Visionworks sees personalized and scalable patient engagement with Twilio
Time to read: 3 minutes
Challenge
Visionworks, a VSP Vision™ company, needed to handle large volumes of customer communications efficiently while maintaining high deliverability and speed, especially for time-sensitive messages like appointment reminders and order status updates.
Solution
Twilio’s reliability and scalability supports Visionworks' large customer base of over 20 million eye care customers, allowing for timely notifications and reminders that boost appointment bookings. The two-way SMS feature for confirmations and cancellations has also improved customer interactions and reduced no-show rates.
Visionworks found that customers receiving an SMS reminder in addition to email are 3 times more likely to book an exam than those receiving email alone.
How’s your vision? Whether you’re reading this with perfect eyesight, through prescription glasses, or with some other assistive tech, chances are that some things will eventually end up a little out of focus. In fact, more than 90% of adults 55 and older wear glasses.
Eye care involves infrequent yet critical interactions—annual exams, order updates, and reminders—where timing and precision can make the difference in quality of life. Enter Visionworks, a VSP Vision™ company.
Visionworks, one of the largest optical chains in the United States, operates over 750 locations across 40 states and the District of Columbia. With more than 20 million customers in its database, the eye care service provider needed a reliable, scalable way to connect with patients for essential updates—appointment reminders, order notifications, and health-related insights—over email and SMS.
Seeing the big picture: The challenge of personalized eye care communications
Although their initial communication tools provided a quick solution, it lacked the scalability required for such a large customer base. Visionworks also wanted to strike a balance between sending essential communications and avoiding message overload (and compliance issues).
According to Richard Senzel, CRM Manager at Visionworks, that’s the main reason why they switched to Twilio.
“Our previous system wasn’t able to deal with the volume of patient communications we needed to send across channels. With Twilio, we enjoyed quick and efficient scalability.”
Additionally, Visionworks needed scalable, preference-driven communication tools that engage with patients in ways that are reliable and respectful. Essentially, they wanted to communicate with customers on their preferred channels—whether it’s SMS or email—in a personalized way.
SMS and email: Maximizing engagement for higher conversion rates
However, reaching such a vast audience in the right ways comes with unique challenges. Danielle Montgomery, IT Supervisor at Visionworks, recalls that with their prior system, they had to rely on vendor resources to accomplish what they needed.
“With SendGrid Email, we are able to maintain what we need without anybody else intervening,” said Montgomery. “We can manage both sides of it.”
Visionworks uses Twilio SMS and SendGrid Email for appointment and order notifications, with SMS offering significantly higher engagement and conversion rates—especially for appointment reminders. Both channels are used in tandem when possible, with SMS as the preferred method for time-sensitive notifications due to quicker response rates.
“With Twilio, we send out communications to patients via email and SMS, ultimately taking advantage of a much higher response rate with SMS.”
For email campaigns, Visionworks uses SendGrid to build templates and create structured elements like forms and columns. SendGrid’s dynamic templates make it easy to manage transactional emails seamlessly.
With SMS, Visionworks focuses on transactional and engagement-oriented messages, like health information and seasonal updates, to maintain customer relationships. Additionally, the company leverages two-way SMS communication for pre-appointment confirmations, cancellations, and post-transaction surveys, which allow for faster, more interactive customer feedback than email.
“Having two-way communications to get more details and allow customers to let us know what we did well or what we need to work on has been super helpful,” said Montgomery. “Especially since patients are able to just type and respond really quick via text message.”
For customers who are overdue for appointments, Visionworks uses SMS outreach—which has been three times more successful than email alone. For those who cancel or miss appointments, SMS enables nearly twice the rebooking rate compared to email.
I can see clearly now, the pain is gone
Visionworks saw immediate benefits in Twilio’s support for high-volume messaging and its built-in tools to manage customer preferences. The company offers 12 distinct categories to choose from to allow people to tailor preferences by both channel and type of message.
While Visionworks strives to handle most opt-out requests broadly to minimize unnecessary contact, Twilio’s automated keyword detection streamlines this process. By identifying the message source and intent, the system effectively removes users from specific communications, enhancing the opt-out experience and helping Visionworks stay attuned to each customer's unique preferences.
“During the year, we're talking to them about health trends, seasonal things and it's okay to do that as long as you're not swarming people,” said Senzel.
“When you're providing a healthcare service once or twice a year, you don’t want patients to forget about you. You have to think of ways that you can keep the lines of communication open with them in an enjoyable way.”
Envisioning seamless patient communication in eye care
In an industry where customer interactions are often infrequent, Visionworks has created a communication strategy that keeps patients engaged and informed throughout the year. By leveraging Twilio’s advanced messaging capabilities, Visionworks has set a new standard for effective, respectful customer communication. This approach highlights how Visionworks is not only delivering seamless eye care experiences but also building long-term loyalty, making them a trusted partner in their customers' eye care journey.
