AT YOUR SERVICE:
Transitioning From the Dispensary to Lab Customer Service
By Preston Fassel, BS
Release Date: July 1, 2016
Expiration Date: May 5, 2020
Learning Objectives:
Upon completion of this program, the participant should be able to:
- Learn the difference between work as an optician in a dispensary and laboratory customer service work.
- Identify a basic set of skills which will help in making the transition from the dispensary to a lab environment.
- Understand how customer service representatives (CSRs) improve dispensary operations and how positive relations can be built between opticians and CSRs.
Faculty/Editorial Board:
Preston Fassel is an optician in the Houston, Texas area. His interests are in the history of eyewear and all things vintage. He writes for The Opticians Handbook and 20/20 Magazine, and has also been featured in Rue Morgue magazine, where he is a recurrent reviewer of horror and science fiction DVDs.
Credit Statement:
This course is approved for one (1) hour of CE credit by the American Board of Opticianry (ABO). Course SWJH551
It’s 5:00 as you put the phone down into the receiver, the final call of a long and hectic day. People move rapidly around you; there are scraps of shredded paper all around. Tie around your neck, the dregs of your sixth coffee of the afternoon coagulating in its cup, you close down your computer and check the tickets one last time. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have changed hands today under your watch; tomorrow, hundreds of thousands more. You walk out the door and prepare for your drive home. No, you’re not a stockbroker: You’re a laboratory customer service rep.
Recently, I had the opportunity to go work for a company that I’ve wanted to work with for the past three years, virtually the entirety of my career in optics. The job was a customer service representative in a finishing lab that was opening near my neighborhood. Considering I had been actively seeking employment with the company for so long, and given the proximity to me, it seemed like a no-brainer. Customer service? I’d been dealing with customer service representatives (CSR) for five years, and I had two years of experience in an insurance company call center. I signed the papers and showed up for my first day ready to answer some phones.
For as long as I’ve worked in optics, I always had a pretty concrete image of what our lab customer service center looked like. Sometimes I pictured them in cubicles, sometimes at desks in a bullpen, occasionally in little offices. Usually, the exterior of the building was the Klingon High Council from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” Still, I always pictured kindly helpful folks answering chains of phone calls, answering questions, engaging in some pleasant chit-chat and then moving on to the next call. While there was a grain of truth in this whimsical scenario, the truth was something I wished I had been a bit more prepared for. So in the interest of helping out any other opticians who are considering—or who are already in the process of making—the transition from dispensary to lab, I wanted to create a sort of entrance exam for the Laboratory Customer Service Field: a CE to see if you’re ready (or want to be ready) for an exciting new step in your optical career.
KNOW THE SCORE
It may sound like an obvious first step, but know your stuff before sitting in that chair and picking up that phone. I’ve been dispensing for five/10/15 years, you might say; of course I know my stuff. But do you really? You might know what a slab off is, but do you know when and how to do one? You might know what a backside digitally surfaced progressive is, but do you know the exact steps in that process and the science behind each manufacturer’s backside surfacing process? You might know the right progressive for the right situation— wrapped frames, wide, flat frames, PALs for younger presbyopes—but are you prepared to explain the exact optics behind each of those choices when someone calls and asks? I am, admittedly, not ABOC (as the lack of letters behind my name ought to tell you), though colleagues have told me that if I bite the bullet and just take the exam I would probably pass. If I had the opportunity, I would probably have studied up and gotten certified before taking a CSR job in order to give myself an even firmer basis of knowledge.
Even still, the questions that came to me not only from accounts, but from my own coworkers, caught me off guard. Most of the questions I receive from accounts are of the variety that I can easily answer, and which aren’t too far removed from the questions I answered as an optician—after all, many of the questions you’ll be getting are really patient questions being passed through the medium of an optician. Once in a while though, you’ll have to field that real killer—and if you want to have any reliability at all, you’re going to need to answer it correctly. That goes double for interacting with the people in your lab who are doing the actual surfacing and/or edging. You’re part of their team, and they’ll want to know that you’re on the same page as them. While a significant part of your time as an optician involved helping people find frames that not only fit, would suit their Rx and made them feel good about themselves, virtually all aesthetic concerns are gone from your job now, replaced almost solely by Rx concerns. The people you’ll be working alongside will probably have realized this already, and you’ll be expected to be on the same page. It’s all well and good if you were the top salesperson at your dispensary, or if you were particularly gifted at helping patients with unusual fashion requests or concerns, but those days are over. Crack that ABO study guide open. Get your hands on some manufacturer product information. You’re playing in the big leagues now—be ready to bat.
CHECK YOUR EGO AT THE DOOR
Part of the appeal of opticianry, at least for me, is the amount of impact it allows someone to make in another person’s life. We perceive one another by our faces, and guiding someone in making a choice that will necessarily change the appearance of their face is an awfully big responsibility with far-reaching implications. That said, the feeling of power and personal responsibility that comes from being an optician is nominally gone from the CS experience. You won’t be working with the public anymore, you’ll be working with accounts— and that requires learning a whole new set of interpersonal skills.
Perhaps you worked in a dispensary where a number of your clients are wealthy and high-maintenance; perhaps your dispensary even catered exclusively to that clientele. In either case, those experiences are good prep work for a career in customer service. As with any walk of life, you’ll be dealing with both pleasant and unpleasant people, but as a customer service representative, the stakes will be much higher. If your personality didn’t click with a particular patient, or communication broke down, you lost a sale. If the same happens as a customer service representative, you can potentially cost your lab an entire account—dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of sales, all at once. And while you and maybe everyone you know is a pleasant, jolly soul, any career in customer service will quickly remind you that this isn’t the case for everyone. The people you’ll be speaking with—especially those at high dollar accounts—are under a tremendous amount of stress from their doctors and office managers, who themselves are under a tremendous amount of stress from the patients. As a CSR, you will be the final stress-bearing link in a long chain of people, and you’ll have to take that stress with a grain of salt and a kind smile; and while you might have had the authority in your office to assert yourself when patients made unreasonable or impossible demands or became abusive, that assertiveness needs to leave the moment you sit down in your chair and pick up your phone. It cannot be stressed enough that when you deal with an account, you may only discuss one job at a time, but you’re actually discussing every job that account will ever do with your lab. If you’ve ever watched a sitcom or comedy with a powerful character who has a loyal but long-suffering sidekick or servant, you’ve actually gotten some pretty good training. You can hear a smile in someone’s voice—practice it. Opticians are just customers, the way people at any store are customers of that establishment, and like people in Penney’s or Wal-Mart, you’ll be exposed to a microcosm of people. Many will be kind; but just because they’re your fellow travelers in the world of optics doesn’t mean that you won’t find yourself being threatened or verbally abused. Learn to accept it. The greatest skill you can have as a lab CSR even greater than optical knowledge is the ability to let things roll off your back and not phase you. Be ready to turn the other cheek. Be ready to give service with a smile. Not only will you be better at your job, you’ll feel better for it.
IT SLICES, IT DICES, IT MAKES JULIENNE FRIES
One of the first things I learned as a CSR is that my image of those cubicles and the endless chain of phone calls wasn’t quite accurate. Unless you’re in a very large laboratory with very specialized staff, odds are you won’t spend your day answering phones...at least not just answering them. As a CSR, you’ll be in the unique position of having a thumb in every pie in the office. For example, I receive frames from our accounts, lenses from our manufacturing center, match those frames and lenses up, trace the frames, tray up uncuts to be inspected, prepare work tickets for traced frames that I’ve paired up with lenses, fill stock orders, receive and stock orders of stock lenses, and occasionally inspect completed jobs and wrap them up for shipping. Near the end of the day, I also bag completed jobs, sort them into their proper shipping boxes and do the end of day’s final ship out. And all the while, every time the phone rings, I’m obliged to stop whatever it is I’m doing and answer it, then immediately return to what I was doing. As a CSR, you’ll need to be able to perform all of these tasks and potentially more. From an account perspective, this actually makes a lot of sense: If you’re a part of every process in the lab, you’re able to helpfully explain to an account what exactly is happening to a patient’s job and when. Multitasking is an absolute must—as is gaining a level of proficiency at each of the tasks you’ll be performing.
THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE MEMORY
Do you take notes? Neither did I before going to work as a CSR. It’s now an invaluable part of my job. Unless you’ve got an honest-to-goodness Sheldon Cooper level eidetic memory, you’ll find yourself jotting down a lot—as well you should. For one, you’re going to be dealing with so many different mediums of information that even an exceptional memory is going to struggle. Whereas before you were probably just dealing with patient information and other tangential tidbits of information related to that (such as lens style, frame style, etc.), now you’ll be dealing not just with names but serial numbers, addresses, bin numbers, stock numbers, account names, account DBA names (“Doing Business As” names, which allows a dispensary to operate under a branded name), and the list goes on. On top of this, you’ll also find yourself in situations where documentation isn’t just helpful, it can save you some real grief. Did an account forget to send in a pair of frames you’re supposed to edge and mount? Write down who you spoke to and when—if someone attempts to say later that they never spoke to you, it’s been documented. Will you be out of the office tomorrow but a particular job needs priority attention? Write it down for your coworkers to take care of. A Chinese proverb says that the faintest ink is sharper than the best memory. The same goes for word processing programs—use them.
...AND MY NEXT BOOK IS ABOUT A MINOTAUR
On that note, you’ll quickly find communication becoming an even more key part of your job than it has in the past. Those notes to yourself, coworkers and accounts are going to begin piling up—make sure they make sense. This is a task probably most difficult for a generation raised on text speak and Internet culture, but it’s also something to be overcome for those who have worked for most of their lives in a capacity that didn’t require them to write much (if anything) down. No one’s going to expect you to write like a Dostoyevsky or a Doctorow or a Fassel, but it’s going to stick out like a sore thumb to others if all of your communications read like they were written to be Tweeted. If you’re uncomfortable with your writing skills, pick up a book or a magazine and pay close attention not just to the content of what you’re reading, but how it’s written. Pay attention to syntax, punctuation, grammar and tense. For the inexperienced writer, newspapers are actually a good place to start. Most local newspapers in the U.S. conform to a style that’s easily understood by the largest number of Americans. My wife, who teaches ESL to high school students, has found it to be an invaluable tool for helping non-native speakers learn to read and write English well. The same applies for native speakers who are simply more used to communicating verbally than in writing—I myself am much more comfortable writing than speaking. Not only will this help you in the workplace, but at the same time you’ll find yourself developing a new skill set that can be utilized in a wide array of places in your life.
REP TIES
Depending on what sort of relationship you had with your lab as an optician, you may be Facebook friends with your account rep or you might not even know what he or she looks like. As a CSR though, positive, close relationships with reps are an absolute must. They’re your best barometer for the atmospheres and cultures of your various accounts, and you need to be able to rely on them to correctly convey what different accounts need and expect. Your phone conversations may give you some indication, but it’s the reps who actually meet the opticians face to face. An optician at a particular account may feel too shy or insecure to ask you for what they really need over the phone; others might sound experienced but could actually be new to the field and in need of support and education. Your rep should be able to give you a good indication of an account’s wants and needs so that you can meet those needs appropriately. You’ll also run into those instances in which the rep is the best messenger. Do you have a job that keeps failing inspection? Was an account displeased with the quality of work that came back? In their job capacity, reps are able to make concessions and smooth over circumstances that you as a CSR cannot.
(CORPORATE) FAMILY TIES
...Which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t be forming some relationships of your own. While your reps can deal with the big problems, you should have enough of a positive working relationship with the opticians at your accounts (especially the high-volume, high dollar offices and the smaller dispensaries requiring more personal attention) that in the event of minor hiccups or trouble situations, your account trusts you enough to get it taken care of. Try and remember what the opticians sound like and give them a personalized greeting when you speak to them; if you have difficulty remembering names or identifying voices, see if the account has a Facebook page or website that will allow you to put a face to the person and help solidify that image in your mind. You probably haven’t got time to chit-chat (nor should you), but over time you can glean details about the individual (and they about you) that’ll help to forge a friendly working relationship. For regional labs, or labs close to offices, try and arrange to have them come visit you, or go visit them yourselves. A few months into my current CSR career, I initiated a program I called “Lunch With Your Lab” that brought opticians and office staff from our accounts up to the lab to give them a tour of the facilities, show them what a day in the life of a lens looks like, and to air any questions or concerns. Handled well, this sort of personalized get-together can really forge a strong working relationship between your lab and your accounts.
BACK TO THE TRENCHES
A move to the fast-paced, hard-living world of CSRs isn’t necessarily the end of a journey. For a variety of reasons, even if you find that being a CSR is the right career move for you, there’s still the chance that you might someday find yourself back as an optician. In the event you do make that move, your time as a CSR can be valuable to seeing the dispensary in a whole new light: The advanced knowledge of optics you acquired will let you make more informed decisions about lenses; you’ll have a more realistic idea of turnaround time on jobs; you’ll have had hands-on experience with lens products; and the multitude of smaller skills developed as a CSR will only help you to be better around the office during your day-to-day activities. If nothing else though, your time as a CSR should give you a brand new perspective on whatever reps you find yourself dealing with from the other side of the table. You’ve walked in their shoes now; led their lives. If you don’t take anything else away from having worked as a CSR, take a newfound respect for CSRs.
WAIT, DON’T GO!
Don’t go running for the door. Some of what I said might sound like I’m trying to scare you. Some of it may have made it sound like being a lab CSR is the perfect job for you. This CE isn’t meant to judge either way: It’s to help you ask a serious question about whether it’s the right job for you, and if so, whether you’re ready to take that step. Much of the advice I’ve given above is advice that I’m still in need of myself— being a CSR is a whole different beast from being an optician, and I’m still in the transitionary period. For example, my memory used to serve me exquisitely as an optician, while now I’m in serious need of that pen and paper, and in even more serious need of remembering to use it. As with any skilled job, one of the most important things you can do is be aware of your own mistakes and weaknesses, acknowledge them as such and work to improve them.
For many, being an optician will be the pinnacle of their personal optical experience and the most fulfilling position for them. For others, being a CSR will provide them with the challenges, rewards and responsibilities he or she finds lacking in their dispensary or OD’s office. It’s up to you individually to make the decision whether or not that step is for you. If not, it’s OK. If it is though, you’ll find that you’ve just taken the first step down the road to a challenging, exciting new career in a whole new part of the optical word.
