When the customer does not turn up: no-shows in the workshop

No-shows cannot be driven to zero. People fall ill, forget appointments and mix up days of the week, and that will stay true with the best organisation in the world. The question is not whether it happens but what the share is and what becomes of the time that has just come free.

Both are measurable, and the measuring is where it starts: a tally sheet at the counter, one column for "did not turn up", one for "cancelled at short notice". After four weeks you have a number instead of a feeling — and usually it is lower than feared and unevenly spread.

The arithmetic is unpleasantly simple. What you lose is the time nobody fills any more — one of the already scarce productive hours of a week — multiplied by the amount an hour ought to earn your business. You work out your own figure with the labour rate calculator; a number out of a trade magazine will not help you here.

On top of that come three items that are usually missing from the first calculation:

• Parts that are already there. Ordered, paid for, put away — and depending on the supplier not returnable at all, or only at a discount.
• The preparation. Job opened, time allocated, lift kept free, possibly another customer put off.
• The crowding-out effect. The customer who asked for that same day and was turned away does not call twice.

The last item is the most expensive and the least visible. It is also why working on no-shows pays off even when the rate looks small.

If you note your no-shows for four weeks with a one-word reason, almost everything falls into three groups — and each has a different remedy.

What is striking is what the table does not contain: bad faith. It is rare, and an organisation that makes it the working assumption loses more customers than it saves hours.

One pattern turns up almost everywhere: the further away the appointment, the more often it falls through. If your lead time runs to several weeks, the reminder is not a comfort but the only connection between booking and appointment.

A reminder works if it comes early enough for the customer to still cancel and late enough that they do not forget it again. That is the reason for the usual window of 24 to 48 hours beforehand — not a marketing rule but simply the span in which a cancellation is still of use to you.

Without any technology at all

A follow-up folder with 31 pockets does the same job. When you make the appointment you put a card in the pocket for the day before last; whoever works through the day's cards in the morning and phones has done the reminding. That costs about a minute per appointment and works during a power cut.

What the message has to contain

• Date, time and — if you have several sites — the address.
• How long it is expected to take and whether waiting is possible.
• What the customer should bring: registration document, second key, locking wheel nut key, service book.
• A number for cancelling. Someone who cannot cancel does not turn up — they simply go quiet.

An appointment reminder is part of carrying out the job and is not advertising. The moment you mention an offer in the same message, though, the rules for advertising apply, and then you need the customer's consent. Keep the two apart for that reason, and check what counts as consent where you operate before you combine them.

Software replaces exactly one move here: working through the cards each day. The message goes out by itself and the replies land in one place. What you say does not change.

Two hours that come free at nine o'clock are only lost if nobody is prepared. Two lists change that, and both fit on a clipboard.

The waiting list holds customers who would have taken an earlier appointment. Getting on it costs one sentence when the appointment is made: whether you may call if something comes free. What matters is the note on how much notice the person needs — a customer who needs two hours' warning is no help to you that same morning.

The list of jobs without an appointment is the more reliable of the two. On it goes everything that can be done without a customer booking: your own courtesy car, the rework you postponed, the tyre changeover, the vehicle that is standing with you anyway — all internal work that otherwise comes off the plannable job time of a week. It fills no till, but it stops the time being lost twice over.

Both only work if the gap gets noticed. So a no-show needs a fixed move attached to it: whoever takes the cancellation strikes the appointment out and tells whoever keeps the lists. A call that stays in one person's head is not a free slot.

The question comes up in every shop eventually, and the answer is unsatisfying: what mostly helps is what takes effect before the no-show.

The deposit is the more effective instrument, but not for every job. It is appropriate when you are ordering expensive or vehicle-specific material for this one customer that you would otherwise be stuck with — a special part, a set of tyres in an unusual size, a custom paint job. For an oil change it is a statement of distrust.

The cancellation fee is legally more demanding than it sounds, and the demands differ from country to country. Two questions decide it everywhere, so ask them in this order. First: did a contract come into being at all when the appointment was agreed? For a workshop slot arranged over the phone that is by no means self-evident. Second: if you put a flat fee in your terms of business, is it tied to the loss you typically suffer, and does it let the customer show that your loss was smaller or nil? Consumer-contract law in most jurisdictions turns on that second point, and a clause that fails it is usually void — leaving you with neither the fee nor the goodwill.

Have such a clause checked by your trade association or a lawyer where you operate before it goes on your job sheet. And expect to enforce it rarely in practice: the customer it would bite is usually the one you did not want to keep anyway.