Reaching The Opportunities Between Optical And Hearing Care (1)

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Reaching the Opportunities Between Optical- and Hearing Care

Acting on a hearing loss is still connected to a lot of stigmas. The average waiting time for doing something about a hearing loss is 7 years. Opposite to that, people get their eyes tested every second year. You should do the same for hearing care!

Massive Opportunities And Spill-Over

There is a massive upside for optical shops to enter the hearing care business. Optical and Audiology serve somewhat the same customer demographics and have very similar functions of being semi-clinical, semi-commercial. Fixed costs can be saved, and you can take the opportunity to address the clients’ hearing issues much earlier than when they would have reacted themselves. By testing your existing optical clients with a hearing screener you can catch them early on in their process. Lastly, the revenue levels are usually much higher in hearing care than it is for optical.

Qualify Your Client Database

Having an established customer database of optical clients, you have a unique opportunity to talk to your customers about their hearing and engage them to start on their hearing journey and incorporate this into their optical journey.

The best way to get started is to assess which of your clients might be eligible for a hearing aid. We recommend qualifying all your clients in the age of above 50 years by testing their hearing with a quick-screener device. Over 65% of adults above 60 years of age has a hearing loss. In this way, your clients will realize that they have a problem, start their mental hearing journey - and potentially shorten the 7 years waiting time.

With our Auditdata Engage hearing screening solution, you get a customer database of people that you know have a hearing loss. 

New Look Vision (1)

"With Engage, we have a customer database of people that we know have a hearing loss because we screened them in the last year and we've talked to about the hearing. They are returning for a regular eye exam, and by including hearing in that cycle, we believe that we can establish the same patterns with hearing health. Compared to leads from a regular hearing clinic, we pick up the customers with a hearing loss much earlier in their mental journey and they are still in their denial phase."

Katie Ball

Product Director

Get Them To Act On Their Hearing Loss

You then need to council them to do something about their hearing loss and educate them about the hearing and consequences of not acting on a hearing loss. As they are returning regularly for an eye exam, you can establish the same patterns with hearing health. Thereby delivering both hearing and optical care to the same clients.

Decide How You Wish to Deal With These Clients?

Do you want to set up a hearing care clinic of your own or should you partner with a local hearing clinic and sell these leads to them?

Reaching The Opportunities Between Optical And Hearing Care (2)

When Deciding Which Optical Shops to Use, Consider For Hearing care:

Opening a hearing clinic your own can be a challenge, but it is likely the way you can get the highest returns. Use our retail guideline to get an outline of how you should do this end-to-end. To start on the journey, we suggest that you select a few key shops and use these for the hearing examinations. However, all your other shops should act as lead generators to these shops.

  • Geography: In urban areas there should be no longer than 35 minutes to the nearest shop. In rural areas, no more than 1 hour.

  • Size and set-up of shop: The hearing instruments take up space. Make sure that you have enough space for this new task and that clients can easily access these facilities.

  • Onboard the right audiological capabilities: Finding audiologists can be a challenge. There are few and some do not like the idea of working in an optical shop. You need to consider if you can onboard some audiologists in a freelance setting, where they e.i drive from shop to shop or they also work in other places.

  • Buy or lease hearing equipment: For hearing, there is a line of instruments required to service the clients and fit a hearing solution. You can either decide to buy these or lease equipment. Auditdata offers a fully-integrated diagnostic assessment and fitting solutions that gives unique performance insights resulting in high clinical efficiency and customer satisfaction. Unlike operating with typical diagnostic equipment and limited access to data. Read more here

  • Marketing: Screen all your clients above the age of 50 and review your client database to find relevant target groups. If you want more information about how to market in hearing care, you can read our marketing guideline about increasing your in-store traffic, converting more prospects into clients, and retaining those for life.

Free Guide

The Data-Driven Customer Journey In Hearing Care

This guide focuses on improving the customer journey end-to-end by gathering and activating data in every step of the journey. Using this data will enable you to realize your full potential and get the most out of your existing resources: staff, marketing spending, clinics, equipment, and much more.

Learn more
Retail Guide 2.0 (2)

When Deciding on Hearing Care Partners

Geography

In urban areas there should be no longer than 35 minutes to the nearest shop. In rural areas, no more than 1 hour. – you could decide to have a hybrid of your own and partner sales. A model where you take in some of the clients, and in areas where you do not have the facilities, you partner up with a local hearing care provider.

Agreement

What is the agreement and what is in it for you?

    • Are you paid per lead or per client buying?
    • How do you exchange data?
    • Do you get leads in exchange for your optical business?

You are now ready to serve the hearing market and help more clients with both their hearing and optical challenges.

 

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