Whole Optical Dispensing
Welcome to our continuing series of Credit Education Courses for Opticians.
This course has been approved for one hour of credit by the American Board of Opticianry. No fee is required for ABO credit.
Being able to realistically and impartially assess your practice today, plan and set goals for the near and far future, and make the necessary investments and changes, can prove a challenge to time and resources. However, expending the effort to create a whole optical approach will pay dividends in practice image internally and externally, as well as financially.
Learning Outcomes: With dispensing getting more complex, the concept of a "total package practice" image makes increasing sense. This course takes the big picture and is designed to help ECPs better view their practice and understand how to position product in it. At the conclusion of this credit education course, participants should be able to:
1. Understand the link between all optical components
2. Be able to conduct in-depth practice analysis
3. Create, implement, and maintain a total package practice image
4. Be able to work beginning and ongoing plans for differentiation based on commonalities
Test procedures: Read the article and then click on the link below to take the test. This will open a new window with a test consisting of 20 questions. To receive ABO continuing education credit, respondents must correctly answer 16 of 20 test questions. Simply click on the best answer for each question and click the submit button at the end of the test. Your test answers will be automatically sent to Seiko Optical and we will send your CEC or notify you of test failure within 7 to 10 business days.
Note: Some states do not accept home study courses for continuing education credit. Check with the licensing board in your state to see if this course qualifies.
Whole Optical Dispensing
A uniform image or all-for-one, one-for-all operating system can help differentiate your practice. Powerful branding throughout the system maintains key recognition with customers. This continuing education course will show you how to create a working environment that really works, from employee effectiveness to patient interaction and from inventory management to operating systems. Internal and external sales and marketing, appearance and branding, and uniform branding and management practice recommendations illustrate how your practice can operate smoothly, efficiently, and profitably. This is big picture, total solution, practice-encompassing operating the whole optical way.
Complete View
How many practices have envisioned an entire, complete operation, then let those plans slide? Many think they don't have time, it's too complicated, or the results seem too ethereal.
To start a whole optical initiative, simply start with FPOP:
Facts: Gather all the history and present the facts.
Problem: Even if they seem irrelevant, list all the problems.
Object: What is it that you want in detail, then prioritize.
Plan: How to get your wants
and needs.
After FPOP, the next step is BIME:
Budget
Implement
Monitor
Evaluate
Set deadlines for all actions, including feedback. Formulate a one-year plan that ensures that all new facts get assessed to see how the plan may have to be modified. Make pros and cons lists and obtain a group buy-in by providing a blueprint for the year.
Bold Branding
Marketing can be defined as getting your message together and getting it out there. By differentiating yourself while keeping your mission and message uniform, you can achieve a brand that is unique to your practice.
Appearance. How you look. The public's initial contact with staff, whether it be via the telephone or front desk greeting, determines your practice's appearance.
For the dispensary, a clean, organized appearance comes first, then fixtures and displays, with perhaps some remodeling. Remodeling can be as simple as fresh paint or new carpeting, or even changing light bulbs from incandescent to fluorescent, which saves around 75 percent on electric usage and is easier on the eye.
You may instead choose a partial or complete remodeling, installing an in-house lab, or investing in updated lane equipment.
Ensure that branding translates to personal appearance. All employees should wear professional clothing, whether it be scrubs, lab coats, or business-appropriate attire in a color scheme that aligns with practice branding colors.
Attitude--Just do it. Focusing on staff interactions with patients is a key element in practice growth. It's easy to get in a rut. Seasoned staffers field similar patient questions day after day, and it's easy to get complacent, even bored.
The danger of this is missing opportunities for more eyewear sales or even overlooking a patient's eye health problem. In addition, many patients recognize this disconnect and may leave the practice, or at the very least, not offer the most important form of advertising: word-of-mouth recommendations.
Give your practice a check-up by having friends, family, or even yourself, call the office. Furnish a list with a variety of questions and ask each caller to get an overview of what patients are being told and the friendliness of the conversation. You can also ask patients directly by conducting a quality assurance review or a focus group with patients.
Take time to listen to staffers interact with patients throughout the office, including the front desk, in the pre-test area, in the exam rooms, and in the dispensary. In addition to obvious technical eye health and eyewear information, are staffers truly engaging patients with enthusiasm?
Compile gathered information to address with staff, either as a group at regular meetings, or individually.
Don't assume the knowledge level of your employees. Ensure a uniform, branded message with mandatory cross training by the entire staff. Test them regularly on what they?ve learned. Cross training allows all employees to interact professionally with patients, and studies show that cross training increases moral. Pay staff for their time spent in training or offer gift cards or a free lunch/dinner.
PR Brief
In your outreach efforts, don't overlook the local media for opportunities. This could include approaching the appropriate newspaper editor (typically the managing editor) to offer to write an eye info-blurb or eye health column.
Focus on your specialty: what's your practice known for? Don't use the old hooks quality, value, price--everyone does that.
Instead, pick an intriguing segment: sports vision, computer vision, or bifocal contact lenses, for example. Keep information honed to who, what, when, where, why, and how. Write tight and you can't go wrong. For internally driven communications, utilize patient testimonials in newsletters, brochures, and on your website.
A patient who went elsewhere then returned to your practice is the most powerful testimonial. They can make a powerful case as to why your practice is better. Remember that, to quote a motion picture executive, The work you do (or anybody does) is taken for granted by the consumer of the product. I don't think twice about contacts or glasses until it?s time for an exam. You probably don't think at all about [the] movies until Friday afternoon while planning your evening. But what we do professionally is what we live and breathe day after day."
Ring Ring
Start branding attitude by ramping up staff phone skills. Everyone who is on the phone should adhere to these phone etiquette rules:
Smile when answering the phone, callers can actually hear a smile.
- Identification. Identify both yourself as well as the practice by name.
- Elocution. Speak slowly and clearly.
- Education. Be ready to answer queries or get the caller immediately to a person who can.
If a patient must be put on hold, customize your on-hold message to the practice with a loop on exclusive products and services that are available, promote upcoming dispensary events and specials, and describe community happenings relating to vision and the practice.
Instead of having phone scripts or letting staffers answer on the fly, blend both phone techniques. Involve staff in creating phone scripts, citing questions theyre most often asked and initiating answers. Scripts should include what to say/do with an irate patient. Irate patient tips include:
- Letting the patient vent
- Offering them full attention and collecting key facts
- Making sure any information given to the patient is correct and if that information isn't known at the time, saying that you don't know but will find out
- Giving a timeframe for an answer
- Finding a solution
- Reminding the patient that you are there to help them
Create phone scripts for FAQs, but allow employees to address individual conversations on a one-on-one basis so the discussions arent de-personalized. During weekly or monthly meetings, discuss and revamp/update phone scripts.
Welcoming committee. Next, make certain that every patient is warmly welcomed when they arrive. Don't call it the waiting area, it's the reception room.
Make the front desk appear more open. That means no sliding windows separating staff from patients. Also greet patients in a friendly manner and be sure that all their questions are answered and guided in a helpful manner along the way.
This may include having a staffer circulating in the waiting room to greet patients as they enter, escort them to the front desk, help them personally with their paperwork, and answer any questions.
The person who handles insurance should not be remotely headquartered in a cubicle in the back office, but rather be readily available to answer questions as well. Offer coffee, tea, and water as well as cookies, crackers, and mints, for a relaxing atmosphere.
Meet with staff once a week or once a month to review patient interaction.
Display Dynamics
What's on the walls and on tables matters. Artwork should be a recognizable practice branding tie-in. Posters should be framed and paintings or other art should carry the aesthetic theme, be it traditional, urban, or medical.
Manufacturers offer some dynamic point-of-purchase materials. However, these are the same materials that are available to other practices and don't necessarily mesh with your branding. Create your own exclusive posters and brochures with the same logos and colors for a professional branded image while merging manufacturer information selectively.
Most practices rely on manufacturer-supplied demonstration units in the dispensary or show lenses like polarized and photochromic. Some practices display a hands-on lens center and/or virtual displays for hands-on patient interaction. Larger units should have high visibility and accessibility in the dispensary with plenty of working room so patients feel comfortable.
Smaller countertop demo units should be placed where patients can feel free to experiment, not at dispensing tables. Having a polarized lens demo unit as part of a sunwear display ties lens selection into frame selection.
Create eye-catching displays by sub-sectioning displays. For example, instead of a sunwear corner, create mini-displays that demonstrate types of sunwear recommended for specific outdoors tasks. Instead of a unisex section, place a mini-display of short B measurement metal and rimless frames together.
Go seasonal by changing displays regularly for the season or various holidays. Spotlight frame and lens combinations in the front window and throughout the practice, keeping with the theme. For example, green frames and G-15 green sunlenses for St. Patrick's Day, or red, white, and blue frames for July 4th.
Make sure there's enough room throughout the office, especially the dispensary, for patients to feel comfortable and not cramped. Reposition dispensing tables so staff and patients have enough personal space to talk and move around.
Most of all, get rid of clutter! It's ok--even preferable--to have open spaces on the walls, floors, and tables. Simply ridding the practice of clutter and keeping it uncluttered goes a long way toward presenting a clean, professional image.
Have a once-a-week clutter-buster party where each practice area cleans, organizes, and picks up with an eye to moving out old materials.
Mighty Materials
Your practice interior is all branded with the same color scheme, including signage, walls, and employee attire. Now your print materials must follow suit.
Create an eye-catching logo and a one-sentence tagline that encapsulates what your practice is all about, then display them repeatedly with every print/media run. This includes your business cards, website, advertisements, signage, P.O.P materials, employee badges, mailers, recalls, anything--everything! Have a staff contest to come up with a new logo and tagline, and offer bonus cash or a prize for the winner. If ideas are stale or hard to come by, hire an agency to help.
Branding Tactics
A practice branding issue for a large practice is focusing on specific product categories and brands. Better inventory strategy will result in increased practice recognition, easier maintenance, and more profitability. Products and services should match with the practice. If they don't, it's time to re-evaluate and revamp inventory and pricing.
Inventory strategy. Many practices have more frame, lens, and contact lens vendors than they need. This can lead to intensive, ineffective product management that sucks time and money from your profitability. Basically, inventory strategy entails selecting vendors carefully and using fewer vendors. A rule-of-thumb for frame stock is around six vendors for 1,000 spaces. For lenses, settle on around four vendors and one or two labs unless your practice has an in-house lab. Plano sunwear should be about 20 to 25 percent of your selection.
Vendor value. Evaluating current vendors to ascertain which ones offer you the best products and service is essential to launching your revamped whole optical plan.
Consistent re-evaluation at least once a year will keep your practice and products up-to-date with the latest. Re-evaluations also help to winnow out sub-par performers and to give you the opportunity to replace them with better performance, service, and products that meet your needs.
Get help. Staff can help you put together a vendor evaluation checklist and help assess vendors. Some vendor evaluation points to consider are: ease of dealing with the company; promptness of deliveries; backorder amounts; representative accessibility and response; company policies including financial and warranties; and overall trust.
Ask questions. Ask vendors what buying groups they're part of, if P.O.P materials are available, about co-op advertising opportunities, and discount and return policies. Most of all, assess whether the product price range, quality, and styling match with your practice and patient base.
Practical pricing. If you haven't done it already, package price all lens and frame options. You should have no more than four price categories, ideally three: good, better, and best.
Some innovative independent practices have taken a cue from large optical retailers, and display their prices on posters in the dispensary. Others offer patient-friendly price sheets instead of flipping open the often-intimidating price list folder.
One highly effective price demonstrator is to have custom dispensing tablemats made up with your practice logo and color theme that list your price categories for easy reference.
Generally, practices with successful sales have a frame inventory mix of around 10 percent at the low end, 20 percent at mid-range, 50 percent in the high-end, and 20 percent in boutique.
Get Over Yourself
Buy for your demographic, not yourself. It pays to re-assess your area demographics at least every five years.
Check patient records to determine the primary patient age, insurance or private-pay, and generally where your patients are coming from including mile radius and work/home environment.
Drive in a five- to 10-mile radius around your office and observe any changes. Maybe a light-industry or office complex has developed. Approach tenants with business cards and discount certificates in-hand to introduce them to you and your practice.
Perhaps the condominium up the street is changing from retirees to young professionals with kids. Offer to speak about eye health and conduct free vision screenings.
Community outreach programs connect you to a larger patient base and also establish your practice as a trusted source for eyewear and eyecare. Get out there and sponsor a Little League or soccer team. Speak at local clubs, visit nursing homes for free eyewear adjustments, or outreach any group that appeals to you and your practice image.
Trunk Show
Hold a quarterly open house, trunk show, or vision screenings and consultations for back-to-school, computer vision, and color contact lenses. Send invitations and follow-up notes, personalized if possible, to the patient base selected for each specified initiative.
Select patients from your files who match the event criteria. Encourage them to bring friends and family, and mail 10 to 20 percent of the invitations to a new potential patient base.
Follow up with RSVP phone calls 48 to 24 hours prior to the event, and call after the event to follow up again.
Being jazzed about the day-to-day, and staying engaged with customers so that they can take it for granted that your practice will always do the best for them is the goal of a whole optical.
The Funk & Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary defines 'whole' as containing all the parts necessary to make up a total; undivided and undiminished; entire; complete.
The same dictionary describes, 'complete' as having all needed or normal parts; lacking nothing; entire; full.
Your practice can be all of these things by adhering to a whole optical dispensing strategy, and by making whole optical an integral part of everyday business practices.
This concludes the article. Click on the link below to take the test.