Staff Kudos
Staff and patients submit compliments, catching our staff going above and beyond. These are all read at a monthly staff meeting with congratulations to the individual. One of these is drawn for a $50 cash prize. Steps: Create a form to fill out the information for each event. Explain to staff. (Must […]
Get Patients to Buy Complete Pairs Beyond Lenses
Some time ago I overheard opticians telling patients with some vision plans, “you are not eligible for a frame this year but we can update your lenses.” We decided to reword that as “this year you have wonderful benefits with 20% off your frame and an allowance for your lenses.” (Since VSP patients receive a […]
Improve Contact Lens Reordering
We have created a business card-size patient info card that we attach to all patients’ orders that do not purchase a year supply of contacts. The purpose of the card is to inform the patient that they are able to re-order their CLs directly from us online. We kept the card simple by having a […]
Team Building with Cookies
I had an office meeting. I would ask questions, and whomever got the answer right first got a prize. The prizes were in a bag, and they would pull one out. The prizes seemed strange: A bag with a teaspoon of salt? A bag of flour? At the end of the meeting all the the […]
More Isn’t Always Better
Tim Nichols, OD In the first quarter of 2013, we noticed our per patient revenues were falling and began to investigate, hoping to pinpoint the cause and take action. We were seeing appropriate numbers of patients; some days we were too busy. Our demographic offers a wide variety of patient types, were we being prudent […]
Creating a Vision and Learning Center
Daniel Hock, OD We moved a Vision Therapy department to a new stand alone location. We have teamed up with a reading specialist who will be offering tutoring services. Steps: Get a VT office established. Team up with an established tutor, ACT SAT prep, OT, etc., to help share the costs of rentfind suitable space […]
Kids in Eyewear Photo Contest
Mark Teeple, OD To introduce our members to our website and to gather email addresses we held a contest over 3 months inviting patients to submit photos of their children with eyewear from our office. The prize was substantial ($100 gift certificate for future purchases at our office). The participation rate was quite good, […]
Sharing Gratitude
Shawn McBride, OD We have a brief “huddle” in the morning 10 minutes before we open, where we review anything that needs discussion from the previous day, discuss what’s in store for that day, etc. One thing we have started doing is have each team member say something they are grateful for from the […]
Economic Gardening
Greg Kraupa, OD Economic Gardening is a project managed by the National Center for Economic Gardening and hosted by the Edward Lowe Foundation. This is a nationwide program, but it is carried out at a county level and funded by county governments. The purpose is to help small and mid-sized businesses grow. Specifically it […]
Computerized Check-in with LobbyCentral
Jennifer Redmond, OD We are using this cloud-based system for a high-tech and efficient way to check-in patients to the eye wear gallery. We switched to LobbyCentral, and we are really happy this new system. LobbyCentral manages a database of records that will tell you how many customers were seen, how long a customer […]