Automating Review Requests After Visits

Setting up an automated review request means every patient who completes a visit gets a follow-up text or email without anyone on your team having to remember to send it. This article walks you through turning that automation on and customizing it so it fits your practice.

Why Automate Review Requests

Manually sending review requests after every appointment is easy to forget, especially on a busy day when the phones are ringing and the schedule is packed. An automated request goes out at the right moment every time, which keeps a steady flow of fresh reviews coming in without adding work to the front desk. Practices that ask consistently tend to build a much stronger online presence than those that ask only when they remember.

Before You Begin

Make sure your Google Business Profile (and your Facebook page, if you want to collect reviews there as well) is already connected to the platform. If you have not done that yet, see Connecting Google and Facebook Reviews before continuing. Your appointment calendar should also be set up and actively logging completed visits so the automation has a trigger to work from.

Turning On the Automation

1. From your dashboard, open the Reputation tab in the main menu.
2. Select Settings or Automation depending on which version of the menu you see.
3. Look for the section labeled Review Requests or Auto Review Request and toggle it on.
4. Choose your delivery method: Text (SMS), Email, or both. Text messages tend to get opened faster and produce higher response rates for most practices.
5. Set the delay. This is how long after the appointment status updates to completed before the message goes out. A window of 30 to 90 minutes is a good starting point.
6. Click Save.

Customizing Your Message

Dental Marketing Tool provides a default review request message, but you can edit it to match your practice's tone. Keep the message short, warm, and direct. Patients are more likely to tap the link when the message feels personal rather than automated.

1. In the same Automation settings panel, click Edit Message next to the SMS or email template.
2. Update the body text. Use the patient's first name variable (shown as a merge tag like {{contact.first_name}}) so each message feels addressed to them personally.
3. Make sure the review link is included. The platform inserts a direct link to your Google review page automatically if your profile is connected.
4. Click Save Message.

If you send both a text and an email, you can write separate versions of each. A text should be two or three sentences at most. An email can be a little warmer and include your practice name and logo if you have an email template set up.

Choosing Which Patients Receive Requests

By default, every patient whose appointment is marked complete will receive a review request. If you want to limit this, for example to exclude patients who are coming in for a sensitive procedure or patients who have already left a recent review, you can add filters.

• Tag exclusions - Apply a tag like "no review request" to a patient's contact record and set the automation to skip anyone with that tag. See Organizing Patients with Tags for how to add tags quickly.
• Appointment type filters - Some practices prefer to only trigger review requests after new patient exams or hygiene visits, not after extraction or other sensitive appointments. You can set this in the automation filters by appointment type.

Monitoring Results

Once the automation is running, you can track how many requests have gone out and how many resulted in a review from the Reputation tab. Check your reputation score and review volume weekly to see whether the automation is moving the needle. If your request volume is high but new reviews are low, consider tweaking the message or adjusting the send delay.

What Happens Next

As reviews come in, Dental Marketing Tool pulls them into your inbox so your team can respond promptly. Learn how to handle responses (including using the built-in AI to draft replies) in Responding to Reviews. You can also display your best reviews directly on your website using review widgets to build trust with prospective patients before they even call.