No show customer

I just spent $20 in gas to go out to a customer's home not to mention my time. tried to call the customer yesterday with no answer and again today no answer. would you guys have gone out if you called to verify the appointment and no one answered? If he calls back to reschedule with you guys charge him a fee for a
missed appointment?

All apt must be confirmed before we go. That's is went over with the client during booking. If I'm near by I may drive, but I won't drive out if the way.

95% of all my jobs are withing a 10 mile radius of my house. I do not call to verify because most of mine are all done with in a few days of the booking. I I had a customer that was a no show, and they called to schedule again I would probably add a service call fee to the job and inform them because of the no show on the last appointment.

Appointments are confirmed the day before. If they do not answer, I will not show up. It's a good habit to get into, even though it takes some of your time. It saves you and impresses your clients.

As with Ryan, this is all put out clearly for them before hand.

We confirm all our jobs in advance, if no answer they are instructed to call and leave message, if we do not hear from them, we do not go --

Thank you all for the valuable advice.  I will be instituting a new policy for verification calls especially when they are out of our immediate area.  This usually only happens two or three times a year but it is frustrating.  This forum is truly a wonderful place for advice and feedback.  I really do appreciate it.

Thanks for bringing that question up Dan. Nothing wrong with taking policy and procedure developments to a round table. Glad we could help.

It is infuriating when some one had a complete disrespect for your time. It makes you want to ring their neck.

This is for educational use only do not do!

Do not go to petsmart and buy a bag of a thousand crickets

Do not go back to house and put those crickets through the front door mail slot.

Funny thing is the house did have a front door mail slot. :-)

well, you know now what not to do  

Funny that you brought up this topic, I had one this weekend. It was a "special request" that brought me over an hour out of my area. I did confirm the job with a realtor who told me what the combination would be on the garage door and to let myself in if she wasn't there.

Wrong combination to the garage door. Actually, wrong house too!! She sent me to a home that she already sold and those new owners were not too happy to see me.

Not really a no-show though. To prevent no-shows, confirm in advance that if you are not notifed of a cancellation with 12 hours of the scheduled job, a fee will be charged for the inconvenience. Then offer to waive it if they re-book the job.

I know a business on line that sell roaches by the pound

I agree with the- confirm day or night before, if they do not answer leave a message to have them confirm that they know you are coming. If they do not call do not go. Make sure that you get multiple phone #s, most people will not check their cell phone or even their home answering machine until to late, then they blame you. BY leaving the message on multiple devices you have covered you ass.

Its like when I worked for ILS got time blocked out to service/repair someone's truckmount that they got to have right now. You pass up work that's standing in the shop then he no shows doesn't call or shows up three hours later wanting you to stop and work on his equip. right now. Talk about no respect for the customer or the tech working on billable labor. Now if you no show me I'll find somewhere to be when they show up late I wait at least thirety min.then I'm on a parts run or on the road I tell them call me if you can't make it I know how it is when you get call to do work or running late on a job. Treat me like your customer how meany times can you no show a customer and still have them as a customer.

Confirming appointments are helpful and I used to call when I'm going to the appointment, however I had a couple cases where the customers were in the middle of moving and didn't hear or realize their phone was ringing and ended up not confirming, resulting me not showing up and they ended up very upset because that was their last day, after a couple of those I realized I needed to make some changes, when they make the appointment I tell them that we have a very strict 48 hours cancellation policy ( most of my customers schedule within a few days ), and I haven't had any no show since then ( been about a year now ), knock on wood
I had one early last year scheduled 3 times and no show 3 times ( local, within a couple miles from me ), when she called the 4th time, I told her I can't put her in the schedule any more, if she happens to be at home and ready to have it done then and only then call me and if I have availability I'll head down there, she never call back.

I have had that happen too DP. Only once, I really hate it, but it's too much of a risk for us. When they called, I reminded them of our policy, and apologized.

We also get a small percentage of these customers and we do have a stated '24 hour Cancellation Policy' that we do charge a $25 fee for. This is if a customer pulls a 'No Show' or if when we get there, either they cancel or we decline the job because their situation is totally different from what they stated on the phone (usually a nightmare and both yourself and customer will not be happy with the results due to how damaged the carpets are).

We use to make conformation calls years ago, but stop doing so because we found that some customers used that call as an excuse to cancel their appointment which still screwed us up on our scheduling, so now we just go.

It is very disrespectful of a customer to just outright no show. They do not realize that 1) fuel costs there and back, 2) waste of an appt time slot that we could have booked another job & 3) I still pay have to pay my technicians a set amount when they do not show...(but the $25 Fee usually will cover those costs)....The ironic thing is that if THEY are the ones waiting for US to show and we don't show(which never happens)...they would be one very pissed off customer that we wasted their time....I hate those one-way streets!

http://www.backwaterreptiles.com/feeders/dubia-roaches-for-sale.html

Note to self. Don't upset Terry in any way 

ODIN wrote:http://www.backwaterreptiles.com/feeders/dubia-roaches-for-sale.html

Yuck, d.a.m.n I didn't know they sell them online, how the heck did they ship them ? Don't they need to breath ? Oh well, it's not like I'll ever order them and regarding their warranty that they'll arrive alive, I don't think they'll have to worry about that, roaches is so strong, I've whacked them in the past at my friend's mom's house and they're still running, you have to step on them and squash them if you want to kill them, and when you did that you make a nasty mess, yuck, they're the most disgusting insects imo.

My aunt had one crawl in her ear while she slept. She was in a lot of pain went to the Dr and he pulled it out with tweezers

Mo wrote:My aunt had one crawl in her ear while she slept. She was in a lot of pain went to the Dr and he pulled it out with tweezers

Holy c.r.a.p Mo, that's scary   

http://www.ghann.com/