How to gain efficiency in your optometry practice
Making your optometry practice more efficient is a question of designing a good strategy that allows you to use technology to automate processes, train your staff and not waste resources.
At CECOP USA we have over 25 years of experience helping our members boost their optical efficiency. And today, on our blog, we’ll share some of the processes that can help you.
Audit your optometry practice
In order to improve, first you have to observe, measure and analyze. So, it’s best to start by auditing your optometry practice or group, either yourself or outsourcing it to professionals.
The main areas to look at are:
- Patient flow: analyze how you get new customers, how they are served, what percentage comes back, why they leave, etc.
- Practice processes and procedures: it’s important to look at all patient related processes, from welcoming customers to patient care, treatments, etc.; as well as the practice management processes, like accounting and marketing.
- Productivity: for all products and services, and staff, too.
This will help you identify your strengths and areas that need improvement. That way you can implement measures to improve, like staff training, automating processes and a better marketing strategy. Now we’ll analyze some of these processes.
Centralize customer management to boost engagement
Using management software to automate the processes at your optometry practice is perhaps the most important measure you can adopt to boost optical efficiency.
Depending on the software you choose, you’ll get access to billing tools, patient scheduling systems and automatic appointment reminders.
At CECOP USA, we offer our members specific advantages on the Weave software, including:
- $50 off the monthly bill for new customers
- 5 free phones (hardware only)
- Free terminal when customers add payments
- Auto renewal
- This program is effective for any member that is not signed up today
The Weave software gives you the tools you need to attract, keep and engage customers, all in an easy-to-use platform.
Automate your marketing strategy
Nowadays, a content marketing strategy is essential to attracting users searching for information on optometry products online. It’s the best resource to catch them when they need a service or product you provide, giving them information and drawing them to your website.
And, to do this, we recommend using inbound marketing services, including SEO positioning, social media and email marketing.
At CECOP USA, we offer our members support in managing several of these services and some of the resources required, at highly competitive prices, so you can focus on your area of expertise and leave other concerns to us.
Make appointments online
User habits have changed radically: customers are more demanding today because they are better informed. And they get that information online. So, it’s key to have a good content marketing strategy that ensures you are well positioned online, as we’ve mentioned before. But it’s also very important to give customers the option to make an appointment on your website.
This is an excellent strategy to attract customers and make sure they can easily schedule an appointment once they’ve found you.
Data analysis
Automating these procedures at an optometry practice, with software like Weave, and following up on the metrics in your marketing strategy, will give you useful information on the behavior of your customers or potential customers when interacting with your company, through various communication channels.
Collecting and analyzing this data is key to evaluating your performance and designing strategies to improve it.
In short, gaining optical efficiency in your optometry practice depends in large part on planning good strategies to attract and manage customers, analyzing their behavior when they interact with your practice using the opportunities the digital world offers, and creating good campaigns to attract new customers.