Leverage existing patient relationships
to drive growth
Every business has opportunities to drive growth by leveraging existing customer relationships.
For eye care practices, one of the largest opportunities for growth comes with finding ways to sell more contact lenses to patients you are already seeing.
LEVERAGE EXISTING PATIENT RELATIONSHIPS
TO DRIVE GROWTH
Every business has opportunities to drive growth by leveraging existing customer relationships.Â
For eye care practices, one of the largest opportunities for growth comes with finding ways to sell more contact lenses to patients you are already seeing.
Why Contact Lens Patients?
Industry research suggests that contact lens patients may be your most valuable, using a variety of factors to estimate that they may bring over 50 dollars more per patient than glasses-only patients annually. That means deepening your relationship with these patients should be a priority.
According to industry research:
On average, 40% of contact lens sales happen on the day of the exam, and ECPs retain most of these. Once patients leave your office without buying, though, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll keep the same capture rate. It’s similar in the contact lens reorder marketplace, where online retailers are taking 90% of the reorders.
In-office capture rate is significantly higher than capture rate once a patient leaves your office. How can we change the capture rate deficit AND start capitalizing more on in-office opportunities?
Understand Your Opportunities
To understand where to focus, you have to have some understanding of why these numbers are the way they are. Who are you losing business to? Why are you at such a disadvantage when it comes to out-of-office contact lens sales?
The main reason is one that isn’t new: Online retailers and third-party competitors give patients more convenient purchasing options than ECPs do once the patient leaves their eye doctor’s office.
Between online contact lens retailers and subscription services, patients have convenient ways to buy contacts at their fingertips 24/7. These competitors know what your patients want, and their business models are designed to capture market share from ECPs.
Use High-ROI Tools at Your Disposal
So how can you fight back? ECPs have access to new technology that serves to level the playing field with online retailers.
One of these is the CLX System. CLX is a feature-rich software system that integrates with your practice management platform to greater serve the wants and needs of these all-important contact lens patients. With CLX in your practice, you can leverage existing patient relationships to drive business growth without the constant pressure to attract new patients.
The Need to Offer New and Convenient Options to Patients
CLX allows you to give your patients a wider range of options when buying their contact lenses, which translates to convenience. Your patients trust their eye doctor. That’s the importance of the doctor-patient relationship. The advantage that third-parties have is the ability to offer convenient options your patients couldn’t previously access from ECPs like you. With CLX, they can.
Let’s just briefly run through a routine contact lens fitting. Your patient gets an eye exam, receives their prescription, and sits down with you to discuss options for ordering their contact lenses.
Without CLX, you’d show the patient the product that you recommend, and you suggest an annual supply, but there are some problems. Your patient doesn’t always feel comfortable making the investment in a full year’s supply without shopping around. Before CLX, they’d leave and your odds of getting the sale would decrease significantly.
CLX Changes the Playing Field
With CLX, things are different. During a fitting, CLX Price Compare provides a comparison between you and your major online competitors for a given product. CLX Subscriptions offer a convenient alternative to purchasing an annual supply. CLX Patient Protect gives patients an easy option to buy even after leaving your office empty-handed.
CLX helps you target the reorder market as well. Look no further than Dr. Amanda Barker at Advanced Family Eyecare, in North Carolina. Dr. Barker and her staff addressed the fact that contact lens sales were a large part of her practice’s annual revenue and that the business couldn’t grow while it was losing so many contact lens reorders to online competitors.
After integrating the CLX System into their practice, CLX’s Convenient Reordering had an instant impact on Dr. Barker’s practice. The feature activates for every patient who doesn’t buy a full year’s supply of their contact lenses in the office of their eye doctor. It automatically tracks their prescription and sends them custom, white label reordering reminders via text and email.
Offer Your Patients Exactly What They Want
The contact lens marketplace is rapidly changing. Consumers still want low prices, but they’re more likely to put convenience above price on their list of priorities when buying the things that they need. To increase contact lens sales (and in turn, build revenue for your practice), you don’t need to rely solely on finding new patients.
CLX can help you leverage the strength of your relationships with existing patients. With the CLX System’s range of features and robust reporting capabilities, you can offer your patients more ways to shop for and purchase contact lenses, while tracking CLX’s impact on your business.
The result? Better sales numbers: a higher contact lens capture rate, a higher annual supply rate, and fewer exam-only patients leaving your office and buying their contact lenses elsewhere. CLX is a turnkey solution that grows your contact lens business and satisfies more patients; a win-win for your practice.