E-commerce Competition Versus In-Office Strengths

My practice, Sokol Advanced Eye Care, is located in downtown Atwood, a neighborhood of Madison, Wisconsin. My team, which includes an associate doctor and nine staff members, caters to an eclectic group of patients, from young professionals, to families, to long-time residents. At our single location, we offer full-scope optometry with an emphasis on medical optometry and anterior segment disease, which includes a dry eye center. Naturally, contact lenses represent a substantial part of our patient loyalty and revenue—currently around 31% of sales— from longtime wearers, new fits, some specialty lenses, and dry eye patients returning to contact lens wear.

WHERE E-COMMERCE CAN’T COMPETE
For small, privately-owned practices like ours that focus on providing top-tier patient care, competing in the physical marketplace is hard enough. Yet, we can’t ignore the competition from e-commerce sites like 1-800 Contacts, etc., which are setting patients’ expectations for 24/7 ordering, home delivery, and perceived lower prices. Although their prices aren’t always the lowest and the quality of their products and services is questionable, the e-commerce ecosystem has trained consumers to comparison shop.

We can’t ignore these game-changing trends in how consumers access their health-related purchases, or we risk ceding important patient touchpoints that build practice loyalty (and generate revenue streams). I’ve found that it’s possible to compete successfully against online retailers by using technology to meet our patients’ demand for convenience while leaning into the advantage of in-person visits that e-commerce can’t replicate: personalized care delivered by a trusted healthcare professional.

FOCUSING ON THE WHY BEHIND OUR STANDARD OF CARE
I believe our biggest strength as eye care professionals is our ability to deliver customized, concierge-type health services. My team and I enjoy giving our patients so much value at every visit that we make shopping around an exercise in futility. By value, I mean that we pinpoint their visual needs through comprehensive exams and lifestyle questions, clearly explain why we recommend certain lenses, and then make the lens-ordering process as easy as possible.

When a patient walks into our examination room, we begin by asking them lifestyle questions such as their daily activities, bothersome visual symptoms, and whether there’s anything about their current contact lenses they wish could be improved. Then, we dive into the options we have to help them, explaining how a particular lens’ technology will address a specific challenge they’re having. These explanations solidify patients’ trust in our prescriptions, and when they receive an upgrade to their contact lenses, it makes their office visit all the more worthwhile.

PROVIDING CONCIERGE-LEVEL SERVICE
I'm proud of my team’s ability to make office visits seamless and enjoyable for our patients. Because our office used to be a bank, we have the space to keep our most popular lenses in a modern, illuminated vault—a large, sleek storage space that impresses patients and lets us place lenses in their hands during their visits. While I’m still in the exam lane with a patient, our coordinator is working on their prescription authorization, creating a quote, and preparing the order. She will have an annual-supply box of lenses sitting on her desk waiting for the patient when they meet with her, then she’ll say, “We have these here for you right now. This is the price, these are the discounts, and this is what is included in our bundled package.”

As members of our community, my team and I are as price-conscious for our patients as we are for ourselves. Our yearly bundle includes an annual-supply discount, a significant rebate, direct shipping (if we don’t have that particular lens in stock), a sample bottle of contact lens solution (if they are not using daily disposables), and a discount off a pair of non-prescription sunglasses from our optical. When we calculate the rebates, discounts, and shipping included in our bundles, many patients are surprised to learn that our pricing is often better than what they’d find online.

Patients have a hard time resisting this level of service—our capture rate for sales of annual supply boxes is 65% (see the sidebar, Breakdown of Lens Categories).

We also extend rebates to patients who split their annual supply into two 6-month orders, if they order their second 6-month supply within a specified window of time. We’ve found this to be a powerful selling point to maintain patients’ loyalty.

For the patients whom we’re trying to convert to daily disposable lenses, we’ll often send them home with a pack of 5 days’ worth of trial lenses. Then, we continue the conversation. Whereas we had previously tracked and followed up with trial lens wearers manually via a ledger and phone calls, we are now vetting automated systems that will text patients to ask them how they like the lenses and provide a link for them to order the lenses to be shipped to them directly. This is another example of how we’re keeping up with technological trends to make contact lens ordering more convenient for patients.

Finally, before they leave the office, we make sure all our contact lens patients are aware that we’ll work with them to exchange a box of lenses if they are unhappy with them for any reason—another level of service that they can’t get online. We are constantly reinforcing the message that we support our patients with a high level of care. My team has been able to streamline these messages into just a couple of sentences that take no time to include in patient interactions.

USING AUTOMATION TO IMPROVE EFFICIENCY AND SERVICE
In this digital age, I believe it’s important for optometric practices to automate as many office tasks as possible, both to alleviate the time pressures on our staff members and to meet patients’ expectations regarding efficiency and convenience.

There are quite a few contact lens ordering and e-commerce platforms available to try, such as MARLO (Alcon), Arrellio (Arrellio, Inc.), and CLX (CLX System). We’ve been trialing a few of these systems to see which will work best for our practice. Thus far, we like the patient interface of MARLO, but we’re still using RevolutionEHR (RevOptix) as our contact lens inventory system.

EMBRACING TECHNOLOGY TO PROVIDE VALUE
Throughout my career, I’ve learned that patients will purchase what they find to be valuable. Taking the time to explain why we’re recommending a prescription goes a long way toward building trust and communicating to patients that we care about their visual health.

Yet, personalized service also means making patients’ office visits as uncomplicated as possible, and this is where automated communication systems, fast and easy lens ordering, and patient portals can signal to patients that we invest in the latest technology (while simultaneously alleviating administrative burden for our staff members). These digital apps and services help us deliver that personalized touch that online retailers can never replicate. As e-commerce continues to evolve, independent practices that embrace technology while delivering personalized, human-centered care will not only survive, but thrive.