TECH SOLUTION TO NO SHOWS
Today there is a big issue plaguing the service industry, leaving companies throughout the country with less money and fewer resources each time it occurs. This issue is referred to by many as “no shows.” It’s when clients don’t show up to their appointments at all, or show up late to them. In the health industry alone, each no show that occurs costs the company on average of $196. However it is not just the health industry that is affected, most industries are. There are ways to exterminate the issue of no shows in a company, some of which we will talk about in this blog.
No show’s affect businesses for a number of reason. First, the lost time from a no show cannot be regained. This time should have been used by a paying client adding to overall company revenue. When people don’t show up to their appointments, it decreases customer engagement as well because they are not getting feedback from their customers. When you’re catering to customers who do not show up, valuable customers who would have used the appointment are also losing valuable time. Overall, this decreases the customer base. None of these things are good for a company, especially in the service industry. When you make an appointment with a client, you want to be ensured that they are going to show up.
What can be done about this issue? How are you going to ensure that people show up to the appointments that they make? One possibility is to hire a receptionist, or someone who can confirm their appointments. However, this option comes at a cost, as receptionists make on average thirty thousand dollars a year. This becomes another expense a company is responsible for. Each firm must decide whether the decrease in no shows outweighs the added cost incurred.
Another way to prevent no shows from occurring is having an option to prepay before appointments. This is beneficial to the amount of money that you make because it prevents you from losing money on these no shows, however many customers may be adverse to this idea of paying for an appointment without receiving the service.
Rather than paying for a receptionist, it is more economically beneficial for you and your company to develop push notifications to send out to your clients before their appointment. These push notifications can be emails, texts, or even automated phone calls that are delivered to the clients phone the day before their appointments. This type of system will reduce no shows because it will force the client to see the information about their appointment right in front of them, especially when it comes up on their cell phone, a device that people rarely put down these days. This takes away from yearly costs incurred from hiring another team member. Rather than hiring a receptionist, you can now spend that money on something that will greatly improve your company, for example, a new member of your marketing team to market your company more than it currently is.
One online program to help solve this problem is Pulse 24/7, a custom software that helps organize companies sends push notifications to the clients of the companies who use it in order to prevent these no shows from happening. These pulse notifications will get rid of all the issues that come with no shows. Although we hope that no shows don’t occur in your company, there is a great possibility that it will happen at some point. It is unfair to your and your employees when this happens, so it’s important to work as hard as possible to prevent this from happening.
This article was written by SYNERGY Consulting. SYNERGY works with early stage founders and mid sized companies to build, launch, and grow their innovations. If you’re working on launching your next big idea, contact our team today at www.virtualminsyn.dev.displayme.net. We build Apps, Websites and complex web applications.
