At Professional VisionCare, we work with many different vendors and labs to get our frames for our patients to view, to order glasses and contacts for our patients, to get special eye drops and solutions for our patients, and more!
What does a lab do? They make the lenses for the eyewear that we sell at Professional VisionCare. We send the frame directly to the lab, or if we didn’t have the frame in stock, we would have the frame manufacturer ship the ordered frame to the lab. At that point the lab works their magic to create the custom lenses you sold the patient, sizes them up and puts them in purchased frame, and sends the completed order back to us!
On a regular basis you will have the responsibility of contacting our labs and/or vendors to provide solutions to our patient’s needs. For example, we often call labs to check on the status of eyewear orders, to provide clarifying answers to the lab regarding eyewear orders, and to check on quality control situations (errors).
The most common labs we use for eyewear orders are:
Walman Optical (aka Toledo)
Central Optical
Classic
You will also utilize the websites of our vendors frequently, such as our frame vendors websites where you can display other color and style choices of frames to our patients if its not on our frame boards for them to physically see.
The following are a few examples of frame vendors/manufacturers that we work with:
Europa
Ideal Optics
L'Amy
Luxottica
Marcolin USA
Marchon
Safilo-Elite Accts
Maui Jim
OGI Eyewear
Real Kids Shades
Silhouette
Specs4Us
And lastly, when ordering contacts for patients you may need to get in touch with the lab and/or manufacturer with questions.
The following are the most common contact lens vendors that we work with:
Alcon
Bausch and Lomb
Cooper Vision
Vistakon
X-Cel/Walman
Synergeyes
WVA
Obviously, no one can remember ALL of the log ins, passwords, phone numbers, account numbers, etc for ALLL of the various labs and vendors we work with. So, to provide easy access, a spreadsheet was created to house all of this vital information. This spreadsheet is called the “PINK BOOK” for reasons unknown (lol), and can be found on the desktop of any server.
Take a quick second to minimize this training and locate the PINK BOOK on your server. Open the spreadsheet, and have a look! The quiz associated with this training will have you navigate this spreadsheet so that you won’t need to scramble when the time comes that you need it!
Special note: Some lab and vendors are definitely better than others in our experience. As a heads up, you will notice that some labs have long wait times to get through to a human, or you may feel like you are getting incorrect information from a specific lab member. However, we always want to make sure we respect everyone we work with and be professional with all of our partners. With that said a couple notes to remember:
It is always better to call the labs if if you have any questions about whether a special lens, material, tint, etc can be done. Also, it is so so so so so so so important to have clear and well written notes. This is so we can make sure the job gets done correctly and swiftly.
Mistakes can be made by labs and vendors, but we want to handle these things with grace. Do your best to keep your ducks in a row and keep notes of you who speak with on the phone, reference/order numbers, etc.
As you continue through your training, you will witness and have the opportunity to practice interacting with our vendors and labs. Make sure you take notes of what information you need to provide when calling the lab or manufacturer, and anything else that will help you have successful and efficient phone calls!