A big part of running a successful eyecare practice is keeping your customers happy so that they remain loyal to your office. And in order to keep your customers happy you need to be running things as efficiently as possible so that your patients can get through their exams quickly and receive their frames and contacts shortly after leaving your office.
In a recent survey, 92% of eyecare providers agreed that online lab ordering is the most efficient ordering method available today for eyecare practices. If you're not utilizing online ordering in your practice, that's just one area your practice could improve on to help your customers have a better experience with your office. How might your lab ordering methods be bumming out your customers? We've got the list to tell you.
How Your Lab Ordering Methods Could be Affecting Your Customers
Slower Turnaround
When it comes to ordering frames, spectacle lenses, and contacts you've got options. You can order by phone, fax, online through individual lab websites, or online through one ordering solution. So which way will help you and your patients get products back faster? Online ordering is going to give you the fastest turnaround time on your products. Here's why. When you place your orders online they go directly into the lab's management system. Orders placed by phone or fax have to be transcribed by someone on the lab's end in order to be entered into the system. Which is essentially twice the work.
More Mistakes
Placing orders with the phone or fax are also likely to have more mistakes. As we mentioned before, when orders are placed from the phone or fax machine, it requires another person at the lab to transcribe your order into the system. This means twice the data entry, and twice the chance of human error. It's very easy for someone to misunderstand an order over the phone, or misread handwriting on a fax order. Placing orders online reduces the chance of error. With our online ordering solution you aren't able to place an order that the lab can't make (because each lab manages their own catalog). Automatic error-checking features make sure that order is good to go before it's sent to the lab. The best part is, your labs want you to place your orders online, that's why they pay VisionWeb and make the solution free for you.
Less Time Spent Face-to-Face
Another big drawback of placing your orders via phone or fax is that it takes away from time you can spend face-to-face with your customers. If you're on the phone placing orders that means that your patients in the office are likely being neglected until you're able to get off the phone. With our online ordering solution we have the tools you need to put orders on hold until you have a free minute away from your patients. With our save to pending feature, you're able to put an order on hold, save it, and come back to it later to complete the order without losing any of the information or re-keying.
On top of saving time by placing your orders online, you'll also be able to keep up with your products and orders more easily by tracking order status online. Instead of having to pick up the phone to call the lab, you'll be able to log in to your account and check the status of any order.
If you're looking for an online ordering solution so that you can spend less time on the phone, we've got the solution for you.
Originally published in May 2014. Updated in March 2022.