How to improve customer ‘show rates’

When customers miss appointments, it can be annoying and inconvenient. But those “no shows” also can end up costing your company in other ways.

No shows can have a negative impact on revenue by:

• Using up employee availability – Staff must work around a missed appointment and divert resources to maintain high levels of service for other customers.
• Increasing employee costs – Businesses that require employees to travel onsite (appliance delivery, HVAC, real estate) incur additional costs such as gas, wear and tear on vehicles and hourly employee rates.
• Slowing response time – Inability to provide prompt service could mean losing one-on-one time to nurture customer relationships, as well as lost sales opportunities.
• Affecting professionalism and reputation – Last-minute cancelations can really mess up a day’s schedule, which in turn makes an organization look less professional or inefficient. The other “waiting” customers feel frustrated about wasted time. Even worse, customers unable to schedule an appointment or who have a bad customer experience because of a full schedule may turn to a competitor and never return.
• Harming staff productivity – Staff that is frustrated from having to constantly juggle resources and reschedule appointments may become less engaged and not as productive in the long run.

Consider a healthcare organization. A recent study found that even a small number of no shows can significantly affect patient retention rates.¹ Someone who has missed an appointment is less likely to reschedule another one later.

Here’s another way to calculate the potential revenue loss from a missed appointment. Consider that one “no show” per day costs your business $200. If you are not able to backfill that missed appointment, that $200 is lost forever. If you are unable to reschedule that no-show appointment to a new time, that’s another $200 in potential future revenue.

A Fix for the No-show Problem

Addressing the no-show problem head-on helps reduce the chance of occurrences before they happen. Dynamic notifications provide a solution that combines phone, email and SMS to maximize an organization’s potential revenue and ensure a customer or patient experience that generates future referrals.

NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE Dynamic Notifications solution has several advantages:

• Incorporates a cadence that includes interval, messaging frequency and message content and leverages phone, email and SMS
• Provides customers or patients with an option to easily “confirm” or “cancel” an appointment
• If “cancel” is the response, redirects the customer to an agent to reschedule right then and prevent future revenue loss
• Enables backfilling canceled appointments to maintain or increase revenue
• Reduces downtime and costs associated with idle staff

The reminder capabilities enable an organization to send outbound voice, SMS or email notifications set to customers’ preferred method of communication, adding to their convenience and satisfaction.

Also, businesses that use UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE Dynamic Notifications are able to offload routine or trivial tasks from their staff. This enables them to reduce cost per outbound call (no staff involved), increase staff productivity, enhance scheduling efficiency and maximize revenue opportunities.

Flexible Industry-related Options

Deploying dynamic notifications not only benefits health organizations and service call companies, but can also be effectively used in a variety of other industries.

• Retailers alert customers of deliveries, surveys, promotions and collections.
• A real estate agent can let potential buyers know about open houses and visits.
• Hospitality businesses remind guests about travel dates, reservations, orders or delays.
• Banks provide account balances and payment reminders.
• Utilities communicate with customers about installations in their neighborhood, outages, emergency and weather alerts.
• Small and medium businesses send promotional offers, upsell new products or launch marketing campaigns.
• Transportation services provide pick-up reminders and offer scheduling options.

The ENGAGE Dynamic Notifications setup is simple, data-driven and contains customizable options:

• Phrase Manager, with a buildable library of message templates
• Highly scalable to fit the size of any organization
• Tightly integrates with ENGAGE Contact Center features
• Reports campaign status through a Live Dashboard
• Provides reports on completed calls
• Incorporates Text-to-Speech voice notifications in multiple voice options and dialects

UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE is a cloud-based contact center solution that is fully equipped with Dynamic Notifications to help improve no-show rates and potentially increase revenue. Regardless of company size or industry, it is flexible enough to help you reduce those pesky no shows.

Discover more and schedule a demo.

Source:

1. “No-show effect: Even one missed appointment risks retention,” Athena Health

Contact Us Today

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. Fill out the form, and we will get back with you.