Sponsored Content
By James R Hoffman, OD, FAAO
May 3, 2023
Single-vision spectacle lenses are the most common eyewear need in optometry offices. The question is how to provide single-vision glasses that set your practice apart from competitors. How can you create glasses that patients will rave about, send friends and family to experience and return to your office to order again? In our practice, we found a lens, ZEISS ClearView, that significantly boosted the visual quality and experience of our patients’ single-vision glasses.
A Lens that Looks & Feels Better
ClearView lenses offer a noticeable improvement in the appearance of glasses. The lenses are thinner and flatter, which can be seen by the patients who wear them and their friends and family. The lenses also provide better peripheral optics than standard single-vision lenses, thanks to their free-form design.
The patient feedback has been fantastic. First, the lenses look great in the frames, second patients say they feel better wearing them. Glasses that appear better are perceived as better quality. Patients always ask for thinner and flatter lenses regardless of their prescription.
A Product that Both Patients & Opticians Love
Since these lenses are more about the optical design than material qualities, we do not have to change the appearance by using higher-index materials.
Once our opticians saw how good these lenses look in today’s frames, and started hearing from patients that they preferred to wear ClearView over other glasses with the same prescription, they were very excited to use ClearView.
Opticians have the opportunity to recommend lenses and frames to assist patients with a pleasing final pair of glasses. As this is an entry-level single-vision lens that performs much better than previous single-vision lenses, we can now focus more time on educating patients about other enhancements.
Our opticians also get to dispense the glasses and see the impact of the final product on patients. Having the ability to offer thinner and flatter lenses, and hearing patients rave about how much they love their new glasses, is gratifying.
We don’t generally have a high single-vision remake percentage, but on the rare occasions when we do have to remake a pair, it is usually due to cosmetics or peripheral optics. ClearView takes care of both those issues.
A Lens with a Wow Factor that Is Easy to Explain
We do not charge an additional fee for ClearView lenses. We provide them as a “value added” enhancement. This decision allows us to wow our patients and retain them in our practice.
ZEISS has provided us with excellent patient education tools and displays. These tools help our doctors and opticians discuss how ClearView lenses are optically superior to other standard single-vision lenses, and to show them how much thinner and flatter they will look and feel. We tell our patients that their new lenses are of the best quality, and not only will they see better, but their eyes will feel better at the end of the day. As an independent OD practice, we are able to provide many options, like ClearView, that other retailers are not able to provide.
Send a Message that You Stand By the Quality of the Products You Sell
The impressively positive experience our patients have had with ClearView has prompted us to start getting the word out about it. We started using ClearView lenses with a “wait and see” attitude. Once we personally witnessed the difference these lenses make, we began to plan how to educate patients and market this new offering.
Using an advanced lens, like ClearView, as our entry-level single-vision lens sends a message to patients that we care about the quality of the glasses we create for our patients, and that our practice consistently delivers a premium experience.
James R Hoffman, OD, FAAO, is a partner with Orange Park Eye Center. To contact him: hoffmanod@gmail.com
