Who is Your Perfect Customer?

By Tom Chapman, Peeq Pro CEO

This weekend I attended a conference in Louisiana. During one of the breaks, a relatively young doctor came over and asked me a couple of questions about how she could grow her optometry practice. She was a recent buyer of the practice, and she was looking to others to help define her “new beginning”.

I responded by saying, “It depends. What are you trying to build? Who is your perfect customer?”

A perfect customer analysis is often hard for optometrists to do without prompting. If a patient comes to your lane, your job is to treat them. This is not suggesting you should not treat patients. But your customer is not just a patient - they are a buyer of glasses. They can buy from you or from Warby Parker. They are still customers.

The perfect customer query is really a question about business targeting and intentionality. Here are four prompts about how to think about your perfect customer:

1. Which customers (and you should be able to pull this out of your EHR) make you the most money? There are many ways to think about the word “most” - best return on time spent, most profitable, Lifetime Value of a Patient, etc. Choose one and use that as a starting point. Can you find out who these customers are today? Make a list and look at those customers. Do you like providing them services? Are there any consistent themes - older upper class women from neighborhood X (for example)?

2. What type of practice do you want in ten years? Many doctors are saying that they want a practice that serves more myopia management or dry eye patients. Some doctors don’t like working with kids. Others want a more medical focused practice. The key is not for an organization or your peers to influence your practice. The key is for you to know your own heart. What do you want?

3. Your business involves multiple elements. One element is your eye practice - the medical part. The second element is your retail business - where you sell glasses, contact lenses, and potentially Peeq Pro products. The third part is additional services that you may offer. Collectively, your business involves all three. A perfect CUSTOMER is spending money at your broader business, but they may not use all three services. You could choose to close your optical after this analysis. Do you know what you want your business split to entail? What products and services should you offer?

4. What makes you and your staff happy? Some patients drive you crazy, even though they spend a lot of money. Yes, you can endure them for the sake of the business - but these are not your perfect customers. It is okay to fire patients, and it is okay to pre-appoint some but not all of your customers. You have some control of who sits in your lane. If you don’t like someone or something, you can slowly weed out bad apples. So, for example, if a patient never buys glasses or contact lenses, choose not to re-appoint for next year. You aren’t preventing them from returning, but you are ensuring that there is more friction in their return.

Understanding who your perfect customer is makes it much easier for you to identify the attributes that you are seeking in a patient and the types of service that those perfect customers desire. 

Many offices fall victim to providing the service that they are supposed to provide rather than the one that delights them. Be awesome at building the practice you want - and it starts by being discerning about your customers. Who is your perfect customer?

Once you know, you can identify them by name and start asking them for more people like them. Once you know, you can ask those perfect customers about ways that you can provide better care for them. This insight is more valuable than a general customer survey. Your general population may say cheaper services and glasses, but your perfect customers may say higher end retail products. You listen to the perfect customer - not the loud one.

In short, it is hard to wade through the morass of things that a main street business owner must wade through - particularly if you only spend time thinking about the medical side of the business and the patient. Spend some time changing your brain to think about the holistic view of the customer.