The Performance Doctor: Handling Cancellations, Rescheduling and Re-booking.

Happy Friday !

Welcome to another Clinical issue of The Performance Doctor!

I hope you had a kick-ass week and you saw your numbers climb!

Last week was one of our WORST weeks in a long time!

Almost 50% reschedules, and 10% cancellations—I felt ill to my stomach 🤢.

I still don’t feel right - but that’s part of business.

, in this issue I’m addressing exactly why this happened, what I am doing about it, and what I have done in the past to minimize the chances of this happening again.

Let’s get to it.

First of all…

It will happen.

You will get cancelled on, NCNS, and even worse ghosted once or twice.

IT SUCKS!

I have been there. Man it’s a gut-punch.

You start questioning why it happened? Did you say something? Are your prices too high? Did they find someone cheaper? Should you have handled it better?

Well, you’ll never know if you never ask.

Cancellations are going to happen.

They are.

Don’t be too haste and rush to cancel their appointment. Simply ask them if they would prefer to reschedule it.

In most cases they will. Others they won’t, and this is where you want to get your inquisitive hat on and ask why they’d like to cancel the appointment?

This is your opportunity to learn why people may chose to cancel appointments. It may conflict with their schedule, they may have been told not to go to a chiropractor (they may not say this), or you may find out another reason.

Keep track of this excuses — later on they are called objections and you’ll learn how to use these in your process.

If they choose to cancel, don’t just say “okay, thank you, bye”.

Make sure you get enough information to learn why they actually cancelled the appointment.

Now… what the f happened last week?

In business you only control 50% of what is going on every single day.

The other 50%? Your customers and nature.

While you can educate them on the importance of not missing a scheduled appointment, or calling the office with plenty of time to let you know they need to reschedule because they forgot about a meeting.

You can’t make them.

Sure, you can charge a fee for late cancellations, no call-no shows, etc. I do, and I collect them every single time — except last week 🙄

As you integrate into your community, you’ll start picking up on days, weeks, months and events around the area that will most likely impact your business. You’ll even pick up on possible natural disasters.

That’s exactly what happened to me this past week.

With all the rains scheduled for Friday - Saturday this past week, track and field events got pushed to Wednesday-Thursday and therefore practices went earlier or longer on Monday-Tuesday.

A total disturbance in my day… and my week.

You probably are asking, why didn’t you predict this?

Well I am still learning the patterns of consumption around me and how people react to climate events around here.

In St. Charles I would typically see a decrease in patient visit during the summer months. Most would take their kids on vacations. Here, most keep their kids in sports all year round that even during the summer they are competing locally.

A very different environment.

But now that we know why last week happened, here’s what I am doing to prevent anything like this from happening again.

1. Keep an eye on the weather - This gives you some sense of control as you will be the one calling your patients and suggesting they either come in earlier, or re-schedule to the following week. This keeps you in control of the conversation and your patients see you as being proactive.

2. Stay in constant communication with patients - I send monthly communication to my patients, but I have been thinking about moving to every week, just like I do here.

It’s pretty simple what I should do (and you should too).

There’s no need to make it complicated.

While neither you, or I have control on the last minute decisions our patients make or the last minute life events that occur, it’s not complicated to be proactive.

What did I used to do in St. Charles that I haven’t done here?

In the past I would text every single patient regarding weekend events, weather changes, or any office updates that required immediate attention.

I remember texting 17 different people letting them know the office had no power because someone rammed their vehicle into the light pole. That was a day.

If something like that were to happen today, I would still send text messages and even call them to make sure they got the message.

Here’s the copy that I have used in the past to rebook for various scenarios:

I should’ve used the weather copy earlier last week in advance of the weather, but… oh well. We live an learn.

Now that you’ve made it this far do me a favor and share this post in your story

If you find that there’s something missing, or you’d like me to dive into deeper areas, let me know too.

Until our next issue!

In health and strength,

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