MY EXPECTATIONS WERE HIGH AS A VIP CUSTOMER. THEN I OPENED THE ENVELOPE

I WAS IN DALLAS waiting for my flight when my name was announced at the gate. This was a good sign — it usually means a first-class upgrade.

Once at the counter, the gate agent handed me an envelope and said, “Thank you for being a loyal customer of ours for 30 years.”

Half-jokingly I asked, “No upgrade?”

She nervously chuckled, “Sorry. First class is sold out, but thanks for being a great customer.”

As I opened the envelope, I did some quick math. Thirty years, nearly two million miles and a few hundred thousand dollars in plane tickets meant the envelope had to contain something substantive like a free vacation, money, a gift card, etc. Christmas had come early, or so I thought!

THANKS FOR THE BUZZ KILL

“Extreme buzz kill” doesn’t do justice to the experience. Inside the envelope was preprinted card that said, “Happy Anniversary . . . yada, yada” with a handwritten, “Thanks for flying with us!”

My brain went to, “My kid goes to Indiana, and all I got was this T-shirt.” Yes, my daughter does go to Indiana University, and she’s getting a great education, so that makes me happy. But the analogy was obvious: “I’m a million-plus mile, 30-year customer who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, and all I got was this card?”

HOW DO YOU APPROACH VIPs?

Do you thank your VIP patients? How often and with what? And who exactly is a VIP in your practice? (Yeah, I know. . . “Gary, in my practice, every patient is a VIP.” Yeah, OK.)

Do these patients have to spend more than $2,000 on glasses and/or refer more than 10 patients per year? Or is the gateway to entry to your elite patient club as easy as, “They show up on time?”

Regardless of how your practice defines VIP, does any “thank you” you might offer fit your patients’ degree of “VIP-ness?” Or, will what you’re offering be perceived like my lame thank you card?

One thing United Airlines did do right was to have a system in place to flag my anniversary. So, kudos to them for that part. But, as I’m sure most travelers are, I was unaware of the anniversary and they probably should have just left it alone (and prevented me from writing this article)! So, if you decide to have a system in place to first define your VIPs, make sure what you offer is aligned with how special they might actually be.

For example, if someone spends $3,400 on eyeglasses and that qualifies them as a VIP, does he or she get a handwritten note, a $5 Starbucks gift card, a $50 card, limousine pick up for the next appointment, limousine pick up for the next five years of appointments, a $200 gift certificate to the best restaurant in town — or, is the smart move to do nothing?

BETTER LEFT UNNOTICED

Everyone has different assessments of what rewards or perks, if any, are warranted for VIP patients. It would helpful to see what other businesses in your community do, then, should you decide to go down this path, do something a little better. See what your staff has experienced. Also, get their impression of what may or may not be appropriate for different categories of patients. And if you wind up with, “Nothing for anyone” — as United should have done with me — it might be the best possible solution. OM

DR. GERBER is the president of the Power Practice, a company specializing in making optometrists more profitable. Learn more at www.powerpractice.com , or call Dr. Gerber at (888) 356-4447.