Private Relay: What's Changed?

RealSelf relies on ongoing feedback from our doctor community and consumers to ensure we are a helpful resource and deliver value as the market continues to evolve.

We listened to your feedback regarding our feature that anonymizes email addresses and phone numbers in your RealSelf inquiries, otherwise known as Private Relay. On January 15, 2019, the masking feature was retired to make RealSelf easier for you and your practice. We’re now sending you more transparent RealSelf inquiries with unmasked contact details.

What’s Changed?

• New Inquiries: All new RealSelf inquiries will display unmasked email addresses and phone numbers starting January 15, 2019. ^[1]

• Past Inquiries: Starting January 15, 2019, you’ll also find unmasked contact information for all inquiries received while the masking feature was in place (October 1, 2017 through January 14, 2019), sorted in chronological order on the inquiry page in your RealSelf Dashboard. You can still access the masked contact information for each inquiry by clicking “read more” to view the inquiry detail page. Note: Masked email addresses and phone numbers will continue to work for your patient communications.

• Inquiry Notification Email: There will be no immediate changes, but we will continue to improve the inquiry notification email so that: 1) it’s easier to understand where the potential patient is in their research, and 2) it’s formatted to let you take action quickly and meet consumers’ response time expectations.

• Inquiries Page: The inquiries page on your RealSelf Dashboard is the best place to review all of your email and phone call inquiries. Starting January 15, 2019, we will no longer be able to call out the inquiries you have responded to and will no longer auto-update the status (e.g. new inquiry, awaiting response, pending customer response), but you can do this yourself by manually updating the drop-down menu next to each inquiry. You will also still be able to filter your inquiries by date, interest, and status, or search for specific inquiries by contact name or treatment. Your call log will display the unmasked phone number and will not change otherwise.

• RealSelf Dashboard: Your RealSelf Dashboard homepage will look slightly different in that you will no longer see alerts for unanswered inquiries, response rates and times, or a comparison of your response rates and times to other practices on RealSelf. ^[2]

[1] Non-U.S. providers always received unmasked phone numbers for inquiries. We are now unmasking the email address as well.

[2] Non-U.S. providers never saw response rate and time data, the leaderboard, or alerts for unanswered inquiries in their RealSelf Dashboard. Providers in the RealSelf Connect program saw response rate and time data (which will now go away), but not the leaderboard, or alerts for unanswered inquiries.