A: In eye care, we too often seem to operate by the same playbook — our offices look the same, our pricing structures are typically dictated by insurances — so there is little room to customize the language or costs around an eye exam, and even our office names tend to sound rather similar. So, how can you set yourself apart as the ultimate local destination for eye care and eyewear? Here are the steps we’ve taken at TrueVision EyeCare, in Raleigh, N.C.
BUILD LOYALTY BEFORE YOUR PATIENTS EVER MEET YOU
Our patient experience starts before I ever introduce myself to a patient in the exam room. Your practice’s online presence (website, social media, online reviews), or lack thereof, determine whether patients decide to come to your practice. Research shows 77% of patients search online before making an appointment with a doctor.1 The first impression you make isn’t when you say hello to the patient for the very first time in your exam chair; it’s that photo you posted on your office Facebook page last week. So how do you make the most of that first impression?
- Use organic images. In my experience, ads or stock images of models wearing glasses typically do not equate to engagement for O.D. social media accounts. Think about how you consume social media. What makes you stop and look at a post? We may scroll past ads, but when we see people we know or a location that is familiar to us, we stop and look. Posting images of your practice, your community, yourself and your staff is the best way to share with your patients that you are a small, local business and to build those personal connections essential for patient trust and loyalty.
- Post with a purpose. Coming up with creative ideas for posts every week can be challenging. We’ve found that posting three times a week on our Facebook and Instagram accounts has been the best way to provide great content that engages our patients, without overwhelming our to-do lists. I’ve created a system to help better plan what I’m posting for the week if I’m at a loss for inspiration:
- One photo or video post with the doctor educating on an eye care topic
- One photo post of staff members or a product feature (new glasses, new eye drops, new contact lenses, etc.)
- One written post educating about a new study or a surprising stat about ocular health issues
This format helps organize my thoughts around what I want to post each day (and also gives our Instagram grid an aesthetically pleasing sense of order), while providing content that is meaningful to patient impressions of our practice! Articles suggest the best social media accounts tell a brand story through a visual voice that sends a clear message of who you are and what you are trying to achieve.2 To achieve this, break up photo posts with written posts created using the free tool, Canva (canva.com), which will net an aesthetically clean space in your Instagram grid that tells your patients you have a modern and organized practice.
- Start conversations. Many eye care providers get too caught up on their follower numbers when it comes to social media success. How many followers you have really doesn’t matter; what’s important is how many followers engage with your content and schedule appointments with you! My goal with every single post on Facebook and Instagram is to start a conversation with our current and potential patients. If I only get one “like” from a post, but that person learned that we can slow her child’s myopia and she schedules an appointment to learn more, that one like is worth more than 1,000 likes from people who never plan to set foot in my practice. We’ve found that many of our patients comment and engage regularly on our social media platforms. When we share new products or new technology online, we’ll often get phone calls from patients wanting to come to the practice and try them out.
- Get in front of the camera. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t relish being on camera, and I was hesitant to post photos of myself or film videos for our practice. But time and again we’ve seen that our very best engagement with patients have come from video posts of the doctor sharing her knowledge and passion. Research shows that on Facebook, video posts get 59% more engagement. And if you post live video, you’ll get 10 times greater reach than all other types of posts.3
ADDRESS PATIENT CONCERNS
Patients have specific concerns, maybe due to the pandemic, that our office can and has been addressing in order to continue to provide excellent customer service for which our practice set the foundation online.
- Disinfection practices. To address pandemic protocols, patients work with an optician one-on-one; the optician brings frames to the patients where they are seated at a dispensing table. Any frame that is touched is thoroughly disinfected. Patients see these extra steps that we are taking to keep them safe, and many of our office Google reviews mention that our practice cleanliness and safety policies are the most thorough of any business or doctor’s practice they’ve been to since businesses reopened. (For more on the pandemic systems implemented at Dr. Lyerly’s office see “Small Businesses in the Time of COVID-19” online.)
- Blue light. In the exam room, I’ve noticed increasing interest in blue light technology and more patient complaints consistent with digital eye strain and trigeminal dysphoria than ever before. Research shows that Americans are spending on average three more hours per day on computers while working from home than they did prior to COVID-19 when they were working in offices.4 This is seen in my practice, as my average patient’s chief complaint is a combination of glare, light sensitivity, headaches, pressure behind their eyes and fluctuating vision. Patients want technology to solve these problems. Compared to this time last year, blue light AR coatings are up from 38% of our prescription eyewear sales to 55% of our sales, and anti-fatigue lenses are up from 15% to 33% of our eyewear sales.
One of our keys to success with blue light technology is demonstrating the lenses in office. We have demo trial lenses with a blue-blocking AR coating that we encourage patients to try while looking at a computer screen or their cell phone. Additionally, we use a blue light pen to show patients how that specific wavelength of blue light is blocked when we move it over the lens.
Relatedly, if my patients bring in blue light glasses they purchased online, we test the blue light protection using this pen and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the lenses they bought online let that specific high-energy wavelength of blue light pass right through to their eyes, unimpeded. The patient sees firsthand that their online glasses are not the same technology we are prescribing for them today, and the conversation about why the glasses we prescribe will be better at solving their ocular issues is now easy for them to understand.
EMBRACE LOCAL
One of the new additions to our optical is a private-label line that we designed to reflect our local community with a play on Raleigh’s nickname as the “City of Oaks.” Each frame is named after a major road or neighborhood in Raleigh. We’ve selected classic shapes in several colors and a minimalistic oak leaf logo to make this private-label collection appealing across all ages and professions. Can you imagine shopping at your local optical boutique, seeing a frame line named for your city and trying on a frame named for the road that you live on? That’s the kind of personalized storytelling that will truly cement your practice as the go-to local destination for eyewear.
Another example of embracing local is how we solved a problem with the additional workload of COVID-19 disinfection. We found that cleaning the rooms between patients was a staff efficiency hurdle, so we created an internship position with students from a local high school. Our intern is fully trained and onboarded and is in charge of cleaning rooms and also back-of-the-house work, such as scanning and shredding documents. It’s been a great way to connect with our local community through the high school, and our current intern has even expressed interest in joining us as a staff member next summer in an optical role to learn more about optometry.
ESTABLISH A PERSONAL CONNECTION
For me and Dr. Alecia Barnes, owner of TrueVision EyeCare, we love seeing patients and solving their problems, expanding our knowledge, bringing new ideas and treatment options to our practice and being a small, local business. But simply because you have a small business doesn’t innately mean that your patients will care (or even realize it!). To help them, build practice loyalty with an online presence, address patient concerns and embrace your local community, thus becoming the eye care destination in your area. OM
Small Businesses in the Time of COVID-19
Small businesses haven’t had it easy in 2020. Since July, when many small businesses reopened after COVID-19 closures, 23% of small businesses have closed again, and 60% of those will never reopen, research shows.1 Like all health care offices, we’ve changed our business dramatically, not just with new cleaning and safety protocols, but with new ways to make sure our practice is running efficiently and is financially secure, so that we can continue to employ our staff members and provide for them and their families during this difficult time.
To limit the number of patients in our office at any time and to make sure we have allotted the proper time to clean and disinfect every surface of the exam room and pretesting area between patients, we are running on a 30-minute exam schedule.
Optical is an area where patient traffic can quickly get out of hand, so we have instituted appointments for optical adjustments and dispenses instead of allowing walk-in traffic. Using our patient communication platform, our patients simply text the office when they arrive in our parking lot, and then we tell them to enter when the area is cleaned and prepared for them. All paperwork and insurance card scanning is done electronically before the appointment, using an electronic document application. Additionally, because the practice is busy and appointment times are limited, we have instituted a 24-hour cancellation policy in which any no shows or last-minute cancellations result in a $45 fee.
Upon entering the office, every patient has a temperature check with a contactless thermometer and is instructed to wash their hands at our sink before entry. Masks are required (at all times in our office and as a statewide mandate at all businesses). If a patient states, when scheduling an appointment, that they are unable to wear a mask, we tell them that we understand, and we will reach out to them to reschedule their appointment when masks are no longer required.
Another important consideration during COVID-19 is acknowledging that our patients also may be facing hard choices financially. Even before the pandemic, the average American household would struggle to cover an unexpected expense of $400 or more.2 Instead of makeshift payment plans that can often leave small-business owners with a pile of accounts receivable to track down, we are looking into third party companies that can provide this to help pre-approve patients for medical expenses with interest-free payment plan options that take the financial risk off of the doctor.
REFERENCES
- Sundaram A. Yelp data shows 60% of business closures due to the coronavirus pandemic are now permanent. CNBC. Published Sept. 16, 2020. Accessed Nov. 9, 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/yelp-data-shows-60percent-of-business-closures-due-to-the-coronavirus-pandemic-are-now-permanent.html
- Sherter A. Nearly 40% of Americans can’t cover a surprise $400 expense. CBS News. Published May 23, 2019. Accessed Nov. 9, 2020. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cover-a-surprise-400-expense/#:~:text=Nearly%2040%20percent%20of%20Americans,even%20amid%20solid%20economic%20growth
REFERENCES
- How first impressions online affect patient acquisition and hospital revenue. Becker’s Hospital Review website. Published Jan. 20, 2017. Accessed Nov. 9, 2020. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/how-first-impressions-online-affect-patient-acquisition-and-hospital-revenue.html#:~:text=Research%20shows%2077%20percent%20of,step%20foot%20inside%20the%20facility .
- Andrew M. How to Style Your Instagram Grid Layout: 4 Planning Tools. Social Media Examiner. Published Dec. 19, 2018. Accessed Nov. 9, 2020. https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-style-instagram-grid-layout-4-planning-tools/ .
- Regev Y. 10 Expert Tips to Improve Your Facebook Video Marketing. Social Media Today. Published May 7, 2019. Accessed Nov. 9, 2020. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/10-expert-tips-to-improve-your-facebook-video-marketing/554182/ .
- Davis MF and Green J. Three Hours Longer, the Pandemic has Obliterated Work-Life Balance. Published April 23, 2020. Accessed Nov. 9, 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/working-from-home-in-covid-era-means-three-more-hours-on-the-job .
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