Grab your notebook. Today, we start working through our client's journey. So, Humphrey (It's a true story, we've just change of name to protect our client's identity) and I started working through the reasons WHY the clients who were booked would cancel and reschedule.
Write a list.
The first step to understand why the clients were not attending, was to look at the most recent data we had at our finger tips. So, we printed the previous months list of booked clients.
Then, we wrote a list of who did not attend (DNA - whether cancellation, reschedule, or no show), the reasons why and what their notice period to us. We looked for patterns in the reasons.
Understand the patterns.
We found that 100% of them had "good" reasons.
It's pretty hard to argue a good reason. A few of the good reasons:
1. Had to reschedule because parent had to pick up their child from school.
2. Employer asked them to work.
3. Feeling unwell.
When working through these situations, Humphrey stated that as part of his spiel to the client, he talks about how important it is to choose yourself over others.
So I asked Humphrey if he had seen the photo of Southwest Airlines #1380 who had to make an emergency landing. Regardless of being told how to use the masks, when it came to actually doing it, the passengers didn't quite hit the mark. An airline stewardess posted the phone online and it went viral. In the photo, almost every single person put their oxygen masks on wrong. Now, anyone who has flown, knows that you're told how to do this properly. But in a moment of panic, the passengers were unable to accurately follow the procedures.
When your client is "doing life" it is very hard for them to choose themselves over therapy. Unless we walk them through what we want of them to be able to attend, it will be very difficult for the client to prioritise therapy in the way we need them to.
Grab your notebook.
What conversations can you provide to a client before "life gets in the way" to help them actually attend their appointments, without rescheduling or cancelling? What patterns do you see in your DNA list and how do your conversations impact those patterns?
For our client, Humphrey, we worked through ways to teach clients how to attend their appointments when they can't physically be in the office. We also spoke about conversations to have in the first session to pre-empt the "good excuse" conversation.
Next post, we talk about how we worked on client engagement.