A minute with…Paul Jackson

When did Bayfields Opticians launch its audiology offering?

We launched our audiology service in five of Bayfields Opticians’ 18 practices earlier this month. During this initial launch phase, I will be hosting a hearing clinic in each of the five practices one day a week.

The practices that we are piloting the service in are Huddersfield, Yeadon, Harrogate, Wakefield and Clitheroe. We have chosen these five practices because they are all very different in terms of location, database size and client demographic. They will therefore provide us with a good overview of how the service delivers in a mix of settings.

Is a wider rollout of the service planned?

The plan is for hearing care services to be available in all 18 Bayfields Opticians practices within the next 12 months. Our initial pilot phase will last for three months before it is reviewed in the new year to see what has worked well and how we can make it even better for our clients. We then aim to launch the service in a further five practices in the first quarter of 2019. Our plan is to use this model to continue to rollout the service to five practices at a time, while also expanding our audiology business as we go. At the moment it is just me establishing the infrastructure of the offering and delivering the service, however in the new year we will be looking to recruit additional audiologists to support our growth.

Why has Bayfields Opticians introduced audiology?

As is well known in this sector, hearing care and eye care complement each other very well and being able to offer these services under one roof is of increasing importance to us as a business and indeed, to our clients. Boots Opticians and Specsavers are two of the largest private hearing care providers in the UK and both work under an optical model. It is generally felt that going forward the majority of private hearing care services will be delivered through opticians, as it offers convenience and wider choice to clients.

Bayfields Opticians’ MD, Royston Bayfield, has been looking to introduce hearing care into the group for a while now but strategically wanted to wait until the group had got to a certain size before he introduced an audiology service. With the group now standing at 18 practices, and with plans to further expand in the future, now is absolutely the right time to introduce this service to further grow the organisation and introduce a value added service to the existing customer base.

How was the service been received so far? 

The general feedback from the clients that we have seen has been really positive.

We are trying to educate our clients to understand that the services we offer is a healthcare check – we look after the health of your eyes and now we look after the health of your ears and hearing. Our whole business model is centred around finding the right solutions for unique lifestyles.

We are promoting this new service to our eye care clients, offering them a free 15-minute hearing care health check. During that appointment, we have a look in their ears and make sure their ears are healthily and ask them a couple of medical questions. After that appointment we conclude if everything is healthy with the ears and hearing or if we spot a potential issue, we advise if further investigation is needed. This would be in the form of a full hearing health assessment which usually lasts around 1.5 hours. We also offer this free of charge.

In addition, we are offering our clients a seven-day free trial with our hearing solutions so they can walk out of practice with a hearing aid if they need one and take it home to find out if it’s right for them.

The free trial is a very important part of our customer journey. We don’t want clients to feel under pressure when they come for a hearing test. Therefore, they can take the aids away with them and try them in their day-to-day lives. This gives them the opportunity to hear the difference of sounds such as their partner or the television, which they can only really do by putting them in their ears and trialing them.”