Taking Credit for Showing Up
When Ellie mentioned a couple of weeks ago that she was considering taking credit cards in payment, it struck a chord with me. I was pondering the same option. Unlike Ellie, though, my driving issue wasn’t the problem of billing clients I’ve already seen. I looked to plastic as a potential way to ensure that clients who book a session will actually show up.
Smokers seem to be the worst for this. I’ll get the phone call, go through my “sales talk” about the effectiveness of hypnosis for breaking the cigarette habit, and book an appointment. A distressing amount of the time, it ends there — appointment time comes, the client doesn’t show, and almost uniformly the contact number I have goes unanswered. Are they having second thoughts? Was I insufficiently reassuring in the phone call? I don’t know; what I do know is that I rearranged my life (because I practice part-time, at home) and allotted two hours to someone who didn’t keep their end of the deal.
One answer, which many hypnotists and other professionals use, is to have a policy of charging clients something — either the full fee or a fixed amount — if they fail to cancel within 24 hours and don’t show. Such a policy has no teeth, of course, unless you have a way to get payment in a way other than in person. Which led me to investigate the possibility of accepting credit card payments. After much looking around, including the firm Ellie mentioned in her post, I settled on New England Payment Systems (they offer a special rate and terms for NGH members) and signed up. In a few days I’ll have a shiny refurbished credit card terminal in my home office and will be able to offer my clients the option of MasterCard, Visa, or Discover if they like. And, if I collect the necessary information in advance, I can adopt a no-show charge policy.
Which leads to a question … in fact, to The Question. I’d like to get your feedback on what policy you have, or what policy you would use in my position. My inclination is toward something like this: New clients are required to provide a valid MasterCard/Visa/Discover at booking. If a client fails to keep an appointment without canceling 24 hours in advance, a $50 no-show fee will be charged to that credit card. The no-show fee may be applied to a rescheduled session within 30 days of the missed appointment.
So please, give me your thoughts: What policy do you have, or would you have, for charging clients who fail to keep an appointment without canceling in advance?
(And thanks, Ellie, for allowing me to co-opt the Sunday Question today.)
<MR>
December 24th, 2009 at 5:19 am
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