If you’re on the front line of LASIK inquiries, answering the phone can feel mysterious and frightening. For the novice employee, taking a LASIK call is terrifying. “I don’t know what LASIK is! I don’t know what it costs! I don’t know what our laser does! I don’t know what bladeless is! I don’t know why we’re better!”

And yet, answering a LASIK call should be one of the most enjoyable tasks in an elective vision office. So why do most inquiry handlers tell “your story” about experience, technology and skill and still lose the caller? Successful counselors know the surest way to schedule an interested caller is to LISTEN.

• Learn about the person calling.
• Establish a relationship.
• Find out how long they’ve been thinking about LASIK.
• Explore where they’ve already been for a consultation.
• Find out about their vision solution and why it doesn’t work now.
• Uncover what they’re afraid of.

Simply, a LASIK inquiry is about having a CONVERSATION. A LASIK inquiry is NEVER about selling anything. It is NEVER about spewing techno-babble. The goal is to establish a bond of trust, so that the caller knows you care about them and want to help them make the best possible choice for their eyes.

After fifteen years of taking calls, scheduling consults, and training others to do the same, I know one thing for sure: the LASIK inquiry is about hope. They hope you can help them. They hope you won’t scam them. They hope their choice is correct. You must recognize, acknowledge and attempt to deliver on that hope.

I’ve written a book on my PACE inquiry-handling method which we use to convert more than 75% of interested LASIK callers to consultation. That’s 75%+ of ALL callers, not just the ones you know about. You’d be surprised at the number of quick calls coming in asking, “What’s your LASIK price?” that never make it to the inquiry report. Yet your staff will say, “The phones are dead.” Every practice I’ve consulted with has had issues with accurately tracking and converting call volume. In fact, industry statistics indicate three times as many people call about LASIK as have it each year. 3x! None of us is as good on phones as we think.

PACE for LASIK Inquiries is a 70-page how-to guide available for immediate download for $39. Written for the inquiry handling team, this book is an indispensable training tool for new hires and a practical, proven refresher for your current phone and counseling teams.

Do you need PACE? If your phone staff is telling the caller how great the surgeon is, how fabulous the laser is, and why the caller would be crazy to consider anywhere else – you need PACE. Prompt-Approachable-Consistent-Effective. Those four topics, the underlying logic that accompanies each step, and specific scripting for every caller’s questions, will dramatically improve inquiry conversion. You’ve been making the phone call all about you. Increase conversions by making it all about them.

In addition, our PACE Inquiry Script is the call sheet your team can use to record each inquiry as they perfect the PACE method. This step-by-step worksheet is set up in a “You Say – They Say” format to ensure each caller is handled consistently and that every call converts to a consultation.

As the economy continues to improve, phones begin to ring. Don’t let one more LASIK call get away!

By Kay Coulson, MBA, founder of Elective Medical Marketing, a Denver, CO-based consultancy focused on helping physicians grow their elective service lines.