Playbook, optician
Answering where my glasses are with no view of the laboratory
The job is at a laboratory. A straightforward single vision pair may be glazed quickly, and a complex varifocal in a strong prescription with a coating goes somewhere else entirely and takes considerably longer. The assistant can see none of it, and most of these messages are still answerable.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for order status holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The work is not in the building: a job goes out to a laboratory to be surfaced and glazed, so nobody in the practice is holding the glasses either, which is not what the customer pictures when they ring.
- Turnaround is not one number, because a stock single vision lens and a complex varifocal with a coating are different pieces of work sent to different places, and an average is wrong for both of them.
- A lens that fails at the laboratory is remade and the clock quietly starts again, which is the commonest reason a job runs later than the customer was told and the reason nobody ever explains.
- A frame ordered in adds a stage before glazing can even begin, so somebody who chose from the display and somebody who chose from a catalogue are on different timelines from the day they paid.
How it arrives
- are my glasses ready yet
- how long do glasses take to come back
- why are varifocals taking longer than my last pair
- you said a week and it has been two
- will you ring me when they are in
- can you post my glasses to me
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Turnaround by type of work | Single vision, bifocal, varifocal, strong prescription, tinted or coated, and anything sent to a specialist laboratory. Publish a range for each rather than one figure, since one figure is wrong for most of the list. |
|---|---|
| What adds a stage | A frame that has to be ordered in, a lens surfaced rather than taken from stock, a remake after a fault at the laboratory. Naming these explains a delay without anybody having to open the job. |
| How you tell somebody the job is in | Text, call or email, from which number, and how long you hold a finished pair. People miss the message and then chase, and knowing what to expect prevents that. |
| Whether you post finished spectacles | And what happens to the fitting if you do, since a pair collected in the practice is adjusted on the face and a posted pair is not. Say which you offer and on what terms. |
The reply
I cannot look a job up, so I have no way of seeing yours. What I can tell you is that turnaround depends on the work: a single vision pair is usually quicker than a varifocal in a strong prescription with a coating, and the ranges for each are on our page [1]. If a frame had to be ordered in, that adds a stage before the lenses are even made. We contact you when they arrive, in the way described there [2]. If it has gone past the range for your kind of lens, ring the practice and they can open the job.
It says plainly that there is nothing to look up, then gives the one thing that genuinely helps, which is whether this wait is normal for the work ordered. The frame ordering stage is named because it accounts for a great deal of the surprise. And it gives a threshold for chasing rather than telling somebody to wait longer.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks about their particular job, gives the date they ordered, or says the practice has already given them a date that has passed.
I cannot see jobs at the laboratory or in the practice. Ring the practice, or leave me your name, an email and roughly when you ordered, and somebody will look it up and come back to you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a job is ready, has come back, or is at any particular stage.
- Never estimate where a job has got to from the date it was ordered.
- Never say glasses will be ready by a date, because the laboratory decides that and a remake may be inside it.
- Never say a pair has been posted or is on its way.
Questions
- Could it check the job if we connected our practice system?
- No. It answers only from the documents you index and cannot query anything. The realistic gain is that it explains what a normal wait looks like, which is what most of these messages are actually after.
- Why publish turnaround as a range?
- Because a single figure is wrong for most of your work and right only for the simplest. A range per lens type lets somebody judge their own wait, which is the difference between a chase and a shrug.
- Should we mention remakes at the laboratory?
- One line is enough, and it saves the awkward call. A customer who knows a lens can fail and be remade hears a delay as a process rather than as somebody having forgotten about them.
Keep reading
- Everything for a opticianEye test prices, NHS entitlement, frame ranges and prescription rules are all answerable. Vision symptoms are not.
- Handling order status in generalThe most asked question in retail support and the one a document-based assistant cannot answer. What it can do instead, and where handover sits.
- Splitting an optician bill into the parts somebody else pays forEmployer screen schemes pay for part of a pair, so the paperwork has to split the bill. What an optician can issue.
- Two kinds of money taken up front at an opticiansA deposit on made to order lenses is money already committed. A missed sight test is a separate charge with separate rules.
- Three access requests at an opticians, none of them a yes or noTesting somebody who cannot answer, a wheelchair at the test chair, and who is eligible for a visit at home.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.