With large chain opticians dominating the high street, running an independent optical practice has never had more competition.
While your clientele may differ from the optical giants (who tend to cater to lower budgets and offer a more one-size-fits-all service), it’s still important to keep up with the how they run their businesses in a digital landscape.
Most modern independent opticians have adopted digital testing software – albeit kicking and screaming in some cases! And lens manufacturers have dragged our dispensing opticians into the future by insisting lens ordering is done online. But there are lots of ways to digitize your practice to make your life (and sight tests) easier.
Practice Management Software
Practice management software is a step up from simple sight test record keeping. Lots of optometrists are still fond of paper testing and their first foray into the digital world of optometry was using a simple record keeping tool that just records a patient’s details, the findings of the sight test and a recall period. This is fine as a starting point to ease you in to digital record keeping, but realistically, you need software that’ll allow your practice to thrive.
Practice management software goes one step further. Alongside all the patient details and record keeping, good software will send out reminders automatically, allow you to plan the diary months in advance, help keep track of and provide staff training, manage dispensing records as well as clinical and even help with stock management.
Specialist software gives you the tools to streamline managing an optical practice making both your staff and your customers happy.
Thorough Digital Record Keeping
Record keeping has always been an issue for optician practices of every size. After all, you need to keep your patient’s files for seven years after you last saw them. That stretches even longer if you last saw them when they were a child, as you have a duty to keep children’s files for seven years after they turn 18.
This often pre-dates a paperless testing system, meaning you’ll be stacked up with filing cabinets galore in staff areas, outbuildings and loft spaces.
Also, when you are dealing with a complicated case (where perhaps your patient has a serious condition or low vision), and they’ve been visiting your branch for the past thirty years, there will be times you need to read their files from 1999, and the last decade of testing software just won’t cut it.
This is where you need to look into document scanning services. By scanning in all the paper records and storing them digitally on a patient’s file allows you to give them the best treatment and totally wipes out the need to be scrambling around in filing cabinets the day before their appointment to fish out some ancient patient notes.
It’ll streamline your storage and speed up your testing. Plus it’ll please the patient that you have all their history to hand. Once of the main reasons independent optical practices retain customers is the feeling that the staff know them.
Digital Refraction
While there’s something to be said for the old style trial frame, you’ve got to admit that digital refraction looks practically space age. Trial frames look ancient in comparison, and of course, they are! They’ve been around hundreds of years, they’re uncomfortable for the patient to wear, they never fit properly and they skew your test results if they’re not sitting straight.
Modern refraction is done digitally. It’s so much quicker to use a keypad to tell a computer which lens to put in front of the eye than it is to search your trial lenses and find the optom from yesterday didn’t put anything back in order.
Any new patient you see will have had digital refraction at the big chain opticians. The last thing you want is to look like you’re stuck in the past, especially since that’s a reputation independent opticians have been trying to shake since the start of the millennium.
Online Ordering
Most lens manufacturers will be pushing this ordering method by now, but I know of some practices that still prefer to phone up, or send orders in bulk via a courier at the end of the day.
The best thing you can do for your practice is to move over to online ordering, even if it feels like a scary nightmare to start with. If you’re not sure how to do it, contact your lens suppliers and ask if anyone is available to come out and offer training. They’ll probably want to do a sales pitch on their lenses anyway, so you might as well kill two birds with one stone.
Some practice management software can be linked up with the big companies you order lenses from, so the IT support from your software company may be able to offer training too.
Ordering online is so much quicker, it allows you to track the progress of the order and report back to patients accurately, and it’s loads cheaper than paying a courier or a big phone bill at the end of the month.
Social Media Accounts
This covers the marketing side more than anything else, but it’s incredibly important to have a social media presence. It’ll get your practice seen by people who never knew it existed, it’ll create a sense of community for your regular customers and it’ll be another ways patients can get in touch if they don’t like to chat on the phone (so everyone 35 and under).
The biggest obstacles independent optician practices face is that people often view them as old fashioned, expensive and not likely to have trendy stock. Show the world what they’re missing. Post every day showing the new frames you stock, how up-to-date your equipment is and how affordable your prices are.
Consumers also equate a more personalized service with independent practices, so use your social media to show them they’re right. Make the posts approachable, answer questions, joke with the commenters (where appropriate). People are much less likely to expect a reply from a business with a million followers and a thousand stores in the UK.
A more personal service is an independent practice’s edge over these big players, so get online and show it off!
Final Thoughts
When you run an independent optical practice, competition is fierce. By bringing your practice into the digital age, you’re essentially future-proofing your business. Most people expect there to be a digital element to an eye test, so if you are able to digitize every step of the way, it’ll keep your image modern and your knowledge up to date.
It can be hard to adopt the digital side of running a practice, but with the right training and the best staff, you’ll find your costs go down and productivity goes up.