EYECARE BY THE NUMBERS

Capture It

How to increase your spectacle lens capture rate

for eyecare professionals, there are few metrics more important than the lens capture rate. This ratio, which measures lenses sold per comprehensive exam, exposes the overall effectiveness of your practice in delivering a valued eyewear experience.

Your capture rate trends can be an early warning indicator of the effectiveness of a number of processes, including the following:

• Eyewear purchasing

• Merchandising

• Marketing (product/price/place/promotion)

• In-the-lane presentation and hand off

• Optician sales effectiveness

• Teamwork

• Training

Over the past several years, lens capture rates have dropped from approximately 65 percent to 59 percent, but, as reported by members of Cleinman Performance Network, have trended slightly upward in recent past.

Most will blame the recession for the decline, but that’s an excuse. From my perspective, the overall decline is caused by the failure of ECPs to effectively respond to the recession and other forces at work (for instance, the increased availability of eyewear via the Internet).

Often, capture rate declines can be traced to staffing problems. We have many examples of ECPs who are having significant success in capturing the vast majority of the sales opportunities available to them, including second-pair sales rates as high as 50 percent. And it’s not unheard of for some ECPs to have better than a 100 percent capture rate as a result of significant multiple-pair sales. Opportunities abound within the eyewear side of your practice.

BENCHMARKING YOUR RATE

As the Key Performance Indicators chart below depicts, the cumulative economic impact of variance from the benchmark of a 67 percent capture rate (see sidebar to the right) can be significant. What might be considered a small differential on a daily basis turns into substance over time.

If you’re not experiencing a capture rate approaching the benchmark, consider: Are you teaching your patients about products and product attributes? Sy Syms, the retailing pioneer, said, “An educated customer is my best customer.”

Our industry has literally thousands of wonderful products available, but consumers know little about product differences. It’s up to you to teach your patients about the products you are offering.

The building blocks of an improved capture rate are many, and the improvement opportunity for most ECPs is significant. With more purchasing alternatives available to consumers than ever before, now is the time to both understand this KPI and invest in improvement. Few areas of your practice will yield a higher return on investment.

— Alan Cleinman

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

WHY IS THE KPI (KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR) SO IMPORTANT?

In simple terms, it is an indicator of effectiveness. The chart below is a look at the impact of various capture-rate scenarios. They are based on the following assumptions:

$380 = revenue per eyewear unit;

2,000 = number of comprehensive eyewear exams per year; and

67% = the capture rate benchmark.

Alan Cleinman is founder and CEO of Cleinman Performance Partners (cleinman.com), a business consultancy specializing in the development of high-performance optometry practices. The information in this column is derived from the database of Cleinman Performance Network, the members of which are generally very large optometry practices. The information in this article is not intended to represent national averages. ©2014 Cleinman Performance Partners, Inc.