Comment: The big conversation

Optician has been getting back to basics recently and it has provided some interesting insights, the latest of which I will come to later.

Understanding the end-user, customer, patient, call them what you will, is always a useful exercise. Actually formalising the process can often deliver a shock when the response you get doesn’t tally with assumptions you had previously made.

Optician prides itself on carefully researching its readership and seeking feedback from its customers. To widen that process Optician has hosted two discussion forums recently with the aim of getting information from our readers’ customers and colleagues.

The first forum was a discussion among industry suppliers, professionals and business folk. The second was a discussion with young teenagers on their experience of eye care and eyewear. Both proved fruitful and interesting and the results of both discussions will appear in the magazine later this month.

Readers may also have noticed our ‘tried and tested’ feature in the products section. In this column Optician writes about products or services that have been experienced by the type of individual for which they were designed.

All of which brings me to my original thought. Last weekend readers of the Mail on Sunday will have received a mini-magazine from internet bucket shop Glasses Direct. It just so happened that my bargain-hunting in-laws were staying with us and they took a keen interest in the idea of buying specs for £15. They looked at the styles available for £15 and then the long list of optional extras. I watched as they read the ‘first easy step’ to saving which said: Have an eye test at your local optician. ‘That doesn’t seem very fair,’ they agreed.

Certainly not the reaction I expected and one that should warm the heart of many an optician.