Reputation for Health: The Power of Review Requesting

156 %

156% increase in review volume (year over year)

510 %

510% increase in review volume (6-month comparison)

88 %

From 78% to 88% positive review share since solicitation start (about 10-12k 5-star ratings)

Who They Are

Intermountain Health is a leading integrated health system in Utah and the surrounding markets spanning 8 states, 33 hospitals, 385 clinics, and almost 4,000 physicians. Intermountain is not only a leader from the perspective of their market footprint but more importantly in clinical quality and efficient healthcare delivery. Their focus? Patients. Zeroing in on patient care services on the day-to-day. 

That consumer-centric thread was evident in their care, but not so visible online. And for years Reputation had managed a portion of the organization’s Google My Business listings, using an API to connect data sources, yet Intermountain had not yet tapped into the world of review-driven possibility with their partner.

The Challenge

Opportunity now revealed itself. Doctors were concerned about their reputations online, knowing how it affected their patient perception. This was their personal name, picture, and quality of care in question. Picture this: you’re in need of a doctor so you quickly turn to Google Intermountain as it is a well-known name in your area. Results then show a number of family medicine centers, but all you see are 2-star ratings next to Intermountain Health physicians? And 1 review? Well, that doesn’t align with what you’ll hear from patient survey results and it’s not in line with the impact Intermountain has made in the market. 

So when Carey Van Wagoner, the Director of Marketing, was tasked with cleaning up and mastering Google reviews for the business, she had her specific marketing goals and who to turn to locked and loaded in mind. 

  1. Star Rating: “Not fixing your business’ star rating is like building a house and decorating it before laying the foundation,” explained Carey. Pointless. To have success in any advertising or marketing endeavor, she knew this was foundational, essential work. 
  2. Review Response: “When you respond to a negative review it almost negates it.” Sadly, a review response strategy had not been in place. And because reviews weren’t being solicited, the majority were negative. 
  3. Digital Awareness and Consideration: Even though Intermountain is Utah’s most relied-on healthcare provider, smaller clinics were outperforming the brand on the Search Engine Return Page (SERP).

But Carey was confident, “Once we get this going, it unlocks so many of the other marketing initiatives we’re trying to do. When we get this right, everything else we do will be exponentially better.”

The Solution

Carey Van Wagoner and Andy Miller, Digital Marketing Director, partnered in their passion about the project. In fact, they were willing to put their own reputation on the line knowing the impact it’d make on Intermountain’s. And that it did. 

Early 2022, the contract for review solicitation and management came into effect. With wholehearted trust in Reputation’s ability to improve public perception of the business, the Intermountain team decided to even expedite the launch and start early by bulk uploading data from Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) to the Reputation platform. This allowed them to quickly send out review requests while implementation was in the works. Reputation delivered immediately. 

The light-switch elevation in aggregate Google Ratings was jaw-dropping. “We were stunned. It was virtually instantaneous. July 19, 2022 the first group of texts was sent out, and within a week or two our ratings jumped from 3.7 up to 4.5,” explained Andy. 

The Intermountain team also reflected on the initial six months of the year, and each month across the whole business they were receiving anywhere between 400 and 500 Google ratings. Month one of working with Reputation? They were up to 4,500. 

Not only was review volume an easily visible result of the strategy commencement, but a powerful SEO win flourished. Google has a 3-Pack feature when users complete a search. Essentially, it’s those top three results for local business listings. How do you get there? More engagement! Google will push businesses to the top of their list when engagement on business listings is high. Intermountain Health physicians are now in the Google 3-Pack. More engagement. More traffic. More results.

In the words of Carey, “That is gold.”

Reputation in Action

The Intermountain Health team really took to a process that enabled transparency, efficiency and productivity. Day-to-day, the digital marketing team has their hands in the Reputation platform. For reviews that are escalated beyond the scope of what Reputation’s review management team is tasked to handle, they are received by the digital content team and immediately addressed. According to Andy, this “allows Reputation to respond to reviews at a scale that we could never do ourselves internally.”

And we’re just getting started. 

As full implementation is completed, the numbers are destined for growth. A cadence in review solicitation will regulate and optimizations will kick in. And as future rebranding and product initiatives begin, Intermountain’s reputation will continue to accelerate to levels never seen before. 

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