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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.