The government is reportedly planning a clampdown on unsolicited phone calls from service providers across the board.
It has become a familiar tale. Phone numbers are sold on to third parties geared up to pester the caller about whether they have ever taken out PPI or been involved ‘in a road accident that wasn’t your fault’. Most UK adults have, at some point, been at the wrong end of such phone calls.
However, optical practices genuinely rely on outbound contact to ensure patients attend eye exams on a regular basis for the sake of their eye health. Services such as dentistry and motoring have an equally legitimate reason to ‘pester’ their customers, it has been argued by a campaign body called Call For Action On the TPS (CFAOTTPS), which has urged optometry to help lobby to prevent a ban on outbound calling.
The campaign body told Optician it feared that the inclusion of a new Data Protection Act in last month’s Queen’s Speech appeared to confirm the government’s commitment to make the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) forthcoming direct marketing guidelines statutory law.
It said new laws could stipulate specific prior permission to call any contact by telephone, and together with email and text messaging, such permission would have to be renewed as frequently as every six months.
CFAOTTPS founder Charlie McKelvey said: ‘If business sectors do not work together to point out flaws in an opt-in system, and do not put forward proposals that will protect both public and commercial interests then it is very likely that appointment and eye test reminders will become a thing of the past.
‘There is six months to create alternative telemarketing regulation and then put it to the ICO and government. Once the opportunity is past there will not be a second chance. To save outbound calling it’s now or never.’
While phoning patients remains an essential tool for optical practices, some told Optician this week they preferred alternative channels of communication such as email, text, social media and sending out letters in the post.
The more the better
Graham Hutchison, MD of the Independent Marketing Partnership, said the more practices communicate with their patient base, the better.
He told Optician: ‘They should co-ordinate all channels available to get their message across – and think through what is likely to be most effective. Just because something is cheap to use, such as email, doesn’t mean it is the best or only solution. Typically 85% of unsolicited emails are never read.’
He described social media as ‘flavour of the month’ but noted its expense in terms of the amount of time it takes to do it properly.
‘Recall letters obviously cost more to send out, but practices can be reasonably confident they will be opened and read, particularly by older patients,’ added Hutchison.
Jonathan Foreman, managing director of Observatory Wardale Williams, said his company does not use telephone marketing anyway. ‘We are rather traditional in that we use letters, whole letters and not post cards,’ he said. ‘There is a level of quality in the way they are done and the content, and we use that as part of being seen as traditional in some respects.
‘We send reminders, and newsletters, and posted offers that are of interest to them. We have had mixed results with texts. Phone calls and texts are not favoured by the staff really. I think controls on telemarketing will help smaller businesses.’
However, Observatory has itself been at the receiving end of outbound calling, with a member of support staff once being pushed into ordering 7,000 till rolls.
‘They made a huge fuss about taking them back, and said we had ordered them, and used my name, and the employee’s name to back that up,’ Foreman said. ‘They did take them back, however, as businesses we have less protection than consumers, so can be scammed like this quite easily. Recently we had a letter from a company who pretended to be HMRC and wanted £900 to file something that we didn’t need to do, and could do for free anyway. So I think we need more protection and so would welcome this.’
Varied approach to marketing
Sight Care Group CEO John French said telemarketing remained an ‘important means of engagement with your existing patients and new ones’.
He told Optician: ‘Practices that realise the lost patient represents failing eye health for the patient and lost revenues for the practice usually have an active telemarketing campaign. Email and social media tend to be used more for general information about the practice than patient-specific notices, but many practices use the telephone for appointment reminders 24 to 72 hours before a visit.’
French believed patients not seen in the past 12 to 24 months should be called by the receptionist or one of the clinical staff, which would prove problematic if regulations tighten.
‘The person carrying out this role should be patient-centred, goal-oriented, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Eye care is healthcare and in every practice there are patients who are inactive and stay that way. Patients must realise that preventive eye care is not expensive or painful, but emergency care can be. Taking care of small eyesight concerns before they become major problems is the name of the game,’ he added.
However, Vivian Bush, a fifth generation optometrist in Hull, was more focused on the look and feel of his practice than contacting patients over the phone.
The owner of two Bush the Opticians practices in the city described his marketing activity as ‘tiny’ compared to the multiples.
He said: ‘As a small independent we have concentrated on marketing ourselves through how we look, what we do, and how well we do it. It has proved a sufficiently effective method for us to maintain the strategy, rather than throw cash at ingratiating ourselves via the conventional press, telephone line, or unwanted emails.’
A more manageable goal for Bush the Opticians was to develop and refine its web presence.
Bush added: ‘It does boil down to the old maxim “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”.’
Meanwhile, optometrist and owner of Albert Road Opticians in Wilmslow, Deepak Oberai said his practice communicated via telephone and text for appointment reminders and recalls. ‘We believe this works for us as we already have a relationship with our clients. We do not use cold calling techniques to look for new clients,’ he added.
As a business, Albert Road also received several cold calls a day from suppliers.
Oberai added: ‘This is a real nuisance and not very welcome at all. It has made the staff at Albert Road very competent at deflecting cold call telephone enquiries into email. We would welcome stricter rules with open arms.’
His practice also sends out patient recall reminders quarterly, using a mixture of text, phone and snail mail though. Its best response came from phone and letters, while email and social media were primarily used for relationship building.
Therefore, while optical practices rely on making phone calls to patients encouraging regular eye exams, they do not welcome the distraction of cold calls during the working day.
This is where CFAOTTPS wants certain business sectors to lobby together. Rogue cold calling companies already ignoring current rules and were unlikely to cease operating under new regulations. Such firms would simply fold and remerge, it said, or be untouchable by UK authorities if based overseas. ‘Rogue calling is likely to increase dramatically to fill the void left by compliant companies,’ it warned.
