How to be a great DO Part 6

Get the best from your labs by building a relationship with someone in them

The lab relationship sits in the middle of everything you do. Every prescription you dispense goes through it – and for a lot of practices it gets less active management than almost any other supplier relationship. That management gap will almost certainly show up when things go wrong.

Most lab frustration comes down to two things: an agreement that was never clearly made, or a communication that didn’t happen. Neither side is automatically at fault, and both sides are responsible for doing something about it.

Set the agreement first

A good lab relationship starts with knowing what you’ve actually agreed to, on both sides.

Do you know your lab’s standard turnaround times by job type? Do they know your typical volume and when your busy periods hit? Have you spoken about how remakes are handled, or what happens when a job runs late? If not, you’re working on assumptions – and assumptions are where disappointments tend to live.

Get on the phone with your account manager. If you don’t have a named contact, get one. Go through the basics together: turnaround expectations, how to flag a genuinely urgent job, what information they need upfront to process an order without calling you back. Write it down.

If you’ve never had this conversation properly, it’s worth doing now. A working conversation about how the relationship actually functions day to day is a different thing from the standard account review about pricing.

The lab has obligations here too. Communication when a job is running late. Clarity on remakes: what qualifies, what the process is, how long it takes. A direct line to someone technical for the queries that go beyond order status.

If either side isn’t meeting what was agreed, have that conversation directly. Don’t wait until something’s already gone wrong. A calm check-in about what’s not working is easier for everyone than a complaint call when under pressure.

Cleaner orders, fewer calls

Most of the back-and-forth between practice and lab is avoidable.

When an order arrives incomplete, the lab has three options: guess, call you, or return the job. All of them add time. Most of the time, a call goes to whoever answers the phone rather than the person who wrote the order, and something gets lost. Giving them everything upfront cuts most of that off.

Pupillary distances, back vertex distance where relevant, complete frame measurements, any patient notes that affect the job. Flag urgent jobs clearly and say why.

Know your lab’s cut-off times and work to them. An order that arrives at 4:58pm for a 5pm cut-off is late, whatever the intention.

Patients don’t know the lab exists

It might be worth thinking about that for a second.

When a job is delayed, the patient calls you. When there’s a remake, the patient waits in your practice. When something goes wrong, you’re the one explaining it. The lab is invisible to them.

Patient expectation management sits entirely with you. And it’s one of the most useful things you can do to keep the whole chain running well.

Over-promising at the point of ordering creates its own challenges. If you tell a patient their glasses will be ready in five days because it’s easier than saying 10, you’ve shortened your own runway for anything that might go wrong.

Be honest about timelines, even when it feels awkward. Patients handle delays much better when they were given a realistic expectation to begin with.

If a job is running late, contact the patient before they contact you. A quick call or message – “Just to let you know, your lenses are taking a couple of days longer than expected, we’re on it” – is received very differently from silence followed by a patient in your practice asking where their glasses are.

What you tell your patient, and when, is entirely yours to manage. Getting that right takes a lot of pressure out of the lab relationship too.

Build the relationship before you need it

The practices that get the best from their labs tend to have actual relationships with someone in them.

A named contact who knows your practice, knows your patients tend toward complex prescriptions, knows you’ll flag a genuine emergency when you have one because you don’t do it often. That kind of relationship comes from the quieter periods: a check-in call, an occasional visit if your lab is close enough, being a decent customer to deal with.

Labs remember the practices that make their job easier; accurate orders, realistic timelines and clear communication when something changes. Those things cost nothing and they tend to come back to you when it matters.

Five top practical tips

1. Do a challenge audit. Look back at the last three to six months of lab issues and write them down. For each one, note what actually caused it. Most practices find their problems cluster around the same two or three root causes. That tells you where to focus.

2. Build a ‘when this happens’ reference. Write down what should happen in the most common problem scenarios before they occur. Job running late: who contacts the lab, when do you tell the patient, what do you say. Remake needed: what’s the process, what does the patient get told. Having it written down means anyone in the practice handles it the same way.

3. Be specific about timelines. Know your standard turnaround times by lens type and write them somewhere visible. Add your buffer. Use it at the point of ordering so what you tell the patient reflects what’s realistic.

4. Have your patient communication ready. Draft a short message for the two situations that come up most: a delay and a remake. Something you can personalise quickly rather than compose in a rush. Simple, honest, specific about next steps.

5. Review it quarterly. A 20-minute check-in with your account manager keeps small issues from becoming patterns. What’s working, what isn’t, anything changing on either side. The relationship stays current rather than only getting attention when something goes wrong.

Rebecca Thompson FBDO is a dispensing optician, eyewear strategist, founder of Eyestyle Studio and writer of Eye Style, a weekly journal exploring the business, design and the future of optics.

Cover and banner images courtesy of Lab3Sixty.