Customer Story
How This Dental Company is Implanting a Better Review Process
The dreaded phrase rang out, “Open wide, it’s time for your checkup!” But in 2017, it was the dentists who were shifting nervously in their chairs.
A new investor had just come into Affordable Dentures & Implants, a network of 240 denture and implant practices, and was reviewing the company’s overall health. Unfortunately, the online reviews revealed a few issues.
“We had a really poor reputation when it came down to the internet,” said Stewart Stearns, director of digital marketing at Affordable Dentures & Implants. “We weren’t asking for reviews from our customers. And so, basically, the only people that talked were the 5% who had a negative experience.”
The digital marketing team prescribed a solution: get more patients’ feedback.
The only people that talked were the 5% who had a negative experience.
Affordable Dentures & Implants began using Podium to interact with patients through text messages.
“We were in the middle of modernizing the way that we were doing business,” Stearns said. “We hoped it would help us meet our investor expectations by getting some work done in the reputation area.”
Not only did the texting tool boost the company’s average online ratings from 3.4 to 4.4 within the first year, but it also exponentially increased their net promoter score data.
A net promoter score (NPS) measures customer loyalty and thereby predicts business growth; the more data points you have for an NPS, the more accurate it is. The year before Affordable Dentures & Implants started using Podium, they got 5,000 data points. A year after Podium, they got 60,000.
“Both the NPS experience and NPS product were data points that the financial community demanded,” Stearns said. “And so they were very pleasantly surprised once we were not only able to generate them, but maintain a pulse, a consistent puse.”
This success has only grown with time.
“Podium has delivered month after month, year after year, and led growth from the digital channel,” Stearns said.
By drilling down on one-to-one texting and encouraging reviews, Affordable Dentures & Implants can go into their next investor check-up with a confident smile.
*PRO TIP from Affordable Dentures & Implants
"We get a 3-4% conversion rate with automatic texts vs. a 15% conversion rate with a manual text invite sent while they’re still in the office.
“I had a situation where a doc drove a practice into the ground, and his Google reviews were a 2 something. And so, by teaching everybody in the practice to ask for reviews and have them manually sent out, we were able to get above a 4.0 in a very short period of time; the power of the manual process is huge.”
Key Highlights
40X
More Monthly Google Reviews
49K+
Total Google Reviews
30%
Increase in Average Star Ratings