How to be a great DO Part 10

Anyone can run an offer – but there’s no story in a discount

A discount is quick and it closes a sale, but it doesn’t touch how anyone really feels about the product (or you) when they get home. Unless the discount is enormous, nobody tells their friends about it because there’s no story in 15 per cent off.

Discounting is the thing you reach for when you don’t know the person. The alternative ideas in this piece only work if you do. You have to know someone before you can give them anything that matters.

When something goes wrong

It’s an odd place to start in a piece about adding value, but I believe it’s where the most value can be created.

Every practice is aware of the mistakes that happen most often; the incorrect PD recorded, frames arriving scratched, certain lenses that always seem to take three weeks to arrive instead of one. Most practices have never written them down though, or invested time in really thinking about the response.

The instinctive response to a mistake is apology and discount. It’s quick and closes the conversation, and is almost always referred to as goodwill. Yet a better response fixes the problem and then does at least one thing that is unexpected. Not necessarily a gesture that costs money, a gesture that costs attention.

Tie the gesture to something you know about them, and let it carry a bit of humour if the moment allows. A gardener gets a small trowel related gift and card that says, “We need to dig ourselves out of a hole with this one”. A dog owner gets a small treat with, “Thought Rex deserved something out of this too”.

Go out of your way to deliver any items, rather than having them go out of their way to collect.

It’s not the gift that will matter, it’s you providing proof that you were listening. That’s the story people will tell, the one where something went wrong but it got handled properly. You also better believe this customer is now twice as likely to return, spend more with you and leave a positive review on another visit.

Could you sit down with the practice team and identify the most common mistakes, note how you respond, and talk about alternative and creative ways to respond in future?

Memory is the product

I said this at Independents Day this year, and I’ll say it again here: the practices thriving in five years will be the ones that understand that memory is the product, that’s not record-keeping.

There’s a difference between having someone’s clinical history on a system and remembering them. It’s noticing that the frame they nearly bought last time is back in stock with new colour options. It’s knowing their daughter started school this year. It’s texting someone who mentioned they were nervous about a job interview, a day or two before it happens, for no other reason except you remembered.

We talk about the customer journey in practice and mention the usual stages, for example ‘Appointment booking’ and ‘Arrival’, but less often do we map what happens in between or after those moments. Mainly because we think nothing is supposed to happen there. That gap is free space, so a small amount of attention here does a lot of work. Fill it with something and you’ll be building their memory of you.

How can your practice develop a system for memory that doesn’t rely on one person?

Small moments where you can add value

• Payment. It’s the most transactional moment in the whole visit and not many people have attempted to make this feel different. It might be worth asking what would really make this moment feel less like a bill, and more like a handshake.
• Surprise, not gifts. A free spray is nice, but forgettable. Surprise is doing something that doesn’t usually happen, at a point where nothing was expected to happen at all. It’s cheaper than a gift or a discount, and lasts longer in memory. It still needs the same ingredient, knowing someone well enough to know what would surprise them.
• Small checks. Offer to adjust or clean something you weren’t asked to, just because you noticed it needed doing. Fix something before it’s an emergency. These gestures are small, unpaid and the kind of thing most others don’t do.

Which small moments could you focus on to create value?

Anyone can run the same offer you’re running but not everyone can remember the dog’s name, fix the mistake before it becomes an issue or notice the thing that matters to one specific person. That’s the difference between a discount and real added value; one is a price change, and one is proof you were paying attention.

The latter is more valuable to the patient and the practice over time.

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.