Online Reviews of Care Providers, a Better Way!

In an ideal world every resident or their family member would get an equal chance to share their views of the care providers they have experienced.

There wouldn’t be fake reviews left by disgruntled ex-members of staff, or anyone else with an axe to grind. Only confirmed users would be surveyed.

Trustworthy feedback would be valued as a rich source of customer insight by the CQC, and by care providers who would use it as part of their continuous improvement plans.

Verified un-biased customer feedback would be shared across the internet on other directory websites including the NHS Choices website to help people choose their care provider.

Today that is not the case. Any online reviews of care providers that you read are either too few in number to be of any significant use or they are simply testimonials which have been filtered out from any customer feedback that has been left.

People have attempted to create TripAdvisor style websites for care homes and home care providers, but is that really what we need?

Even NHS Choices have tried by combining all the reviews left on any number of websites including those left on yourcarehome.co.uk but the results have been very disappointing.

We should also consider that of hotel reviews, it has been suggested that upto 40% of all online hotel reviews are fake and that 15% of hotel reviews have been paid for by the hotels themselves in an attempt to ‘game’ the system.

A nights stay in a bad hotel can easily be shrugged off, but the wrong choice of care provider would be a very different story.

When you are reading reviews of care providers, look for a balance of opinion, as not everyone has a great experience of every business all of the time. In the real world not everyone loves you. Some people are simply hard to please, and that’s ok. If you don’t see a bad review or two, ask yourself why not?

Choosing a care home or home care provider is a big decision. If people are given an unbiased and transparent way to leave reviews of their care provider they will, and the care provider would openly respond to say thanks, or to put things right.

YourCareHome has a sister company called Hootvox, a clever widget that lets a business survey all of it’s customers to ask for their feedback.

Hootvox was specifically designed to be used by social care providers to collect honest opinions from genuine customers, no fake reviews can make it in and the feedback cannot be filtered. But the providers do have a chance to reply openly or privately if they wish. This is unique in social care, only one other system (Reevoo) is as open, honest and trustworthy.

We believe strongly that an honest review system is needed in social care for the good of the industry and for the good of it’s customers. That is why we have created Hootvox.

Hootvox works for both home care and care home providers. It’s cost is just £20 per care home or home care agency per year and all the proceeds from sales to social care providers will be donated to The Stalight Children's Foundation. 

Visit Hootvox for more details www.hootvox.com

Mark Sadler