Photo credit: Getty Images
Pretesting conversation techniques for optometry: Enhancing patient engagement and eyewear sales
By Kayla Ashlee
Jan. 22, 2025
Is your practice harnessing the influence of pretesting technicians? You can train your pre-testing technicians to start the conversation with patients about purchasing new eyewear. Here is how to do it.
The Pre-Testers Have Significant Time with Patients Early in their Visit
“Lisa?” your pre-testing technician calls out as they look around the reception area and see a woman who is looking at frames in the optical. “Lisa?” they ask again. She nods as the pre-tester introduces themselves. “We are going to get started with your exam by doing some tests.”
Lisa follows the pre-tester back to the testing area. The pre-tester motions for her to sit as they begin their instructions. It is no secret, this is the best pre-tester/technician in your office.
They are friendly, they give great direction to patents, they take sensational retinal photos, and when collecting information to start the chart notes, their thoroughness is perfection!
Would you believe me if I told you that this pre-testing technician could make a huge impact in your optical? The great part is that the most simple, yet impactful, adaptation is in the conversations the pre-tester has with your patients.
The Nurses of the Optical Industry
Pre-testers and techs can be thought of as the nurses of the optical industry. They triage patients, run them through tests and hear their health concerns and optical woes. Patients have a special level of trust during their time with pre-testers. Patients hear and listen to them. This gives them an extraordinary amount of influence.
The way you help your pre-testers reach that next level of greatness is to train them to refine the conversations they have while your patients are with them. They have the opportunity to plant essential seeds that ultimately influence the patient’s perception of purchasing eyewear.
Missed Opportunities
There are so many opportunities in pretesting that are being missed. If you genuinely believe that your office has great eyewear, and can make the clearest, greatest lenses, then you have a duty to inform your patient about the beauty of getting their eyewear at your office–early in their appointment, when they first check in and while they are with your pre-testers.
Other Articles to Explore
The power that pre-testers and techs have to influence patients through their conversation is powerful!
To fully utilize this influence, your pre-testers need to know the benefits of the eyewear sold in your office.
Here are two conversations you can begin helping your technicians adapt to have a great impact on your patients and optical sales right now.
Existing Glasses Check
Before taking the patient back, it is a great practice for the pre-tester to look at the patient’s previous orders to see the glasses last ordered in your office.
What was ordered? When was it ordered? Is there something they may have missed out on when their last glasses were ordered? During testing, your technician should be comparing the lenses that are currently worn to the doctor’s last prescription, all the while doing a quick check on the integrity of the frame and the clarity of the lenses.
If your technicians are not reading and assessing the glasses that the patient is wearing on their face before they are taken back to visit with the doctor, you are missing out on a massive opportunity. Even an auto-lensometer will get your technician a close and quick readout of what the patient is wearing.
Here is where your pre-tester’s knowledge can offer a solution to a visual struggle your patient might be having and not even know it.
With the lensometry read out they are able to look and see if what the patient is wearing is what the doctor last prescribed. They are also able to see if the patient has specific treatments/coatings on their lenses.
For example: anti-reflective treatment. If AR treatment is not present, this is a great time to plant a seed about getting this lens treatment in a new pair of glasses.
The pre-tester could say, “Alright Lisa, I just did a reading and cleaned up your lenses. I can see that you’re having to look through a bunch of scratches, ya poor thing. Your glasses did not have our anti-glare treatment on them. This treatment is fabulous for keeping your lenses super-crisp and clear, plus it helps to protect against scratches. Once I tried it myself, I was blown away with how necessary it is. I will make a note for your optician to show you a lens with and without anti-reflective treatment. It’s pretty amazing!”
Your pre-tester giving the patient their genuine thoughts and testimony of how anti-reflective treatment changed their own glasses experience, and how it has helped other patients, will not only plant a seed for the patient in getting these treatments for their glasses, but it will also give your pre-tester a career-growth opportunity to become an even more essential part of the practice.
Beyond the Chief Complaint
At the beginning of the visit, while your pre-tester is discussing the visual changes or struggles your patient is having, this is a fabulous opportunity to begin making recommendations.
First, if you are not already, you and your staff, including pre-testers, need to be asking patients specific questions beyond, “What brings you in today?”
Of course, you will hear their response to this question, and likely it will be that they are there for their exam. This is NOT a chief complaint. You and your team will want to also ask specific functionality questions that get your patient reflecting on how their eyes are feeling:
“What changes have you noticed when you go to read on your phone or look at your phone?”
“How often do you notice that your eyes feel dry?”
“Tell me about your vision when driving at night.”
“Do you notice that it is harder to read items later in the day than it is earlier in the day with fresh eyes?”
“How many hours a day are you spending in front of digital screens? This includes computers, phones and TVs.”
For patients who do offer a chief complaint, such as their vision changing or their eyes being dry, you and your team will still want to ask the functionality questions listed above to make sure they are being comprehensive in identifying the patient’s issue and allow an open door to make confident recommendations around the solutions your practice offers.
Here is where it is vital for your pre-testers to know what eyewear, if any, the patient has been prescribed before and the solutions that your lenses can solve.
Training the pre-tester on the details of what your optical offers, and the benefits of those offerings, will allow the tech to plant a seed for solutions to the struggles the patient is having.
Knowledgeable pre-testers who understand how the glasses purchased in your office will benefit the patient’s specific visual challenges will be pivotal in helping them make recommendations. When these solutions are coming from the tech/pre-tester, in addition to the doctor and optician, seeds of eyewear purchases are authentically planted.
Click HERE to watch a video with examples on how each of these inquiries could result in an authentic solution.
The Power of Suggestion
The power of suggestion is unconsciously used in all of our daily interactions. Being intentional about how you and your team, including pre-testers, speak to patients during their time in your office will not only portray a heightened level of service; it will also set a highly powerful precedent for the remaining interactions the patient will have during this, and future, visits.
Kayla Ashlee is the founder and CEO of Spexy. To contact her: kayla@bespexy.com
