CRM for the optical practice: treating different customers differently

Of all the marketing activities an optical practice can put in place, retaining the customers you already have is the one with the highest return on investment. It costs less than any advertising, it gives continuity over time and, in hard times, it makes the difference: during the lockdown the opticians with an established CRM system kept in touch with their customers and closed surprising months, while the others waited for the storm to pass.

CRM, customer relationship management, is not software. It is a strategy, and I can sum it up with the sentence I have used for twenty years: treat different customers differently. Software is only the tool that makes it possible at scale.

Design the system, do not buy it

A CRM system is not installed; it is designed, and it is a process that gets corrected and refined over time. You start with an analysis: which processes you want to manage, what your customer database says, what the buying habits of the people you already serve are. Then you set measurable goals, with real KPIs.

Choosing the practice management software comes after, not before: you need software built for optics that integrates management and CRM. But software without designed content is a car without fuel. Every campaign has to be defined with clear, repeatable criteria.

The real hinge is the staff

In twenty years of CRM systems I have learned one thing: the critical point is not the technology, it is the people. Everything rests on accurate, continuous data collection, and the front line often experiences that task as a tedious chore whose purpose it does not understand. That is why I involve the staff from the design stage, because they bring valuable insights and adapt the procedures to real habits, and why I pair technical training with communication training: asking a customer for their data and consent is a delicate moment that has to be handled well. It is the work we do with in-practice training.

The launch should be gradual too. First you work only on entering data, without activating anything, to check that the quality is good. Then you start with relational messages, birthday wishes, move on to periodic recalls (the eye examination, the frame check-up), and only when everything is consolidated do you get to promotions, upselling and cross-selling.

Three kinds of message, never automatic in tone

A well-built CRM is organised around three kinds of contact: institutional, which build loyalty; incentive, which contain offers; qualifying, which enhance the relationship and the optician’s brand. Whatever the medium, every message must call the customer by name, be genuinely targeted and be built on their history with the practice.

The customer must perceive a communication between people, specific to them, not mass advertising. The moment it sounds automatic, it has already failed.

Multichannel does not mean everywhere

Multichannel CRM means choosing the medium according to the kind of message, the kind of customer and the expected result, optimising the return against the cost, management time included.

• The phone call is demanding but extremely powerful when a technician is needed on the other end: checking adaptation to progressive lenses, for instance.
• Email remains one of the best media for prompting an action.
• SMS still has an interesting cost-benefit ratio.
• The printed letter, done well, works for important initiatives.
• WhatsApp, today, has open rates no other digital channel comes close to.

But WhatsApp is precisely where clarity is needed: sending multiple messages, copy-pasting or creating groups is not CRM. It lacks personalisation, puts the account at risk and cheapens your authority. Doing CRM seriously on WhatsApp means personalised messages sent as if they were individual, through platforms that respect Meta’s rules, with data exported from the management software and carefully built routines. I discuss the same balance between data and relationship in AI, data and relationship.

One thing is certain: a well-made CRM project cannot be improvised at zero cost. But of all the investments an optical practice can make, it is the one that gives back the most, in loyalty, customer lifetime value, brand and qualified word of mouth. And it can be built step by step, which makes it accessible even to the smallest practices. If you want to understand where to start in your case, the first step is reading the numbers of your practice with Trade Up in Italy or The Charismatic Practice elsewhere, within the theme of digital marketing for optics. In the webinar The state of the art of digital for optics I lined up the tools, from practice management software to artificial intelligence. How to measure, every month, who does not come back is explained in Why customers of the optical practice do not come back, and how to measure it.