While everyone’s lives have been turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing hasn’t changed – your clients’ needs for professional and loving pet healthcare.

With your practice being an essential business yet having to operate on reduced staff and with new protocols to stay safe, it’s vital that you carry on engaging with your customers to reassure them that their pets are still in safe hands.

Every veterinary professional has a reputation, and every practice becomes known in its local community. That’s why reputation management for veterinary hospitals is one of the most important jobs you can do, particularly during this crisis.

Continue Communicating with Clients

Your clients are going to be just as worried about their pets as you are. So, it’s important to post on your social media, send out emails, or give information on your website about how your clients can get help in an emergency, access regular prescriptions or services, or if there are any foreseen delays at your practice.

Whether you’ve got a dedicated social media employee at your practice or you handle it yourself, make sure that all social media comments are replied to as promptly as possible. Responding quickly to assure your clients’ fears can be the difference between being seen as caring and personable, or cold and distant.

Reply to Reviews

Many veterinary professionals don’t see the merit in engaging with customers through reviews, despite them being one of the best ways you can build your reputation in your local community.

Replying to every review, whether it’s positive or negative, with a personal, enthusiastic, and empathetic approach shows how much you care about your clients and their pets. Positive reviews, of course, look great on your website and your social media profiles, and highlighting them gives you the opportunity to show off about your services.

Negative Reviews Can be Valuable

However, negative reviews can, in some instances, be just as valuable. After all, you’re a professional, and you want to improve. That’s not to say you should engage with the trolls, because there’s plenty of them on the internet, and some negative reviews might be far from the truth.

But genuinely negative reviews, where a client has a problem in your practice and wants to make it known, will happen, and you must know how to approach them in a way that doesn’t harm your reputation.

Replying to negative reviews asking for the client to talk to you in person about their experience shows your audience that you’re a caring veterinary professional who only wants the best for clients and their pets. If that client takes you up on the offer, then it’s a great learning opportunity and a way to manage your reputation with that client directly.

And if they don’t, you’ve still shown that you’re willing to learn, change, and grow. Your clients will always appreciate that their chosen pet healthcare professionals are willing to admit when they’re wrong because that’s the first step towards improvement.