A review request after the first visit
The clinic switched on automatic review requests in its booking software. Now every patient gets a message after every appointment asking for a Google review. New patients who have had one examination and are still in pain receive it. Regulars get it for the twentieth time. A patient who had a difficult conversation about their care gets it the same evening.
So the clinic switched it off, and went back to occasionally mentioning reviews at the desk when someone seemed happy, which nobody remembers to do on a busy day.
Why timing is everything in a clinic
Care in a chiropractic or osteopathy clinic is a journey over weeks, not a single transaction. The right moment to ask is when the patient has experienced the benefit of their care and has a reason to say something specific. That moment differs by patient and is known mainly to the practitioner. Generic review tools cannot see any of that, because they only know an appointment happened.
There is also a professional dimension. Clinics are careful about how they seek and use testimonials, and many prefer the practitioner to have a say in who is asked.
What getting it wrong costs
| Approach | Likely result |
|---|---|
| Ask after every visit | Annoyed regulars and requests to people still in pain |
| Ask never, or only verbally | Few reviews, mostly from patients who were unhappy enough to write unprompted |
| Ask at a milestone, with practitioner say | Fewer requests, better timed, sent once |
Online reviews shape whether someone in pain chooses your clinic over the one down the road. Leaving it to chance means the reviews that exist are not representative of the care you give.
How we build milestone-based requests
- You define the milestones that make sense for your clinic, such as the last visit of a care plan, a re-examination the chiropractor marks as positive, or a set number of visits.
- The system watches appointments and notes in your clinic software for those milestones.
- When one is reached, the patient goes onto a short list for the treating chiropractor, who can hold anyone back with a single click.
- Patients not held back receive one message, in the chiropractor's name, a day or two later, with a direct link to your Google review page.
- Each patient is asked once. Their record is marked so they are never asked again automatically.
- Replies to the message go to a monitored inbox, so if a patient responds with a concern instead of a review, a person sees it.
- A simple report shows requests sent and new reviews over time, so you can see whether the timing works.
We do not write reviews, offer incentives or filter who can leave a review on Google. The practitioner's hold is about timing and appropriateness, not about only asking people who will be positive.
What changes
Requests go to patients at the point when they have something real to say. Regulars are not pestered. Practitioners stay in control of who is contacted. And the flow of reviews becomes steady instead of bursty, reflecting the care the clinic actually gives.
The practitioner hold also catches the quiet cases: the patient going through a bereavement, the one who has just been referred elsewhere, the one who mentioned they are moving. A person knows these things. Software does not.
Is this your clinic?
- You tried automatic review requests and turned them off.
- Reviews arrive in rare bursts after someone remembered to ask.
- Practitioners want a say in who is contacted.
- Patients have received review requests at clearly the wrong moment.
- Your Google rating reflects a handful of people rather than your patient base.