My eye doctor recently prescribed contact lenses for my presbyopia.  When I say “lenses”, I mean lens because… well, if you’ve not heard of monovision, that’s an article for another time.  Suffice it to say, it’s a pretty interesting way for a gentleman of a particular age to avoid reading glasses.

Anyway, when I went to fill the Rx, I learned that basically nobody has contact lenses on-hand in the way that your local pharmacy has other prescriptions in the form of pills, for example.  So really the best bet is to order them online or directly from your eye doctor, and usually have them delivered right to your home.

Sure, okay.  But when a large (you’ve definitely heard of them) membership club completely let me down, taking well over a week and a half to deliver them and failing miserably not only in setting expectations, but also in keeping me updated on the status, in a bit of a panic (I was running out of free samples my optometrist had given me, and having been to that well many times over the course of my introduction to lenses, I was determined not to beg for more), I went online searching for another provider.

And, boy, did I find it:  1-800 Contacts.

Before I cancelled my existing order, I first wanted to check to see if this new vendor could address my needs, specifically that I needed them right away, so much time having been lost with the membership club’s rigmarole.

So I called them up (yes, you know the phone number…leave off the S for Superior CX!) and someone picked up immediately.  No recording, no IVR…just directly to a person (onshore, I might add).  This was already turning out to be a great experience.

I’ll pause here to highlight, by the way, how easy it is to contact 1-800 Contacts.  One may get the impression that that’s what they mean by “Contacts” in their name, but surely it’s at least a happy irony.  Obviously, they have the titular phone number, which their website prominently displays.  But the “Contact Us” page offers chat, filling out an online email form, and even, mercifully for some of us, an invitation:  “Just want to send us a regular ol’ email? No problem.” which is a traditional mailto: link that goes to an inbox monitored by no-kidding real agents.  Imagine that these days.

That hotlink text, by the way, is something worth noting and is representative of their communication style.  1-800 Contacts has a witty, irreverent, personal, and friendly way of communicating.  You can get the vibe simply by perusing their website.  Their FAQs, for example, are called “Freakin’ Awesome Questions” and they refer to their return policy as a “Gajillion Percent Promise.”

But when you become an actual Customer of theirs, the cleverness continues.  Throughout the delivery process (which, by the way, was clearly stated and spelled out…oh, and by the way, incredibly fast), I received emails with lines like:  “Nicholas, your order has shipped!  Thank you for your order! We can’t wait for you to see your new contacts.” with a clever image of a scribbled note reading “See what we did there?” and an arrow pointing toward the word “see.”  After they’d been shipped, I received another light-hearted and whimsical message from them, “Nicholas, Say hello to happy eyes. Great news! Your contacts are on their way.”  Even when you log in to their site and they send you a log-in code, the email reads, in part, “Act fast! This code will self-destruct in 5 minutes. (Thrilling, eh? It’s like we’re in a spy movie.)”*

Now, naturally all this is fun and on-brand for 1-800 Contacts.  Sure, it makes one feel good.  But how do they perform?  Here, communication is a big part of the game, in fact, too.

I hadn’t mentioned above while discussing channels for communicating, because it’s not until you get loaded into their system that you can start using their SMS short code to contact them.  Once you’ve replied “Y” and opted in, you can reach them this way with any sort of question or concern, and even to send them a photo of your prescription (which I did).  Those communiques are similarly engaging, but also reflect an incredibly efficient process:  After texting them my Rx, I received a message that it had been verified a little over an hour later.  (The membership club, whose order by this time, I’d cancelled, still hadn’t verified my prescription nearly a week after I’d uploaded it to their system.)

But I’m getting ahead of myself!  I’m still on the phone with their Customer Care agent.  The first thing I asked her, since time was of the essence, and having been burned by the membership club, was about their inventory and expectations for delivery.  She assured me they had tons, and my order could probably be delivered the next day (I was calling in the morning), as long as I had my prescription ready and proper.  I was a bit skeptical, but she invited me to give her my info (including my prescription details), and verified their inventory and delivery expectations to my address.

Since I had her on the horn, we just went ahead and signed me up, got me an account, and placed an order.  I had some confusion about the discount on my first order, and the price I saw online didn’t match exactly the price I was quoted on the phone, but the agent was able to get me what seemed a bit closer to what I’d expected.  In the end, the cost was only a couple bucks more than what the order from the membership club was supposed to be, but I figured the quickness and ease was definitely worth the difference in price.  Within about ten minutes I was all set.

Everything was going great until I received a text message a little later that read:  “Looks like someone’s getting new contacts!”  Again, the fun communication style, but the link to track my package opened up the browser on my phone and my heart sank when I saw that it was being handled by, without a doubt, the absolute worst logistics/delivery company that has ever existed (if you know me, you’ve probably heard me rail against this one).

I replied to the email they’d also sent announcing the shipment (okay, a slight ding here as that had been an auto-generated message and the response was bounced, but I’d also included the info@ address that the above link on their website provides, so all really was fine) made a couple points:  1) you guys are great, and what an awesome experience so far!, 2) don’t actually do anything, because all’s still good, but… 3) oy, the company you’ve chosen to ship is inevitably going to disappoint both of us, which is a total shame because, well, see 1) above.  Within 20 minutes (and it was evening time), I received an actual response from an actual person who’d actually read my email.

Okay, what the hell do I know?  Of course, for all I know, it may have been AI generated (although signed by a person, it seems).  But it was clearly written after my message had been read…no boilerplate, no copy/paste rendition of their shipping policy, and not the dreaded ‘your concerns are important to us and someone from Customer Care will respond within 3-6 business days’.  This response acknowledged my concerns, thanked me for my being a new Customer (and for my positive comments otherwise), and assured me of two things:  That if I didn’t get my lenses as promised to let them know and that they’d make it work, and for any future orders, they’d ship via any other method (i.e., any other carrier I preferred) if I let them know.

How refreshing!

I replied and cheekily warned them that, with great responses and service like this, they’d better look out because I may expect the most from them!  The response I got from that message was even more personalized, inviting me to expect the best from them (they’re getting there!), and reiterating that, if I didn’t receive them as expected they’d take care of it, and also that I can request a different shipper on future orders.

In the end, my contacts actually did arrive as promised (a rare bright spot for that shipper…perhaps it’s a halo effect?  Or just good vibes rubbing off somehow?), and are backed by the aforementioned “Gajillion Percent Promise” which includes replacement for any damaged or torn lenses, of course, but even on opened boxes.  They’ll offer an up-front credit (even before they receive your returns) and no shipping fees if your prescription changes, if you want to try a different brand, if you don’t need them anymore (say, you got LASIK), even if you ordered them from someone else!  There’s even more greatness to their return policy that you can find here.

I’m still new to contact lenses, and even newer to 1-800 Contacts.  But the little time I’ve spent so far interacting with this brand has been fantastic!

 

 

*Speaking of logging in, if you’re like me, you find MFA an irritation…time and time again, I’m having to run around searching for my phone whenever I’m trying to log into a site.  While I appreciate the security measure, someone’s got to come up with a better method.  1-800 Contacts may have a good gap-fill solution here:  They don’t require a password at all.  They just send you a link every time you log in.  (And their ‘stay logged in’ feature seems to be pretty enduring.)  While it’s still a trek to find my phone, I suppose the thinking goes, if we’re going to make you do that silly process anyway, at least let’s take the other step out of it.  It’s not perfect, but definitely a move in the right direction, and something other brands should consider.