At the start of 2026, three multispecialty clinics in Będzin, Katowice and Olkusz, in Poland, had 518 Google reviews between them and ratings from 3.5 to 3.8. By September 2026 they had 2,284 reviews, a gain of 1,766, and each of the three profiles is rated 4.6 or 4.7. Each clinic reached a 4.5 rating at its own pace, and the fastest was the one with the fewest old reviews.
About the client
A group of three multispecialty clinics in southern Poland: Będzin and Katowice in the Silesia region, Olkusz in Lesser Poland. Together they handle 5,000-7,000 visits a month. Each clinic has its own Google Business Profile, and all three run on the same clinic software, which Repto pulls the visit list from. Repto has been running across the group since January 2026.
What problem did the group have?
The same one most clinics have: nobody was asking patients for a review on a regular basis. The front desk at each clinic is busy with phone calls, the queue and the doctors' schedules, so asking for a review loses out to every one of those.
At the start of January 2026:
Będzin: 300 reviews, rated 3.5★
Katowice: 154 reviews, rated 3.8★
Olkusz: 64 reviews, rated 3.5★
That's very few for clinics with several thousand visits a month. The low rating also said little about the care itself: the reviews came mostly from patients who were unhappy about something, and after the rollout 89% of the ratings collected from patients were 5★.
How did the rollout work across three clinics?
We set up the same automated Google review collection process at each clinic:
Visit list straight from the clinic software. Repto pulls the list of visits from the clinics' system every day, so the front desk doesn't export or send anything. (Repto also connects automatically to other clinics' practice management software, or a clinic can upload a CSV or Excel export of its visits instead.)
An SMS after the visit. About a day after the visit, the patient gets an SMS asking them to rate it.
Rating the visit. The link in the SMS opens a Repto page where the patient rates the visit first.
A safety net. A patient who was unhappy with the visit reaches the clinic first, and the clinic can call them back. A happy patient goes on to Google and writes the review themselves.
One dashboard for the whole group. The manager sees results for all three locations together and for each profile separately.
How many new reviews did each clinic get?
As of September 2026, after just under 9 months:
Będzin: 300 → 1,267 reviews (+967), rating 3.5 → 4.6★
Katowice: 154 → 558 reviews (+404), rating 3.8 → 4.6★
Olkusz: 64 → 459 reviews (+395), rating 3.5 → 4.7★
The whole group: 518 → 2,284 reviews (+1,766), 4.4 times the starting count
The difference between the clinics comes down to visit numbers: Będzin has the most visits, so that's where Repto sends the most SMS messages and where the most reviews are added.
How fast did each clinic's rating rise?
Fastest where there were the fewest old reviews. Olkusz reached a 4.5 rating in under two months, Katowice in about four and Będzin in about five.
Bar chart of how long each clinic took to reach a 4.5 Google rating since January 2026: Olkusz with 64 old reviews under 2 months, Katowice with 154 about 4 months, Będzin with 300 about 5 months
The rating month by month, up to September 2026:
Olkusz: 3.5 (January) → 4.2 (February) → 4.5 (March) → 4.6 (April) → 4.7 (June-September)
Katowice: 3.8 (January) → 4.2 (February) → 4.3 (March) → 4.4 (April) → 4.5 (May) → 4.6 (July-September)
Będzin: 3.5 (January) → 4.0 (February) → 4.2 (March) → 4.3 (April) → 4.4 (May) → 4.5 (June) → 4.6 (August-September)
The reason is pure arithmetic. Google averages every rating a profile has ever received, so old 1-2★ reviews drag the rating down until enough new 5★ reviews outweigh them. Google won't remove those reviews just because they're low (when a review can be removed), so the only lever is a steady flow of new ones.
At a 3.5 rating, a clinic needs roughly twice as many new 5★ reviews as it has old ones to reach 4.5 (if all the new ones are 5★). Google rounds the rating to one decimal place, so 4.5 shows up a little earlier, already at 4.45. In practice:
Olkusz had 64 old reviews, so it needed about 110-130 new ones. It reached 4.5 at 189 reviews (+125).
Będzin had 300 old reviews, so it needed about 520-600 new ones. It reached 4.5 at 916 reviews (+616).
Katowice started at 3.8, so it needed fewer: about 180-215 new ones. It reached 4.5 at 359 reviews (+205).
The calculation matches what actually happened: at every clinic, 4.5 showed up in the month the calculation predicted. For a group's management that's a practical point: a profile with a few dozen old reviews shows the effect within weeks, and one with a few hundred within months. I'd run this calculation for each profile before the start, so that nobody judges the rollout by its first month at the clinic with the most old reviews.
What happens in the months after that?
After just under 9 months, the three profiles get about 5 new reviews a day between them, and every new review makes the rating harder to pull down: in Będzin, at 300 reviews a single 1★ rating would lower it by about 0.008, at 1,267 reviews by about 0.003.
What did the funnel from SMS to Google review look like?
From January to October 2026, Repto sent 36,934 review request SMS messages across the group:
5,865 link opens, or 15.9% of the SMS messages sent,
90.2% of the people who opened the link rated the visit (5,293 ratings),
89% of those ratings were 5★ (4,711 ratings),
1,889 Google reviews matched to the SMS messages sent: about 32% of the people who opened the link and about 5% of all SMS messages sent.
In Będzin we sent 2.4 times as many SMS messages as in Olkusz, yet the open rate (15.6% and 14.7%) and the share who rated the visit (90.3% and 90.7%) look almost the same. In Katowice the open rate was slightly higher (17.8%). The process doesn't have a favorite location.
What does it look like in other clinic groups?
Other groups show a similar pattern: MultiClinic in Łódź has more than 8 times as many reviews as when it started, and a group in Warsaw and Płock has been collecting reviews for over a year. How patients choose a clinic based on Google reviews is covered in my guide to Google reviews for medical practices. Combined results for all Repto clients are on the results page.
