How do large hearing care services focus most on sales rather than customers needs?

P

Presbyter

Member
Joined
Oct 14, 2006
Messages
180
Reaction score
17
I've talked to a few audiologist who were fired for refusing to do some sort of daily report on how or why they sold or didn't sell hearing aids. How does those reporting work? In what way does the "meet the criteria" get reported to meet the amount of sales goal?
Note: to meet the sales goal is to hire less experienced instrument-'whatever' (can't called specialist or apprentice)
 
Hearing aids are a product, not a medical device, so like any other product people "sell" there are places that focus on the sales, and not the customer experience, unfortunately. It may be the same way with places that sell glasses.

What type of places are you running into this issue? Perhaps Miracle Ear and other places like that? I never went to those places because I did not trust them. I chose to go to ENT office audiologists (though ENT offices can be "sales over care" places) then I found an audiologist who owned her own business and after talking with her, via emails, knew I could trust her because she actually steered me away from buying expensive accessories that she did not feel I needed at that point. I was very happy with her as I knew she cared about providing me with the best hearing, not the sale of the hearing device. Eventually I became a CI candidate. She even went to the trouble & expense to get set up to program the HA that worked with my CI. I'm bilateral now, so I have had no reason to visit her since 2018.
 
LoveBlue said:
Hearing aids are a product, not a medical device, so like any other product people "sell" there are places that focus on the sales, and not the customer experience, unfortunately. It may be the same way with places that sell glasses.

What type of places are you running into this issue? Perhaps Miracle Ear and other places like that? I never went to those places because I did not trust them. I chose to go to ENT office audiologists (though ENT offices can be "sales over care" places) then I found an audiologist who owned her own business and after talking with her, via emails, knew I could trust her because she actually steered me away from buying expensive accessories that she did not feel I needed at that point. I was very happy with her as I knew she cared about providing me with the best hearing, not the sale of the hearing device. Eventually I became a CI candidate. She even went to the trouble & expense to get set up to program the HA that worked with my CI. I'm bilateral now, so I have had no reason to visit her since 2018.
Click to expand...
The reputation of the person you are seeing is more important, in my opinion, than their degree. I have had a very similar experience to that of Love Blue but the gal happens to be a Hearing Instrument Specialist. Her reputation in town is such that an audiologist that joined the practice of the one ENT in this small town moved on to a neighboring town and did well there. The gal that I have used did a very similar thing to the person Love Blue used in that she had someone come in from Phonak to help with accessories. She has since gotten old enough that she has sold the practice and is only working one day a week the last I knew.
 
Many large profitable hearing aid providers has taken a higher risk to hire inexperienced instrument programmers. As the result my (and thousands of others) hearing aids never got programed right. If I say I used to hear the alarm beeps , they would say you're not supposed to hear those due to your hearing test. Its called gaslighting. If I heard it and know for sure, they will tell me Its impossible and program it their way, using the auto-adjust on the programmer. Thats all they know how to do. Just hit one button and its done. Really dumb they still use auto-feedback. It reduces everything 50%.
 
I think the problem stems from the Target programs which the inexperience use to program Phonak. They're trained to use auto feed back test which strips away so many valuable sounds. Most experienced audis don't use the auto feed back test. If you hear the testing beeps, you're screwed. Then they tell hey can't help you any more meaning they don't know how.
 
Back
Top