How to reduce no-shows and keep your calendar full

Most missed appointments are not people changing their minds. They are people forgetting, or finding they cannot make it and having no easy way to say so. Both of those are fixable, and the fix is a handful of messages sent at the right moments.

The four moments

Confirm on the spot

The confirmation should arrive within seconds of the booking, and it should carry everything somebody needs on the day: the time, the address, how long it takes, the price, and what happens if they need to move it.

Include the practical details people are too polite to ask about. Which door, whether there is parking, what to do if the shop below is closed. Those are the things that make somebody arrive calm rather than five minutes late and flustered.

Send a reminder two days before

Two days is the useful distance. It is far enough out that somebody who cannot make it still has time to tell you, and close enough that the appointment is real to them.

Make the reminder repliable. A message somebody can answer with "sorry, can we move it" is worth several that only announce the time, because the reply is what saves the slot.

Ask for a yes the day before

A short message asking them to confirm does two things. It prompts anybody who had forgotten, and it gives you a day's notice on anybody who cannot come, which is usually enough to offer the slot to somebody else.

Have somewhere to send a free slot

A gap you know about the day before is only a problem if you have nobody to tell. This is the quiet argument for collecting email addresses: a short message to your list saying there is a space on Thursday afternoon fills more gaps than anything you can post, because it arrives rather than waiting to be found.

Rebook before they leave

The best moment to book somebody's next appointment is while they are still in front of you, pleased with what you have just done. It takes ten seconds and it removes the entire problem of getting them back.

For anything on a natural cycle, say the interval out loud: six weeks for a trim, a fortnight for infills. People book much more readily against a recommendation than against an open question.

When somebody does miss one

Get in touch, pleasantly, and offer a new time. A missed appointment is often embarrassment rather than indifference, and plenty of people stay away afterwards because they assume you are annoyed. A friendly message brings a good number of them back.