No shows and clients who run late – they stuff up your day, they stuff up you and your team’s workflow and they (negatively) impact on your other clients.As well – they make your whole workplace and team feel – tense and maybe even angry!
In summary – they’re a right, royal pain (PIA)Want to fix it…?Well – just use the strategies in this short video
Click Here to listen to the PodcastSee below to read the transcriptionWarmly
Diederik
TRANSCRIPTION:
Client No Show
Hi, it’s Diederik here.
I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries lately, inquiry phone calls and emails about client no-shows….
“What do we do about no-shows? We consistently have people not showing up, how can we prevent that?”
In some practices, there are not many no-shows, and in other practice there are a lot, and in certain practices, most definitely it’s cultural – especially in those practices which themselves typically run late. What’s good for the goose is also good for the gander type of thing!
These ideas that we’re going to share now very quickly are going to help get your no-show rate down quite considerably.
There are three strategies that I’ve got for you that work really well, and you can use these by themselves or you can use a combination.
Strategy One
The first thing is please understand that a third of people who don’t show up for an appointment are so embarrassed that they’ve stuffed you around that they’re not going to walk back into your office for quite some period of time.
Most people who don’t show do so accidentally. It’s not as if they deliberately wake up in the morning and decide they’re going to stuff you around by not showing up, but the fact is that a third of people that don’t show up for an appointment, whether it’s to the vet or the hairdresser or their doctor or their solicitor or whatever, they’re so embarrassed, they won’t want to show their face in that door for quite some period of time.
When you ring these people up, do so from a place of concern – you could say something like – “Hey, Leslie, you had an appointment here this afternoon to see Dr. Smith, did something happen? We noticed you haven’t shown up, is everything okay.”
That phone call needs to come from a caring perspective. “Hey, Leslie, are you and Max all right? Is everything all right? We had you booked in, you didn’t show, is everything okay with you?”
And that’s got to be a genuine heartfelt are-you-ok phone call. And then you offer to reschedule. “Look, Leslie Dr. Smith has an appointment tomorrow afternoon at 3:00, how about I schedule you and Max in then to see him then.”
Most importantly – assume they still want the appointment, assume the appointment. Don’t ask permission, assume the apartment. We’ve been through this again and again and again.
How long should you wait before you make that phone call?
If their appointment was at 3 o’clock this afternoon, you’d ring them at five after three, you’d ring them at quarter past three, you’d ring them four o’clock, you ring them at 6 o’clock, or before you closed, you ring them tomorrow morning….
It’s totally up to you.
I’m suggesting that it be relatively contemporaneous, that it’d be maybe half an hour or 60 minutes from that from that appointment that they had.
Then this become systematized in your practice so that if someone doesn’t show up at 3, your receptionist gets on the phone at 3:30 and rings Leslie up and re-books that appointment.
Strategy number two is the day before phone call.
Let’s assume that Leslie’s got an appointment today at 3 o’clock; yesterday my receptionist would have rung all today’s appointments up—or sent an SMS, you can do it either way—and say, “Hey, look, Leslie, you’ve got an appointment to see Dr. Smith tomorrow afternoon at 3:00. Just confirming that everything’s all right.”
Automating that out of your software and sending an SMS works really well. Some software will even allow for Leslie to hit ‘accept’ and that thing gets fed back to the practice software which then records the response; other software is not that advanced.
The (recent) studies on this are really interesting. The studies show that the phone call the day before decreases no-shows by only 18%, 18%. It’s not huge—it’s significant but it’s not huge.
The third strategy is one that was documented by Dr. Robert Cialidini, and he documented this in a book called Yes, and he also documented this in his most recent book called Presuasion, persuasion, not persuasion, persuasion.
If you like reading, or like audio books, this is an amazing book. I most strongly recommend that you get this book.
Normally in a veterinary practice, Leslie is going to be standing at reception, this is a month ago or three months ago whatever…
My nurse, Kerry, is going to make an appointment with her. And she’s going to say, “Leslie, I’ve written it on the card here for you. You’re seeing Dr. Smith at 3:30 on Wednesday the 18th,” and then Kerry gives the card to Leslie.
- * * Changing this strategy just VERY slightly prevents 80%, that’s 80% of no-shows.
“Leslie, here’s our appointment card. Here’s a pen, please write down the next appointment. You’re seeing Dr. Smith at 3 o’clock on Wednesday the 18th.”
When the client HIMSELF/HERSELF writes the date and time down, they have emotionally committed to that appointment, and therefore, they are much, much, much, much more likely to keep that appointment and show up.
This strategy decreases your no-show write by 80%–8-0-%—isn’t that awesome?
My suggestion would be that you use all three strategies.
- They write down their own appointment,
- You send them an SMS 24 hours before (or ring them the day before), and
- You ring them up half an hour after they don’t show, and you’ll find your no-show rate dropping down to almost zero.
These strategies are something you should really apply in your practice. This is really awesome stuff.