Calculating the cost of a no-show: what it costs when the customer is not home

What is a no-show at an installation business?

A no-show is an appointment where the customer is not there: nobody answers the door, or the customer forgot. For a hairdresser that is an empty chair. For an installer it is a technician who has driven an hour, stands in front of a closed door and drives back.

Be careful which appointments you count. An appointment that does not go ahead because the technician is ill, the previous job overran or materials were missing is not a no-show but your own loss, and a reminder to the customer does not fix that. Only 'customer not home' counts. In stipt the technician picks a fixed reason when setting an appointment to Did not go ahead, including Customer not home, and the email you attach to Did not go ahead only goes out for that reason.

How do you calculate what one no-show costs?

The formula: (wasted travel time + unfilled working time) × cost per technician hour + rescheduling time × cost per office hour.

Wasted travel time is the drive there and back, made for nothing. Unfilled working time is the time that was planned for this appointment and that you no longer fill with other work. Rescheduling is the time the office spends calling, emailing and finding a new slot. The second trip for the same job does not count: you would have had to make it anyway. For more precision, add mileage costs.

By cost I mean what an hour costs you: wages, vehicle and overhead, not your selling rate.

What does that mean per month, and how do you measure your own rate?

Suppose you have 120 appointments a month and 5 percent of them are no-shows. That is 6 no-shows, 6 × €170 = €1,020 per month, or €12,240 per year. These are made-up numbers too, but they show why a 'small' 5 percent costs money.

You measure your own rate like this: each month, count the appointments that did not go ahead because the customer was not home, and divide by the appointments that should have taken place (completed plus not carried out). Cancelled and still-scheduled appointments do not count. Do it per type of appointment, because a site survey carries a different risk from a two-day installation. For that you do need to record the reason on every appointment that falls through.

How do you set up reminders automatically?

You will not keep up manual reminders with dozens of appointments a week. Let the system do it: a confirmation when the appointment is scheduled, a reminder beforehand and a message when the technician is on the way. In stipt these are rules (Studio > Rules, or through the lightning icon on a template): pick Appointment as the subject and have an email or an approved WhatsApp template sent at the moment 'When an appointment is scheduled' or 'When the technician is on the way'. The reminder beforehand is a rule with the moment 'before an appointment', in days or hours.

For WhatsApp you may reply freely to a customer only for 24 hours after their last message. A reminder almost always falls outside that window, so you send it with a pre-approved template. Such a template can also have buttons, such as a quick confirmation.

What do you do when the customer is not home anyway?

Record the reason straight away, so it ends up in your numbers. Message the customer right away: the technician was there, the customer was not, and these are the options for a new appointment. A link to pick a new slot themselves saves a round of calls. Then see whether you can still fill the gap in the day with a job from your waiting list.

Look at the pattern too. The same customer twice, always the same type of appointment or always the same day of the week? Then the problem is in your process, not in the customer.

Whether you may charge for a wasted trip depends on what you agreed up front, for example in your quote or terms. Put it in writing beforehand and have the wording checked legally if needed.