View From The High Street

Communication has always been the key to excellent customer service. Asking the right questions and confirming your understanding of the answer sounds easy. In a business where the terminology for progressive lenses and photochromic lenses ranges from varifocals to Transitions, it is easy to see how customers can get confused. Recently a customer asked for ‘those variable lenses’, I asked if he meant varifocals? ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘the lenses that change colour!’

I mentioned in my last article that I have been training some new team members. At last I have begun training on progressive dispensing. I find myself amazed at how complex progressive designs have become over the past 20 years. I think the level of information only really hits you when you start to train someone who has no previous knowledge of progressive designs – the advances visually are truly outstanding.

The technical information and practical fitting guides, however, are a minefield for the new trainee. I have to wonder if we are making the information as complex as possible for the benefit of the customers. As a dispensing optician I will favour a particular design of varifocal based on my understanding of the lens and the success I have experienced in fitting them correctly for my customers. As manufactures develop new and more complex ways to fit their lenses, is it in the industry’s best interest to make an already complex business even more complicated? On the plus side, as a professional, I realise the skill involved in fitting a varifocal correctly is very visual to the customer, who will then appreciate the professional service they are receiving and will hopefully then return for the same fantastic service in the future.