Our culture is WOW-ing someone and that can be a variety of different ways depending on the patient.
And so, to some patients is, “I got in and out in 30 minutes. That was amazing.”
To some it’s, “Wow! You have the coolest technology I haven’t seen before.”
Some it’s all the above; some of it’s the aesthetics, the optical.
And so that’s where you get the struggle of trying to figure out — I got to impress a lot of patients in different ways. How can I do that from start to finish? And that’s where the technology and how you present it to the patient comes in.
So, our WOW goes from as simple as right when you first check in to as simple as right when you check out.
But also all the stuff in between.
Apparel, too. We have cups that have WOW on it; we have t-shirts that have WOW on it; we have scrubs that have our names on it. It’s on a lot of our advertising is WOW-ing a patient.
First, starts with the building. We’re fortunate enough where we have a very nice building. So the first wow is when they come in. You get greeted by a very nice friendly face. Get that WOW. You see the cool technology – it’s another WOW. Friendly doctors, another WOW. And so it’s a process.
We try to WOW you every single step of the way until you’re done and leave.
If we don’t WOW in a certain area, we figure out why, and we try to add something to it to be a WOW.
So, we just add an optic wash to help clean your glasses. Cool piece of technology up in the front for the optical.
To use the latest retinal imaging.
The latest frames. We have a frame that we have from Barcelona. So, we try to have independent frame lines.
Everything you could possibly think of to try to add some WOW.
(The frames) might not WOW you, but it might WOW the next person. And so that’s why you try to do as much as possible so that the WOW factor can go to as many people as possible because what might WOW you, might be different what might WOW me.
In order to do that, you do a lot.
That’s where that kind of comes in. You can have all the fancy technology in the world but if you don’t apply it in the right way, you can’t show it off to the patient well. Right?
So I know that all of my cool instruments back there do all these things for the patients but they have no idea, right?
So, you need to do it in a way that makes sense to the patient.
That’s easy for them.
They type in their first name, hit order glasses, and it says, “Thank you, an optician (will be) with you shortly.”
That’s pretty cool. It’s very easy for them. And so, you want to show off the technology in the way that can make a patient understand.
That, yeah, we do have a lot of cool technology that makes your life easier.
It makes our life easier, and this is one of the few ways that I can kind of go about doing that.
Let’s do an example. Let’s say I hit that. So I say Eric’s my name. I hit enter.
It asks me what’s the reason for my visit. Right. So let’s say I’m here to pick up some glasses.
It shows the check mark that I selected it and then hit enter.
It says one of our awesome certified opticians will be with you shortly.
So already, signed into the queue, and then it goes back to the thing.
So you kind of know that your job is done and is wrapped up.
Then on the computer screens on that program, it’ll now show Eric and it’ll say why the reason for visit.
And it’ll say to pick up glasses. So the optician, before they even see me, walks to the back, grabs my glasses, sits on their desk, and says “Eric.”
And I look, and they go, “I have your glasses right here.” And it’s already all done before I even knew that the process was happening it was happening.
For a patient, (it’s) all about efficiencies. We are a well-oiled machine here and you know the “not waiting longer than five minutes” in the waiting room.
We try to get the idea is, “We hope you can go through your whole experience in less than an hour.”
You can get contacts. You can get glasses. You can sign in and be done in less than an hour.
A lot of doctor’s offices can’t do that and so that’s probably one of the most comments I get from patients is they’ll say, “Wow that was really fast.”
Because when you don’t, you book a doctor’s appointment at 9am, you expect to go back to work at 1pm. And we don’t.
We don’t like that.
We like (to yeah) “You want to take an hour lunch break. We’ll get you in your hour lunch break and we’ll get you back to work.”
And that’s these pieces of technology help speed up that process a little bit better.
So when a patient checks in, there’s two spots for them to check in. One’s up here in the front. That’s if they’re signing in for an exam.
But if they were signing in for the optical, we actually have a different area for that.
So it says, “Sign in for glasses.” All they have to do is type in their name and then they type in what they’re here for.
So sometimes it’s an adjustment, frame style, (or) whatever it may be, once they sign in, it goes into a program that’s on their (the staffs’) computers.
It does a little chime when a patient signs in, so that way, they know.
So that way, there’s not this miscommunication of lost patients or anything like that.
Because once they signed into there, it’s in their world now, so the front desk doesn’t have to worry about it anymore.
They can focus on the patient check-ins for the exams, and then once they sign into the optical, the opticians are able to take it over from there.
If you go into any kind of doctor’s office, and let’s say it’s a multiple/different kind of setting. So dermatologist is a great one that I think of because when you sign into the dermatologist, they also have a spa area in the dermatology, right?
So, you have the doctor’s side and then you have the aestheticians and stuff like that that do the spa stuff.
But they’re all in one building, right?
So then you see the front desk person get up, they walk over to the aesthetician side, and let them know that they’re in.
So they have to leave the front desk open. So now let’s say she’s gone. A new person comes into the front door, (and) they have no one to greet them anymore, right?
So, we want to try as much as possible to let the front desk people stay where they are, so we can greet and say goodbye to patients as much as possible.
This piece of technology helps with that because there’s no reason for them to get up once the patient signs in.
The opticians are able to see their name call them out. That way the front desk doesn’t have to go find certain opticians to then grab the patient, to go help them, so that helps with that.