This week on the podcast, Andy and Stephanie dive into something that they have been hearing about from EVERYONE… an increasing number of late/no-show clients. There has been a lot of chatter in the Uncharted community about how to balance the team’s frustrations along with the impact that a late/no-show client has on the schedule with the business needs of keeping the schedule full and moving along.

Some of the things that Stephanie and Andy discuss:

Our clients are the reason for our work, not an interruption to it. We are in a customer service industry and if we don’t serve our clients, we won’t have a business model. However…

The customer isn’t always right. It is okay to have boundaries with your clients. Your team and your clients need to understand what the boundaries are and how they will be held accountable.

Hearing your “policy” for the first time when you are enforcing it (or a member of your front desk team is!) leaves a really bad taste in the mouth for a lot of clients. We need to communicate early and often with our clients to set expectations for the behaviors we want.

Likewise, letting your team make it up on the fly when they are faced with the issue is equally a problem. You won’t get the same answer twice, your clients will be confused and so will the rest of the team when they all try to address the issue in slightly different ways. This is a fantastic discussion for a team meeting! Even better, they can discuss how they handle it when there are objections and learn best practices from each other.

We can have empathy and still be clear about the abilities or needs of the practice. We need to focus with our teams on one of the fundamental rules of customer service - sharing what we CAN do for them!

Links:

Upcoming events: https://unchartedvet.com/upcoming-events/

Effective Onboarding: May 19, 23 and 26, Stephanie Goss is going to be teaching some skills, best practices and options for leveraging technology to help onboard new team members and more importantly, introduce them to the practice culture from the start (hint: the start isn’t their first day) so that they are more likely to know who you and your team are and more likely to bond and be retained.

Got a question for the mailbag? Submit it here: unchartedvet.com/mailbag

All Links: https://linktr.ee/UnchartedVet