5 Terrifying Optical Ordering Habits

Did you know that practices still fax in their frame orders? Yikes. We know that sometimes resources can be limited, but you shouldn't be scared of your optical ordering habits. If you fall victim to any of the five habits on this list, we promise you there's a better solution.

We've come up with a list of 5 terrifying optical ordering habits that you should get rid of in your practice. Bad ordering habits create more work for your team and slow down the entire workflow in your office.

Why You Should Ditch These Optical Ordering Habits in Your Eyecare Practice

Picking Up the Phone to Track Your Orders

Your office staff spends enough time on the phone with patients, so help them avoid spending time on the phone with suppliers. If you're using VisionWeb's ordering solution to place your optical orders, you're able to track pending orders, processed orders, and everything in between with a few clicks of the mouse. That way, if a patient calls requesting the status of their order, you can stay on the line with them while you track the order, instead of hanging up to call the lab only to have to call back the patient again after you're able to track it's status. This will hopefully lead to better patient satisfaction and reviews.

If you're using a practice management system in your office, then you should be integrating it with an ordering solution too. Having your practice management system integrated with our ordering tool allows you to use the information you've already entered into your system to create and submit orders, reduce the need for duplicate data entry, and place and track your orders without leaving your PM system.

If you're already using our online ordering solution, that's a great first step. But make sure that you're using the Frames Data Assist tool. You get instant access to Frames Data information, and you'll have the ability to search the Frames Data catalog, select a frame, and click to auto populate frame measurements. And, if you're a Frames Data subscriber you can link your account with VisionWeb to view wholesale pricing and color images of the frames.

This one probably should have been #1 on our list of bad habits to break. Faxing in your lab orders is the biggest waste of time yet. It's a pain for your staff, and a pain for the lab on the other end. If the lab is using a lab management system to manage all of their orders, they have to decipher the handwriting on every fax and manually enter it into their system. This leaves more chance for human error. And besides, no one wants to hear that annoying fax machine noise anymore anyways.

If you're ordering your products online, you're on the right track. But, if you're visiting multiple websites of different suppliers to place different orders there is still the opportunity to improve your efficiency. VisionWeb's ordering solution is connected with over 400 labs, so that you can place all of your orders from one convenient place. You're able to place orders 24/7, and get your jobs back 1-2 days faster than with phone or fax orders.

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