What do you do when you had a rough night sleeping and at 4 am in the morning, you get a call from your child’s school informing you that there is a two hour delay? Do you go back to sleep?
What do you do when you rush out of the house for an 8:30 am meeting at the diner, get to the appointment on time, and find that your appointment never shows up?
What do you do when you confirm a meeting with an appointment and the person doesn’t answer you? Do you still go to the meeting?
What do you do when there is a big snow storm and you have a morning meeting with a prospect but you can’t get in touch with the person? Do you trek out in the snow?
What do you do when you are running late and there is ice blocks on the window of your car? Do you try to chip away or leave it as is and drive?
What do you do when there is an ice storm and the roads are awful plus you can’t get in touch with your appointment? Do you go to that appointment?
What do you do when it’s the middle of the night, you wake up because you remembered something that you must email to someone so you go to turn on your computer and the battery is dead and you can’t find the plug?
Tell me what you do…
In my business my clients make appointments several weeks in advance. Part of our process is to call and email to re-confirm 2-3 days prior to the set appt. Often they are grateful that we called to “remind” them. Sometimes they take the opportunity to cancel the appt. I assume since they didn't call us to cancel that they would have been a no-show. As you wondered, it is the ones who don't respond that cause some uncertainity. Are they not responding because they didn't get the message? Did we get the phone # wrong? Is the email address wrong? Did someone in their home or office forget to give them the message? Did they have some difficulty reaching me? Did they decide to cancel but don't want to tell me? (Yup, that happens). My experience is that most that don't re-confirm, will not show up. Of course what I remember is the time a client did not re-confirm, so I made other plans. Well of course the client DID show up with the story that they didn't re-confirm because they were out of town and didn't get the messages and wanted to know what the heck made me think she wouldn't show up, after all, she made an appointment!! Murphy's Law tells us that when I DON”T show based on a client not reconfirming, then that client WILL show up!! Thank you very much Mr. Murphy! My question is how do you handle a client who was a total no show, no call, who calls later to make another appointment?!?!