Monday, December 02, 2013

Problem With No-Shows? Try An ACP approach.

No shows can cost a practices thousands of dollars in lost revenue.  People no show for a variety of reasons but the most common is that they simply forget.  When ever your no show rate exceeds 10% for any given day, your confirmation process did not work.  Happens to me as well.

In November I started a new approach to no shows.  I call it the the ACP--Aggressive Confirmation Protocol.  My no-show rates has since plummeted to essentially zero.

Here's how it works:

  • Monday and Tuesday confirmation begin to happen on Wednesday of the previous week and continue through Friday evening. 
  • Tuesday continues through Monday.
  • Wednesday starts Monday and continues through Tuesday.
  • Thursday starts Monday and continues through Wednesday.
  • Friday starts Tuesday and continues through Friday. 
Confirmations attempts come by phone and elecronic communication.
We don't stop until we get a live person.  

A bit aggressive?  Yes.
Potentially annoying to clients?  Maybe.
Effective at reducing no shows?  Absolutely.  
Expensive?  Nope. 

Try it out and let me know how it goes.

The IU.