How to Reduce Appointment Cancellations for Your Wellness Clinic
For wellness clinics, most treatments are time-consuming making it necessary to prepare for the appointments ahead of time. It can be very frustrating to have your staff ready and everything set, only for the client to cancel last minute.
A few cancellations here there can be expected. However, numerous cancellations will have a negative impact on your clinic. As a result, you need to find ways to lower cancellation rates and save time and money. Read on for ways to lower appointment cancellations.
Lower Appointment Cancellations for Your Clinic With the Following Tips
Cancellations can mess up your cryotherapy machine occupancy schedule, make you miss out on revenue, and waste your time.¹ Here are ways you can lower cancellation rates and make your clinic schedules run smoothly.
Introduce a Customer Cancellation Policy
A cancellation policy for customers might help you avoid those bothersome last-minute cancellations. This policy limits how and when a client can cancel their appointment. For the policy to be effective, let your clients know about it and consent to it.
Some of the items to include in the policy can be a time frame for canceling, a charge for late cancellation, and a client signature. For instance, you could allow free cancellations made 24-48 hours earlier. This will allow you to reschedule your day and avoid preparing treatments for no-show clients.
Consider Charging Deposits for Appointments
Reserving payments or charging deposits to book appointments is another great way to discourage last-minute cancellations. charging for deposits compels clients to stay committed to their appointment. After all, the fee is geared toward their treatment which leaves them on the losing end if they cancel.
Reserved payments on the other hand work well when you let your clients know that late cancellations will be fully charged. This way, clients will honor their appointment or reschedule early.
Make It Easy for Clients to Reschedule
When clients find it difficult to reschedule an appointment, they may find it easier to cancel or worse, not show up at all. Therefore, making it easy to reschedule through multiple channels such as email, text, and phone can mitigate cancellations.
Better yet, go the extra mile and invest in online scheduling software that makes it easy for clients to reschedule earlier. Additionally, the software will give your clients the flexibility to book when they are more likely to make it. You will also be able to seamlessly fill up rescheduled spots with new bookings.
Send Appointment Reminders
Most clients miss or cancel appointments because they book and then forget about them. You can easily get your clients to show up by sending reminders. In fact, 75% of millennials consider text reminders helpful.²
To make sure your reminders are effective, don’t send too many, and more importantly, ask your clients how and when they prefer to receive these reminders. Besides, allowing your clients to choose how they wish to receive reminders shows your clinic cares for them and is looking forward to serving them.
Reduce Appointment Cancellations With the Above Tips
You can lower appointment cancellations by formulating a cancellation policy, asking for deposits upon booking simplifying rescheduling, and sending reminders.
Founded on facts: for peer-reviewed articles, scholarly journals, and articles cited above please see the below sources.
Impact of appointment cancellations https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7280239/
Appointment reminders https://www.offthecusp.com/texting-your-patients-statistics/
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