Why customers of the optical practice do not come back, and how to measure it

A customer who does not come back does not say so. They do not write a review, they do not complain, they do not ask for a refund. They disappear. And the practice, which lives on people coming back every two or three years, notices two years later, if it notices at all: when the month’s revenue is lower for no visible reason, when "fewer people come in" and nobody can say which ones.

It is the most expensive and least measured management problem of the optical practice. Expensive because a person who comes back costs almost nothing, while a new one costs advertising, time and a welcome discount. Least measured because the management software records who buys, not who has stopped coming. To see who is missing you have to look for them on purpose.

The four reasons they do not come back

For years I have asked owners and customers why people change optical practice. The answers, leaving aside the exceptions (a move, a bereavement, a company scheme), are four, and none concerns the product.

They were not recalled. The person bought a pair of glasses, received an excellent service, and left without a date. Two years later, when their eyesight changed, they saw a sign, an advert, an offer, and asked whoever was closest that day. Not out of disloyalty: out of absence. The practice was not there at the moment it was needed, and the relationship, as I wrote in Memory and recall, is preserved only if someone keeps it alive.

They were not recognised. On their second visit, nobody remembered who they were, what they had bought, what they had said the time before. They have to repeat everything. At that moment the practice becomes one of many, and price goes back to being the only criterion.

They had a small problem nobody closed. The frame that loosens, the lens with a reflection, adapting to progressives taking longer than expected. The problem was fixed, perhaps, but nobody called to ask how it was going. The person drew their own conclusion, and the conclusion is usually against the practice.

There was no reason to come back sooner. Between one pair of glasses and the next, two or three years go by. If in that time the practice never offered a reason to come in, a check-up, a cleaning, a novelty that concerns that very person, the thread breaks. Not through a wrong: through time.

None of these reasons is a marketing problem in the sense tool vendors mean it. They are relationship problems, and they are solved with a method before they are solved with software. I explain it in CRM for the optical practice: treating different customers differently.

The three numbers that make it visible

The customer who does not come back can only be seen if someone looks for them every month. Three numbers are enough, to be added to the management control table.

1. Return rate. Of all the people who bought a pair of prescription glasses three years ago (the corresponding month), how many have bought again since. It is calculated once a month on the month three years earlier. It is the most important number: it says how much the practice retains, not how much it attracts.
2. Dormant customers. How many people on file have a last purchase older than thirty months. It is the list to work on, not a statistic: every name is a possible phone call or message.
3. Recalls made and recalls that succeeded. How many people were contacted in the month for a recall and how many of them came back within sixty days. The ratio between the two numbers says whether the recall is well written and whether it is done by the right person.

If the management software does not provide these numbers, that is a problem with the software and it has to be solved; in the meantime, a spreadsheet with name, date of last purchase and category is enough to start. A customer file without the date of the last purchase is not a file: it is an address book.

The recall that works is a promise, not a promotion

Everyone knows the recall that does not work: the same message for everyone, with a discount, sent on any given day. It is read as advertising, because it is. The recall that works has three characteristics.

It was promised. At collection, the person heard: "In a year we will call you for the check-up". The recall, a year later, keeps a promise; it is not an intrusion.

It is personal. It says what the person bought, when, and why it is worth coming back right now: the lens that can be updated, the check-up that is due, the novelty that concerns their case. The same message for everyone is the opposite of a relationship.

A person does it. The name of whoever writes or calls is the name of someone the person has met. Automated recall is there so you do not forget, not to replace the voice.

There is no such thing as a loyal customer. There is a practice that is there when it is needed.

The monthly method

Once a month, in the same hour as management control, you look at the three numbers and extract the month’s dormant list: the people whose last purchase was between thirty and thirty-six months ago. They are divided among the team, ten names each, and each person has a month to contact them with a personal message, not a template. The following month you count who came back. That is all, and in six months the return rate starts to move.

The monthly method on returning customers is one of the parts of Trade Up Online in Italy and of The Charismatic Practice elsewhere; to work on it with the team there is in-store training. The related articles are in the digital marketing for optics area, starting with CRM for the optical practice.