Eyecare product ordering has to be done on a daily basis, and it is easy to stick to the methods you've been using since the doors of your eyecare practice opened. Phoning and faxing are just ordering methods we’re all familiar with, right? But is faxing hundreds of orders monthly really utilizing your practice management system to its full potential? Now, we all know change isn’t something many people enjoy, but the negative effects of faxing your lens and frames orders to the lab happen to be a little more harmful than the few hours it may take for your staff to get use to online opthalmic product ordering. We've come up with a list of 5 reasons why phone and fax optical ordering erodes efficiency; see if your eyecare practice is running into any of these problems! If so, I promise if you order spectacle lenses online, it won't be that bad!
1. Faxed Orders Keep Patients Waiting Longer
Faxed orders can take up to three extra days to return to a practice from the lab. This directly affects your practice’s customer service by causing your customers to wait an unnecessary amount of time. We all despise waiting – in the doctor’s office, in the line at the grocery store, at a red light – so don’t let your customers remember your office as an inconvenience. You want them coming back, so give them a reason to!
2. Phone Orders are More Prone to Error
Phoning in orders can be tedius, and with that comes plenty of room for error. When phoning or faxing in an order there are many circumstances that can cause this extensive process to become even longer – the lab may hear you incorrectly over the phone or even enter it incorrectly into their system, after they had it faxed over from your office. There are countless mistakes that can be made, so practices that phone and fax instead of using an online system, equipped with error-checking features, should expect to run into more errors in their orders.
3. Fax Ordering is Not Integrated with a Practice Management System
If your eyecare practice is using a practice management system with an ordering integration option, than there is no excuse for faxing your orders! If you are paying for an expensive practice management system and not utilizing it to its full potential, you are only inconveniencing yourself. The words integrating and fax don’t really go together, so we won’t even go there!
4. Faxed Orders are Not Always Trackable
When a customer calls and they are wondering where their new lenses are, faxed orders are not the easiest to track. When tracking an order, you expect to track online, correct? Well these expectations are not going to be met when you’re not placing these orders ONLINE in the first place. This situation ties directly back into customer service, and just like before you don’t want to inconvenience your customer in any way. So be sure you're using an ordering method that allows you to give your customers the most accurate estimate of when their prescription will be ready.
5. Fax Ordering Drains Your Staff
Your staff’s happiness is just as important as the customer’s – they do happen to be the people the customers see as soon as they walk into your eyecare practice. Error after error, and repeat after repeat, your staff is going to be drained with unnecessary work that could easily be avoided with an online ordering service. Your staff already has a lot to manage, don't make their lives more difficult by forcing them to use an ordering method that is more error prone like the phone or fax. Order to optical labs online - that's just the way to go today!
