Fill your contact lens staff positions with your best players

Batter up! With baseball season in full swing, now is a good time to set your staff lineup for success. Patients often spend more time with staff members vs. their eye doctors. So, to achieve a winning contact lens season, all the members of your team need to be trained and in the proper positions to enable your patients to achieve optimal vision, while growing your contact lens business. Here’s how!

HAVE A DEEP BENCH

Whether your practice goals are in line with traditional contact lenses or the specialty contact lens market, make sure staff understands proper care instructions, how the lenses work and their roles in ensuring patient success. An example: providing positive reinforcement at the first contact lens appointment.

Additionally, our staff members should be prepared with training in technology. (For tips on training your staff on technology, check out http://bit.ly/2MQHcBi .)

KNOW YOUR DESIGNATED HITTERS

Many patients who have never worn contact lenses are concerned with lens insertion and removal. Therefore, it’s important to provide patients with training on inserting and removing contact lenses — along with proper care instructions — to ease their anxiety.

For this to be successful, staff members who work with these patients need to have the proper temperament. Namely, they need to be able to maintain a calm and positive demeanor. So, the staff member cannot show any frustration for how long this process may take, although that may be a challenge sometimes.

BRING IN THE CLOSER

After a successful contact lens fit, make sure a staff member helps with all the ordering and follow-up appointment details. Whether it is making sure the patient’s annual supply gets sent to the right address or properly scheduling a follow-up appointment, make sure the patient is comfortable and well equipped to leave the office. To accomplish the latter, this staff member will reiterate specific wear instructions, such as build-up of initial wearing time and care instructions for any reusable or specialty contact lens.

Having this position filled is critical to closing the conversion to contact lens wear. This is a staff member whom you trust to get the details correct. You need to efficiently pass along all the details to your new contact lens-wearing patient and expect everything to be taken care of.

PLAY BALL

Proper planning increases the likelihood that the patient’s experience is positive, while maximizing his odds for success. After all, one player who makes an error at a critical moment can affect the outcome of the “game,” possibly creating a disconnect with the patient and subsequent dropout of the fitting process. OM

DR. MILLER is a partner at Eyecare Professionals of Powell, Ohio. He is past president of the Ohio Optometric Association. Dr. Miller has received honoraria for consulting, lecturing, research or acting in an advisory capacity from: Alcon, Allergan, Bausch + Lomb, J&J Vision Care, Revolution EHR and Shire.