What to do when clients miss an appointment.

The previous article looked at ways to ensure your clients remember their appointments. This one is about how to decide what to do when they fail to attend. In all cases you should make it very clear that you charge for every missed appointment, when the booking is made, when they get a reminder and by notices when they come into the premises.

Formulate a policy:

There are different reasons why people miss their appointments. Without a doubt if they have simply forgotten, or if they decide to get a haircut, you must charge. What about If they have to take their dog to the vet? Their car won’t start? Or you would need to be very strict to charge someone taken to hospital as an emergency, or a close family member involved in something similar.

• Do you charge on the first offence? Do you charge if they rebook immediately?
• It might be a good idea to print copies of the policy and display them in your premises.
• When someone fails to turn up phone them.
• If they have forgotten they will be apologetic and you can rebook.
• If they are not there leave a message, state that they have missed their appointment today and would they call you.
• If they don’t call you send a letter.
• Speaking to them on the day will help them be aware that you are now sitting twiddling your thumbs. When you speak to them, do remind them that there will be a charge for the missed appointment.
• Your letter should be polite, but make it clear that you have lost income. If you don’t receive a reply, and a cheque, send it again.
• The legal position is that a client who makes an appointment has entered into a verbal legal contract with you. You do have the right to pursue payment from them.

Some of our clients at Real Time Reception are very strict about charging, some prefer to be less strict. Everyone has to find a policy that they are comfortable with.

You may possibly not always recoup the fee, after a second letter it is probably not worth pursuing, but you owe it to yourself to make some effort. Do you need a client who doesn’t value your service?

Missed appointments seem to be becoming an increasing problem for businesses. We often hear about the cost to the NHS of missed appointments, and my GP surgery runs a monthly tally of the number of missed appointments and the cost to the surgery.

For small businesses and private healthcare providers the cost  is a personal one; you just don’t get paid. It is difficult to know whether the number of missed appointments is increasing or whether there is a greater awareness. Because a missed appointment is lost income, it can’t be resold, so the only recourse is to claim that money back from the client. These articles are a discussion point on how you might keep failures to a minimum, and how to claim back the charge when a client misses an appointment.

Read more…

We had a great time at the Harrogate conference. We went with 3 aims:

1. To meet up with existing clients, we got excellent feedback on the benefits they find.
2. To extol the benefits of our appointment booking service to new potential clients and the time saving this brings.
3. To meet up with other companies, we were greatly encouraged that TM2 and PPS both had representatives at conference and were sending potential clients down to talk to us about virtual reception service.

For me there was also the benefits of checking out new podiatry products.

I think we achieved all these, but the best bit was meeting our clients, what a lot of nice people they are. Some of you gave us some feedback, which is always welcome, and some of you gave us some sound bite testimonials which are excellent and will be appearing on the website very soon, so thank you for those. Those of you who recommended colleagues or friends to come and visit us, thank you. There is lots of information about us on the new website, including the current Real Time Reception price list.

If we took your photo at the conference, we will have pinned you up on our wall of fame. It really is nice to be able to put a face to the voice. We hope to go to the Glasgow Conference next year and hopefully we will see you again there. Maybe we will organise a bit of corporate entertainment next time?

So, See you all next year
Jennie, Howard and Jean.

We are celebrating our first Christmas at Cromer, and we started the celebrations with the Christmas dinner at a local hostelry, and very good it was too. I believe that once management were out of the way the staff let their hair down a bit more and caroused until the early hours of Saturday. Fortunately they have all recovered this week.

We will be open this year until 17.00 on Friday 23rd December and we will be opening again on Wednesday 28th, Thursday 29th and Friday 30th December from 10.00 until 3.00 each day. We are not expecting a lot of calls so we are only keeping a small staff in for each session, It is an interesting exercise to try to predict how busy everyone will be and balance staffing levels against business need.

Meanwhile we would like to wish you,  our customers and their families,
Peace and Prosperity and Goodwill to All.

We really enjoy a chance to get out and about, meeting our clients in the flesh, and hopefully meeting some new clients. As we are not in your office with you we don’t often get the chance to meet up so when we do we try to make the most of it.

Jennie, Howard and Jean are going to Harrogate from 23rd to 26th November, to exhibit at the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists Conference.

Anyone coming to the conference, whether you are a client, are interested or just want to know a bit more about what we do, come and visit us at stand 32 and have a chat.

Anyone who is a client already we would really like to meet you. Be warned we have strict instructions to photo everyone to stick your pics on our wall of fame in the office.

If you are not able to attend the conference, not a podiatrist or can’t spare the time, but would like to talk to us while we are in your area do give us a call and we will contact you to arrange an appointment.

Jennie