Tips to Help Equine Veterinary Practices Manage Online Reputations

The 2025 American Association of Equine Practitioners Convention featured a session by Tim Scerba and Michelle Sinning, consultants in online reputation who serve the American Veterinary Medical Association. They began by polling the audience about social media usage and whether attendees had established crisis management plans in place. Most responded that they used social media but were unprepared for a crisis of their reputation online.

The Importance of Positive Reviews

Sinning followed by stating that Google reviews of veterinary practices are important to manage. She said 94% of potential clients will try a veterinary practice rated four or more stars, but only 57% will try a practice rated only three stars. “As many as 71% will use reviews as their first step in choosing or evaluating a veterinary practice, and 28% are swayed by a single positive review,” she added.

Reviews impact trust immensely, Sinning continued, and the horse community amplifies posts immediately. Facebook is home to countless horse-related groups, many of which are regional, and they can quickly turn on a veterinarian based on one post by a disgruntled client.

Crises in Veterinary Medicine

Scerba defined a crisis as any situation that: 

• Threatens people or property. 

• Seriously interrupts your operations. 

• Damages your reputation. 

• Negatively impacts your bottom line.  

Unfortunately, people are negatively biased to look for evidence that supports their opinion and ignore anything that doesn’t. He warned that crises rarely happen at convenient times and generally come as a surprise.

Crises in veterinary medicine often arise from a patient’s accidental death or injury, a disputed outcome of a case, or a disease outbreak that perhaps you had nothing to do with. Prepurchase exam disagreements are other common sources of social media storms. Billing disputes, disgruntled employees, staff sharing confidential information on social media, or business partner disputes can also cause explosions of negativity. Horse owners and trainers can start and amplify rumors very quickly, which can turn a spiral into a crisis. It all can happen very fast, Scerba emphasized.

Explaining why crises go viral so quickly, he said, “People love to bring out the widows and orphans.” The emotional side of a story can cause it to spread fast and generate outrage. One-sided narratives form early and, because concrete fact-based information is not available, speculation is rampant. The perceived power imbalance between a practice and a client can also fuel outrage, he added. The presenters warned that “screenshots live forever,” and damaging, inaccurate information that spreads virally will be available to find even if the posts are taken down.

How to Respond to Crises

Scerba said many people prefer “to ostrich” during a crisis, but this is absolutely the wrong approach. You must communicate during a crisis so your messaging is out there, he said. “People want official information,” he added, and studies show that information is trusted most frequently when it comes from doctors. “The one thing you’re selling is trust” in a veterinary business, he said. People hate informational vacuums, and stakeholders get angry when official channels do not provide information. If the story expands to the news media, you might lose control of the narrative. “If it bleeds, it leads,” he said.

“Every escalation point provides an opportunity for you to put the brakes on the crisis,” said Scerba. For example, imagine an emotional event occurs. This is the first point of response, where the goal is to bring the emotional temperature down and calm the situation. Next, a one-sided narrative could emerge on social media. If you don’t respond immediately, the entire barn community will come on board, and then it will be unstoppable, spreading across multiple online groups. This pattern of escalation is consistent with these situations. To stop a crisis from burning out of control to the point it impacts the practice reputation, you must communicate early and take efforts to be seen as reasonable, open, and caring.

Crisis Prevention Strategies

Sinning shared information about preventing liability claims, saying such claims generally arise from perceived communication gaps rather than actual malpractice. She recommended having iron-clad documentation, including a complete medical record, pain scores, doctor recommendations, offers of referral, and owners’ decisions about care. Follow-up communication by text or email can prevent disputes because it is in writing. It must emphatically communicate urgency and risk of not acting, she advised.

Crisis prevention procedures can prevent 95% of crises, Scerba said. Taking a “wait and see” approach is very dangerous. “Have a mindset that the customer is always right,” he said, because perception is reality, and the client’s perception is their reality. Look for risky situations and respond immediately. Customer service will be your primary prevention, because consistently strong service keeps issues from becoming crises.  

“Listen, then respond with speed, empathy, accuracy, and transparency,” said Sinning. When practices send clients text or email summaries, give clear estimates and recommendations, and check in with them before and after appointments, they build “a bank of goodwill.” 

She explained that a reputation strategy revolves around training staff to respond effectively to emotional clients, building proactive strong relationships with barn managers and trainers, monitoring key online equine groups, encouraging positive reviews, having regular debriefs with staff asking what could we have done better, and elevating your profile online as a trusted expert.

Final Thoughts

If a crisis occurs, remember to respond rather than react, and acknowledge without accepting blame. Offer empathy without disclosure, and always maintain a calm, factual tone. It’s important to gather screenshots of online posts and assess the urgency, said Sinning. Do not join a discussion on an equine-oriented group page but instead, respond on the practice’s page. Redirect to an offline conversation as quickly as possible. It can be helpful in some circumstances to create an educational report about a particular disease, but never about an incident or the case in question.

The AVMA has created an online Reputation Toolkit that’s available with sample responses. Some key recommendations include always responding to reviews and never “feeding the trolls,” which are the people online who are rude, disrespectful, and unresponsive to reasoned dialogue.

You can reach the speakers at www.Maydaypr.com. 

Business coverage from the 2025 AAEP Convention is brought to you by CareCredit.

Related Reading

• Social Media Use for Client Communication
• Business Briefs: Tips for Effective Equine Practice Marketing
• 9 Social Media Tips for Veterinarians

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