The 6 Best Customer Retention Strategies for Optical Business

Profitability is vital and challenging to attain in an increasingly competitive optical industry. According to the Annexe Cloud, you can raise your profitability by up to 95% with only a 5% increase in customer retention. You can boost the retention of customers by effectively using POS systems in conjunction with proven strategies as an optical retailer.

Let’s dig deeper…

Customer Retention: What Does It Really Mean?

Retention refers to a set of coordinated strategies that entice current customers to make more purchases. It basically involves convincing one-time customers to continue buying from you regularly and eventually becoming brand ambassadors.

The retention increases the value of each client as opposed to customer acquisition, which results in the creation of new customers.

As an optical business retailer, you may ask when it is best to concentrate on retention. Let’s explore that question right away.

Optical Retail Customer Retention Is Crucial: Here’s Why!

More frequently than not, the retention of customers is both efficient and profitable. According to a Stitch Labs analysis on customer loyalty, less than 12% of all customers are repeat customers, although they generate over a quarter of all retail sales. Additionally, returning customers spend 120% more over a year and 15% more on a single order.

Retaining customers is beneficial in more ways than one. Moreover, it enables you to evaluate the state of your client connections. Not to mention that devoted consumers may develop into brand ambassadors who carry out the bulk of your customer acquisition work. For approximately 75% of consumers, word-of-mouth is the most critical component in a purchase choice.

For instance, a satisfied customer might tell their friends and family about the wide selection of branded eyeglasses you offer and give discounted prices for recommendations. As a result of this referral, you earn more clients, and the process continues.

We will now discuss the best 6 customer retention strategies for your optical business, and how an optical POS system can aid in implementing these tactics.

1) Make Your Customers Feel Appreciated by Strategically Rewarding Them:

The initiatives taken to reward your customers help you stay top-of-mind and provide more significant insights into your customers. Loyalty programs can raise customer lifetime value when done right. Additionally, as 66% of consumers who participate in loyalty programs change their spending to optimize rewards, basket sizes unavoidably grow.

Customers come back to make more purchases to earn or use their incentives. For instance, if a consumer acquires a premium loyalty membership, you may offer them specialized festival deals or offer free eye exams after every six purchases.

By marketing tailored reward offers to your customer base with the use of an optical POS, you can draw substantial sales to your optical store and increase the retention of customers. You can use the built-in promos template to define promotions. You can also create referral programs, oversee referral sources, and give customers rewards for recurring purchases.

For instance, as an optical business owner, you could offer a special coupon code to a consumer who buys a frame from your business, ask them to tell their friends about it, and then ask them to make a purchase in your store with that same coupon code. The referral and its source may receive exclusive discounts thanks to the promo code. This will increase your sales and help with customer retention, so both you and your customers will benefit.

While using Ari, one of the leading optical POS systems, the store manager can provide discounts on various purchased products by utilizing the “Promotion Grouping” feature. Additionally, each offer may be identified by a certain color, which would be mirrored along the frames shown.

2) Keep an Eye Out for Various Brand Names and Ensure an Efficient Inventory:

Consumers prefer branded goods and are frequently willing to pay extra for names they believe to be reliable. Keep up with the most recent frame or lens fashions and trends. Have a broad selection of branded and unbranded frames and lenses to meet the needs of a broader range of clients.

This approach is one of the most common ones employed by optical companies worldwide to keep customers. Customers with eye power choose to experiment with styles and brands over time because they wear glasses or contact lenses for most of their life. In addition, brand-name sunglasses that are popular draw in new clients who want to keep up with the newest trends in fashion. So, for optical firms, effective and automated inventory management is essential.

Hence, optical inventory management includes various optical goods under several categories and descriptions, and an optical POS aid in the simplification of this inventory management. To create unique qualities, the optical business manager can use the “Product Characteristics” function.

Using a POS, you would be able to sort eyeglasses and contact lenses according to type, shape, brand, gender, and other characteristics. You can add inventory barcodes and organize your prescription drug inventory.

3) Outperform Your Competitors by Providing an Excellent In-Store Experience:

Serving your patients beyond is the secret to success for every optical store. Pay attention to the details. Simple actions, like giving customers extra discounts on their special days when they walk in or including a thank you note inside the case when handing out a new pair of glasses. Customers take notice of, value, and enjoy these small, thoughtful touches and being acknowledged.

Make customer service development a regular practice in your workplace to enhance customer retention. Each member of your optical business must keep improving themselves to provide your customers with excellent service. Always reflect upon what makes customers happy and upset when they are in your store.

With an Optical POS, you may showcase your complete selection of frames, sunglasses, contact lenses, and brochures. This enables you to enhance in-store customer satisfaction and boost optical sales. The Substitute tool allows you to show alternatives for a frame or pair of sunglasses. The “Link Item” capability can also be used to display and sell combo offers and up-sell with additional features like blue light coating, anti-glare, etc.

Classification of product categories and descriptions is simple with POS; hence, the cashier can sort inventory more quickly. The management of the optical store can issue receipts with projected delivery dates and take payments in advance. The cashier can accept advance payments using the “Layaway” option.

For faster transactions, an Optical like Ari POS provides Quick buttons and barcode scanning. Multiple payment options, languages, and currency compatibility are available. Additionally, when working with another customer, the cashier can pause a payment by using the “Hold” feature.

4) Be Proactive in Providing Customer Service Around the Clock:

Your efforts to retain customers will not be successful without the assistance of your store staff. They are a cornerstone of your relationship with your customers and the human embodiment of your brand. Strong relationships, as we all know, lead to great recurring business.

As you can see, it’s critical for staff members to be more than just accessible. Companies must be proactive in their services if they want to encourage consumer loyalty and repeat business. In fact, data from RightNow shows that after experiencing subpar customer service, approximately 90% of customers will buy from your rivals.

Be sure to stay in touch with your clients as an optical business owner and let them know how their orders are progressing, seek feedback, or just say hello. An optical software can assist you to remember the payments that are past due and are highlighted in red to let you know. In order to keep track of repairs and be reminded of their state, it is also possible to register “Repair” as a new product and have the customer ID to automatically fill in the information.

To increase the client retention rate, you must concentrate on enhancing the customer service touchpoints. For instance, a query form on your website can be used to respond to frequently asked queries about your exchange times, operating hours, scheduling doctor appointments, etc. Your main objective should be to serve your consumers, and you may unwind knowing that your business operations and processes are automated through POS.

As part of these customer retention strategies, also make sure you check the quality of the support teams of POS system provider. Interpersonal communication with a holistic customer support approach strengthens the bond between you and your POS support team and ensures all the details are considered. a

This is essential because, as the business owner of an optical store, you must invest your time in enhancing client satisfaction and increasing customer loyalty. To maintain efficient business operations and processes, the POS software team must provide unending, all-encompassing assistance.

5) Be Precise in Customer Service and Never Stop Listening to Your Customers:

When not using a precise system to keep track of detailed information about eyeglasses or lens prescriptions, being an optical business owner, you may run into mistakes. We advise you to automate the procedure because managing eyeglass prescriptions requires careful attention to detail and adding precise prescription details. The best option is to use an optical POS system that makes your business operations hassle and error-free.

When using an optical POS, you send a “Purchase Request” to the seller, asking them to provide a particular pair of glasses or contact lenses. At the POS level, the prescription image can also be added. You can utilize “Link products” to create custom orders with add-ons. Each “Custom Order” is easy to maintain and track, with unique order IDs for each custom order. The POS dashboard will display the customer’s registered family tree, order history, and purchase status using the customer ID. In the right corner of the dashboard, you’ll see the name of the optometrist who wrote the customer’s prescription.

You can add multiple prescriptions with photographs so that you can keep track of any changes when using Ari optical POS system. Additionally, you will have distinctive customer IDs that include a “Primary member” and family members who are tied to them.The client and their associated family members’ raw data and values can be gathered in more depth. The primary member can use this to order or pick up a frame or lens for his registered family members.

Moreover, whether you make a mistake or not, it’s a critical part of the customer retention tactics to receive feedback about your company, whether positive or negative, if you want to expand. Spend some time reading internet reviews and in-store reviews or feedback cards. Pay attention to each one and give your comments some thought. We are all aware that many negative reviews are unjustified. There will always be people who enjoy whining about everything, but frequently there is some truth to be found.

6) Utilize Analytics and Reports to Understand Customer Trends:

According to McKinsey’s research, adopting an integrated strategy—that is, viewing analytics as a strategic driver of growth as opposed to employing it in isolation or just as a component of I.T.—leads to the achievement of the intended outcome (McKinsey, 2014).

Optical business owners can utilize a variety of analytics techniques to evaluate data, including predictive analytics, which examines the links between various variables. An optical store retailer can use predictive analytics to make future predictions by analyzing previous data to discover what customers may like or dislike. This will help you develop effective customer retention strategies.

By examining historical data to determine what type or brand of eyeglasses, lenses, or sunglasses customers may like or dislike, predictive analytics can be used to create predictions about the future. This will assist us in creating tactics that effectively retain customers.

An optical POS provides you with retail reports that cover every facet of your company. The reports cover topics like sales, taxes, expiration dates of lens solutions, inventory, and other things. This ensures that you receive all the necessary information all at once. You can compare the performance of all the stores, even for various time periods, using the analytical dashboard.

Final Thoughts:

Customers tend to remain loyal to optical stores that have visually appealing physical facilities, are seen as caring, are responsive, and have qualified staff.

Maintaining your patient base may be your most crucial task. Always strive to make a first-time customer become a die-hard supporter of you and your company. The good news is that it won’t cost much to do this. To do this, you won’t require a costly marketing strategy. We shared the best methods for customer retention in the optical retail industry.

Our Recommendation:

You and your employees are where it all begins. The best way to retain customers is to invest in a high-quality POS system that will not break the bank and be an efficient asset to your business.

If you spend money on an advanced POS like Ari, you’ll see a rise in retention rates and optical sales. Ari POS is a complete POS system with all of the special capabilities that we covered regarding customer retention strategies, but many POS systems available in the market do not offer them.

With Ari POS, you can see for yourself how much difference Ari POS can make for your optical business. Hundreds and thousands of retailers are already raving about the success their optical companies have experienced from using Ari P.O.S.