CLINICAL

  OPTICAL

INCREASE CAPTURE RATE

ADD RECIPROCITY TO YOUR TOOLS FOR MAINTAINING PATIENT LOYALTY

DAVE ZIEGLER, O.D.

WE ALL look for ways to get new patients into our offices. In situations where exam payments from insurance plans do not cover chair costs, the purchase of materials becomes crucial to profitability. Therefore, it is even more important to retain current patients — and increase the likelihood they’ll buy from us. But, how effective are you at capturing the sales of glasses at your office?

To make this determination, you must measure your capture rate. When capture rate is measured, it is usually the number of lens pairs divided by the number of refractions through a given period of time. But, there are errors inherent in that formula. It overestimates the capture rate for practices that have a lot of walk-in prescriptions and those that have many second pair sales. Also, it underestimates the capture rate for practices that have a large contact lens practice (patients who rarely update their glasses).

A more accurate method is to find out how many glasses were sold to patients who were actually in the market to buy a new pair. Keep track of the next 100 patients who have said “Yes” when asked by your pretest staff, “Are you going to be updating your glasses today?” These are people who are going to buy glasses from someone, and you want it to be you. While the national average is around 60%, according to the Management & Business Academy, the capture rate at my practice varies between 78% to 80%. We decided that we wanted to increase that by ten percentage points.

Here’s how we did it:

WE GAVE FIRST

The psychological principle of reciprocity says people feel obligated to give back to others after having received something from them. Psychologists have also found that people are more likely to say “Yes” to people whom they owe.

In my practice, we have found that the way to leverage reciprocity to your advantage is to be the first one to give and to make sure that what you give is personalized and unexpected. We invested in an imprinting machine that foil-stamps the patient’s name on an eyeglass case. This personalized gift is given to patients by the optician during the doctor hand off. By doing this, we found that we increased our capture ratio to 92%.

The foil stamping instrument costs around $2,000, so it wasn’t a cheap experiment. It’s also important to use a case that will accept the foil stamp with a professional look. But when you can increase your capture ratio by 10%, it easily pays for itself. Give it a try and, given reciprocity, your patients may feel compelled to purchase from your practice.

BE MEMORABLE

Our personalized cases are one way we try to create memorable experiences for our patients. From our personalized recall cards to brochures explaining eyeglass features to personalized styling with iPad apps, we look for ways to create deep emotional connections, thereby increasing loyalty to our practice. OM

DR. ZIEGLER is a senior partner at Ziegler & Leffingwell Eyecare in Milwaukee, Wisc., and a fellow of the American Academy of Optometry. Email him at daveaziegler@gmail.com, or visit tinyurl.com/OMcomment to comment.