the lack of a routine. Reviews pile up, then someone “deals with them” all at once, in a rush, once a year.
- A named person responsible. Not “whoever has time”. Ideally someone from the admin team or the front desk.
- A fixed deadline. For example: within two working days for any review, the same day for negative ones.
- A fixed time of day. Fifteen minutes each morning, at the same time. A daily habit works better than planning to “do them all at once”.
- Clear escalation. Serious reviews (accusations, safety issues, medical matters) go to the manager before any reply.
Positive reviews: short, personal, varied
Don’t leave good reviews unanswered - but don’t copy the same text either. A good reply has three elements: thanks, a detail from the review and an invitation.
Template: “Thank you so much, Anna! We’re glad you felt at ease at your first consultation and that Dr Popescu explained every step. We look forward to seeing you at your next visit.”
Negative reviews: a five-step structure
- Thank them for writing. Without irony.
- Acknowledge specifically what the customer experienced: “We understand you waited almost an hour without being told why.” Not “we apologise for any inconvenience”.
- Don’t justify yourself in public or blame the customer, colleagues or “a busier day”. Read by others, explanations sound like excuses.
- Take the conversation private: a name, a phone number or an email address they can write to directly.
- Say what you’ve changed, if you have changed something. It’s the part future readers notice most.
Template: “Hello Mr Smith, thank you for writing to us. You’re right: an hour’s wait with no explanation is not the experience we want to offer. We’ve discussed it with the team, and from now on any delay over 15 minutes is communicated straight away. It would really help to talk directly - you can email us at [email] or call [phone], and Joanna, our manager, will reply personally.”
Unfair or fake reviews
It happens. Reply calmly and briefly, without getting into an argument: “We can’t find a visit matching this description. If you were our customer, please write to us at [email] so we can understand what happened.” If the review breaks the platform’s rules (offensive language, conflict of interest, spam), report it through the official channel. Don’t threaten or ask for removal in your public reply.
What you never do
- Don’t reveal information about the customer. Not even to defend yourself. In a clinic, publicly confirming that someone was a patient or discussing a treatment can breach medical confidentiality and data-protection rules (GDPR). Keep the reply general and handle details privately.
- Don’t buy, invent or filter reviews. Fake or purchased reviews are banned in the EU as unfair commercial practices (Directive (EU) 2019/2161), and platforms such as Google prohibit rewarding reviews and selectively asking only happy customers.
- Don’t reply in anger. Write the reply, leave it for an hour, reread it as if it were a review about a competitor.
- Don’t paste the same reply under every review. Readers notice straight away.
How to ask for reviews, properly
Ask every customer, not only those you think are happy. The best moment is right after a good experience: in person as they leave, and in a short message the next day with a direct link to your review page. Keep it simple: one link, no extra steps.
Reviews as data
Each month, read all new reviews and tag each one with the moment of the journey it refers to (booking, welcome, waiting, service, price, payment, after). After a few months you’ll see the patterns: the moments that keep appearing in negative reviews are the first ones to fix. Reviews are the cheapest market research you have.
A negative review with a good reply can build more trust than ten positive reviews with none.
- Proserpio D., Zervas G. (2017). Online Reputation Management: Estimating the Impact of Management Responses on Consumer Reviews. Marketing Science, 36(5), 645–665. Source ↗
- BrightLocal (2025). Local Consumer Review Survey 2025 (1,026 US consumers). Source ↗
- Directive (EU) 2019/2161 of the European Parliament and of the Council (the “Omnibus” Directive) on the better enforcement and modernisation of Union consumer protection rules. Source ↗
