If you think you going to open up a practice, get very nice looking frames, have an amazing layout, work with the best possible team and have experience increasing revenue sales without ever going through various challenges; then you must be out of your mind.
Delays, mistakes, wrong orders and many other controllable and uncontrollable obstacles and challenges may arise at any given point in time.
That means the practice must be in a position to deal with all kinds of problems.
The true test of any business that esteems itself as one that offers great service delivery is how it deals with problems that arise.
“I don’t know” can never be an answer that stems out of a practice.
Your practice needs to have a well-defined problem solving process it follows
Problem Solving Process
| Problem | Cause(s) | Solution | Person Responsible | Time Frames/Follow Ups |
| Appointment No Show | – No reminder | – Appointment reminders day before – 20 Recalls done a day – Confirm optical benefits beforehand | – Allocate team member for the week/month for the solution implementation | Daily |
Points of discussion:
- Patients are very skeptical about eye examinations so when they make their appointments, don’t focus too much on the spectacles they might need. Rather outline process involved in the examination and wide range of possible solutions that can be employed in solving their visual concerns.
- Customers whether existing or new, have preconceived ideas about what they need, is it working or not, should they be coming to you in the 1st place or go elsewhere, what would be different this time round with regards their visual problem or overall experience, etc. Your job in securing the appointment is to distinguish yourself as the ultimate value provide to every one of their concerns or needs.
- Clients will treat the appointment as a by the way kind of thing if the practice treats it like that as well.
Conclusion
Challenges will always arise within a practice but when the entire team is well prepared to handle them, success is guaranteed.
Preparation increases the team`s capacity to effectively drive sales through service delivery.
When sales delivery increases, sales increase.
As a practice you need to regularly set time aside to train everyone in the business on service excellence.
There are far more challenges that we didn’t list above but this article is to get you started on how you go about that.
Use the examples above as a guide and work through it with your team to see what best works for you.
