Eye Care Centers of America Reviews

Pros

Company gives great tools and skills that can be taken to any company or any product.

Cons

Company focuses on kpi as reasons for advancement, however best fit person may or may not have best kpis.

Pros

decent pay and flexible hours

Cons

pay could be better than it is

Pros

The the medical benefits and base pay are are excellent for Licenses.
I personally have an exceptional TD.
The company is thriving and growing in a struggling economy.
Company changes all positive and potentialy

Cons

Not enough hours/Employees given to free up enough time to properly train/coach/manage.
Too many hours necessary to work to properly manage a store.
Despite the necessary hours - Not much flexibility regarding the schedule from upper management to take care of unexpected personal life concerns.

Advice to Senior Management

I highly respect the management for my territory and I am excited about the direction the company is taking. My only advice would be: look at the number of hours/employees we had a year ago and just give us back half of those so we could actually "run the sales floor", coach and manage. Instead I am almost always with customers and I have to stay late to complete everything required of me.

Pros

Met a lot of great associates during a long tenure with what was a great company. So many trying to do the right thing but now go un-noticed by executives.

Cons

Executives choose sub par leadership team who will toss each and every person under the bus before ever admitting fault of their own. Massive VOLUNTARY turn-over at field level due to upper management bullying not only at Regional level but above. A HR dept. that has only THEIR job security in mind when handing down decisions or backing of associates. There are very few "happy" DM's and that is usually because at the time asked, they are part of the chosen few.

Advice to Senior Management

Mr Holmberg, you should really take a long hard look at the team that is in place--the team leading an organization you have worked very hard to make successful. Your directors and store teams live in fear of their Regionals and Sr VP. You had a great thing going until executives were brought in and the direction changed to "fear" management. I"m sure that was not your intention.

Pros

For an Old boys network of vp's, the company was extremely progressive with women. I was told by the company president upon recieving my offer "don't think you can just get by around here with your pretty face". Although taken aback a bit, I honestly felt that my VP had my best interests at heart. All of the Vice presidents (there are quite a few) had all worked together at one point - coming from Curcuit City. Even my head hunter had done the same.

Cons

The salary for Eye Doctors was excessively low, and in much smaller towns was extremely difficult to bring doctors on. There were offices that ran for years without eye doctors! There was supposedly a head hunter available, but he never followed up on what he said he would do. Again, one of the Circuit City boys.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure that the people you place to assist the field are truly doing their job. Just because they were your golden boy at a former job does not make them efficient.

Pros

Commission is good to have

Cons

Over priced products may hurt conscience

Pros

The ability to interact with different individuals that come from different background situations.

Cons

The unrealistic expectations asked of the employees by Corporate.
The Open Door Policy is a joke at this company. If someone goes to their supervisor or territory director, people will know in a matter of days who went above the managers head and for what reasons, causing management to treat that particular individual unfairly

Advice to Senior Management

I wish the suits would spend time in the stores around the country, not just where their offices are located. In particular spend time at the stores in the North East Region. I think you will find that things aren't quite as okay as they seem.

Pros

If you love to learn, this is a great place to work. The schedule is very flexible and the coworkers are awesome. It is a high sales environment so the sales training is very useful because you can apply it to many situations. You will become a more persuasive person after working retail at ECCA. You also will have the opportunity to work under a liscenced Optician, and received the credit hours to become one your self. This could be a rewarding career, (outside of ECCA.)

Cons

There are too many vacation black out dates: First three months of the year, Back to school and then the end of the year.

In my territory there was tremendous pressure to hit sales goals, which were unreasonable.

Working full time hours does not mean you are "Fulltime". "Fulltime" employees enjoyed nice medical benefits , while if you work 40 hours a week but are classified as "Part-time" you get rinky dink medical benefit which iare not worth the cost, and no personal days.

Dial up Internet, Dot matrix printers and no web browsers. The company expects us to verify vision plans. We do this by the phone. Most vision plans would rather us do this by internet but we do not have that technology available to us in the store. Sometimes we waste a lot of time on the phone and it adds undue pressure. The Dot Matrix printer gets off line frequently, its garunteed to happen during a rush and adds undue pressure.

Promotions are linked to performance. The only performace metric used is something called the Take 5. It seems like a good idea until you realize that the standards are too high because the average person is not at "Standard" On top of that they often raise the standard and give you a promotion that limits your chances of reaching the standard. So you end up working like a mule chasing a dangling carrot.

Advice to Senior Management

Get laser printers,high speed internet and web browsing. This will increase efficiency and customer experience.

You need 360 feedback right away. People closest to the customers are your most valuable. You need that feedback!

The current SERVE should be called SELL. Currently all the focus is on selling and for some reason the logic is that a good sale is what matters most. What happened to Customer Experience? Maybe more training and focus should be on the total customer/patient experience. We need to focus on speed, product knowledge, meeting promise times. PRODUCT QUALITY, proper dispensing , proper troubleshooting of visual problems. SIMPLE PROMOTIONS THAT LEAVE THE CUSTOMER FEELING LIKE WE ARE HONEST.

Marketing Mesage. The marketing message does not align with our goals. If you want the average transaction to be $250 dollars why put a big $99 Next to Visionworks name? To increase traffic right? But, if you average $250, you do not need the traffic that the $99 brings in because those are not the customers that you want to target. There are other ways to increase traffic. I recommend lowering the retail price to bellow competitors and advertising the Lowest Retail Price Walk ut The Door message. Advertise the best VALUE - QUALITY AND PRICE. Advertise the "BEST EXPERIENCE/Selection and Service. Include the warranty, make it 6 months. Promotions should just be coupons "Additional $25 off or $55 off two pair"

To grow customers ECCA must Exhube professionalism, integrity and Value!

Treat your employees fairly! The average employee should get a annual raise and it should be atleast cost of living. I've almost worked two years without a raise and it is demoralizing.

Pros

Job is very fullfilling and rewarding.

Cons

There is too much travel

Advice to Senior Management

Less travel

Pros

You make GREAT money ... as long as you work at a busy or mall location
Extra hours
Great lab techs
Specialized training
Friendly Atmosphere
Fun customers

Cons

Management. Third key managers and retail supervisors still receive commissions, and often - and most - times decide that making that extra money is more important than being a manager. Lack of organization. There have been quite a few times when a person has come to pick up their eyewear and it's nowhere to be found, which sends you either on a wild goose chase, to your manager to be fed a suitable lie to repeat to the customer, or to sit across from an angry customer who has been waiting for their glasses for weeks - and will not receive them on that day either. Work/Life Balance. Scheduling really does depend on your manager, but in my experience, it's terrible. You're always asked to stay late in order to wait for another associate who hasn't arrived on time, or to cover someone's hours, or you'll get to work and find that your entire schedule is 100% different than when you first looked. And don't be alarmed if you receive 4 hours one day and 11 hours the next. While the job is marketed as a customer service position, it's really just a sales position. Customer service is secondary; your primary goal is to sell every possible upgrade whether a customer needs it or not, period. Coworkers. Since it's such a competitive base+commissions position, you come to find that the "Team" really isn't much of a team at all. Coworkers often steal your sales if you so happen to leave the vicinity of a customer for long enough for them to do so, pass off their responsibilities so that they can go sell and leave you to deal with them - and this does include third key managers and supervisors.

But please don't be confused; this is NOT the worst job ever. Time goes by really quickly, and customers are fun. However, depending on your tolerance level for miscellaneous BS, incompetence, laziness, and being overworked while coworkers are underworked, it may be unbearable for you specifically.

Advice to Senior Management

Associates should receive commissions, all management personnel should be on salary. Separate sales and customer service positions. Eliminate lies between employees and customers; take responsibility and accountability for screw-ups.