Order Delay Notification

Every lab has backordered inventory, lens breakage, or general delays and a great deal of time is spent communicating with customers about order status. Another time-consumer is follow ups with customers on Frame to Come orders and Information Needed prompts. Some Lab Management Systems do not have adequate WIP reports, or the lab wants to get the message to their customers differently. A quick reminder sent via our Order Delay Notification (ODN) system may be all that is needed. 

The purpose of ODN is to provide a system with which lab personnel can quickly notify a customer of issues, in pre-determined circumstances, by sending an email, formatted to those circumstances, to the customer address on file in the ODN system. This can be done by any employee with access to ODN, with the idea being that the person closest to the issue can send the notice, rather than funneling all issues through customer service. 

Whenever contact is made between departments within the lab, there is a phone call or written note, perhaps a walk from the lab to the front office, etc. Water cooler talk ensues or other subjects arise and employee time is consumed. When calling customers, there is the inevitable chit-chat to open a call, getting to the subject of the call and then the often wordy sign-offs before the customer service rep, and the customer employee, can move to the next item. ODN reduces the amount of wasted time, making your employees more efficient. 

For more information on ODN, or to set up a demo, please email us at dan@danbailey.com. 

Improve Customer Communication

They may not like it when it happens, but all your customers would prefer to know of a problem as quickly as possible so they can adapt their schedules and modify patient expectations as needed, Playing "phone tag" is one of the most wasteful and frustrating aspects of communication, and reducing it can help both sides. Using ODN to send notices to a pre-determined employee of your customer will get the proper message to the proper person.

Improve Efficiency

The less people that are involved in a process, and the less time it takes, the more likely it is to get done.  The more people or steps involved, the greater the chance for miscommunication of the issue, delays from distractions, and misplaced or misdirected notes. ODN avoids the chit-chat and the bottlenecks and frees up customer service time to be more responsive to incoming calls.

Save Time

Improving efficiency saves time. Cutting people and steps (both literal and figurative) out of the process means less time spent getting the message to the customer. It takes about 30 seconds to complete a notification using the ODN system compared to five minutes or more for the typical interaction. Assuming your average conventional contact takes 7 minutes and you use the ODN system an average of twenty times per day, you can save over 10 hours per week.

For a spreadsheet based time saving calculator with the assumptions shown above, click here. 
The file can be edited to get a result tailored for your lab's estimates of use. 

Save Money

In business, time is money. In the scenario above of 100 contacts per week, your annual time savngs would be over 540 hours. that is one-fourth of an annual full-time employee equivalent of 2080 hours. Depending on the amount paid in your region, that is between $8000 and $12000 per year in savings. This level of time savings may allow you to avoid hiring another person or, at least, redirect personnel to other duties.