Have you ever gone to buy something and the worker is just silent? If you haven’t it is awkward. You feel uncomfortable and you start thinking about how long this is taking. We don’t want this for our patients. We want to keep the silence out of the patient experience as a whole.
How do we do this? Well, the best way is to just have a conversation with the patient. I ask every single patient how they are doing, and what are their plans for the rest of the day. These 2 simple questions usually fill up most of the silence. During the patient experience you are usually talking about eyewear or scheduling anyways. But there are times where you have some downtime with the patient where you are posting something, double checking your work, fillling something out, etc.
The one simple question of “Do you have any plans the rest of the day?” should be able to make it simple to have a conversation in any potential silent moments. If they say something simple like going to lunch. Ask them where they are going. (Burger King). Oh, wow have you tried the Impossible Whopper yet? (No) Dang I was going to ask you what you thought. I’ve been wanting to try it just haven’t gone yet. (oh yeah) Yeah. What are you going to get? (I don’t know) Nice! It is always fun to look over the menu. I just did an example of a patient who gave me nothing to work with, but was able to keep the silence out of the conversation. Let’s say we were still working with this patient and we chose out a frame and now we are creating the glasses screen. Any other plans after Burger King? (no) Nice, going home and relaxing a little bit? (yeah I’m tired) For sure, and with being dilated it might not be a bad idea. (Yeah) On that note do you have any sunglasses for when you leave today? (Yeah) Oh good it is bright outside and without any sunglasses it does not feel very good for your eyes. (Yeah) Then I go into a story (true story) of how I forgot to bring sunglasses when I had my exam done. It is crazy I ask tons of people every day and yet I forgot them. Isn’t that crazy? (Yeah) For sure. And on and on and on.
Now of course you aren’t me. You will have different stories and different things to talk about, but the reason I wrote that fake conversation is to show how we can keep the silence out of the experience while also listening to the patient. Believe it or not the patient sees you as a real person instead of just a worker because of this, plus they trust you more. When you are a real person, they see you as genuine which means you care about what you do. If it’s really difficult for you to hold a conversation with the patient while you are trying to accomplish some tasks, another alternative to keep silence out of the patient experience is to simply explain some of the things you are doing as you do them. Such as, “Bear with me here, Bob, I am adding your benefit contributions to your account right now, and there are several amazing contributions here so it will just take me a second…” etc.
Most importantly, be yourself and have fun while working. It makes a huge difference to your patients and to your coworkers too. Practice keeping the silence out of your experiences by working with a fellow optician. Ask them to pretend to be a patient and practice