Optometry Customer Experience
People often use the terms customer experience and customer service interchangeably as if they mean the same thing. However, those who know the difference, know that customer service makes a significant part of the customer experience, and those who understand how to create an effective customer experience, know how to provide good customer service. Being able to provide great customer service strengthens the customer’s belief in the products you deliver, creates loyalty, and fulfills his expectations.
Good customer service in Optometry includes speed in dealing with customers’ requests, treating customers with respect and in a friendly way, and being available in their usual social media environment whenever they want them. Often eye care providers emphasize that they provide exceptional customer service by delivering a one-hour eye exam including dispensing eyeglasses. Another way of good service is to be able to provide ample time for each patient and having the doctor interact in person with the patient. Moreover, allowing the patient to reach out to the eye doctor through Facebook or Instagram as if he is interacting with friends.
Customer experience, on the other hand, is putting ourselves in the patient’s shoes and trying to experience how the patient feels towards all those services altogether and if he feels something missing. The customer experience starts at the first encounter with the practice – like marketing, advertising, or reading a post on social media, etc- till the moment he becomes a loyal customer for life and starts referring other patients.
We live in an era where customer data is available more than any other time before, especially in healthcare and Optometry. A good customer experience starts with knowing the patient’s needs. Many think that online shopping experiences have dictated the experience Optometry practices should provide to the patient. We know those experiences that online retail platforms are delivering to patients work in selling households, clothing, fashion accessories, etc. However, no one said that this would be the ultimate solution to providing eye care. In a patient and customer-centric environment copying successful processes is the worst thing you can do. However, if you can figure out why those processes are successful you can build a successful process to any problem.
Customer experience is about people and the processes they go through to get their products and services. The best way to create a patient-centric process is to first try the experience yourself and then invite the patient to engage in building the process by providing suggestions and expectations about a seamless end-to-end experience. The more personalized the experience gets the better the patient’s engagement and the more the data collection and analysis plays an important role.
For example, the effect of the pandemic on the customer experience dictates that every optometry practice should create a seamless online experience of telehealth, telemedicine, and online shopping. The experience patients are expecting is completely different than the experience they got in the past. Once again it is very important to put ourselves in the patient’s shoes and see what experience is required. In addition, the second crucial step is to engage patients in providing their perspective and engaging in creating the experience. We may want to set up a special telecommunication system while most patients are more comfortable using Zoom or Whatsapp. Collecting data about each patient’s preferred method of communication helps provide a better experience.