Decreasing No-Shows at Your Child Care Center

Parents not showing up for their scheduled tour of your school or an appointment at your child care center can be frustrating. You have taken the time to prepare yourself, the staff and children for a visitor to your center. When the parents don’t show up, it is an inconvenience and can be annoying or frustrating. Not to mention the loss of a potential enrollment.

There are many reasons that families don’t show up for an appointment they have scheduled. Emergencies or simply forgetting they scheduled the appointment are some causes for families not attending their appointment.

Here are some things that you can do, however, to decrease no-shows at your child care center.

1. Communicate with parents using their preferred contact method.

Ask the parent what their preferred method of communication is and use that method for future communication. Doing this can have a big impact on reducing no-shows. Text has become the preferred method of communication with most parents. Most people look at their text messages more often than any other form of communication.

IntelliKid Systems allows you to communicate with the parent directly through its innovative platform. All communication is recorded in the timeline. You are able to see when a text or email was sent and any reply without having to leave the program. This makes communication a breeze and can help reduce no-shows with up to date back and forth communication information.

2. Let parents schedule their own tours.

Parents love the convenience of self-scheduling their tour. Allowing parents the ability to schedule their own tour not only saves time for you and the parent, but, also, reduces the amount of no-shows.

IntelliKid Systems provides tour scheduling landing pages where parents can schedule their own tours. You can set the tour scheduler according to your own availability, slot frequency, and leads per spot. Depending on when you or your staff want to offer tours, you can create a custom schedule and provide options to parents based solely on when you’re able to do the tours. This makes it easy for parents to schedule their tours at times that are convenient for them. IKS has found that letting parents self-schedule their tours decreases the amount of no-shows significantly.

3. Send automatic appointment reminders.

Everyone needs reminders sometimes. By sending email or text reminders to parents, no-shows can be nearly eliminated.

IntelliKid Systems saves you time and reduces the amount of no-shows by automatically sending out email and text reminders. You decide when you want the email and text reminders to be sent to the parents. You can send as many reminders as you would like in any timeframe of your choosing. Just set the marketing automation using workflows and the system will automatically send them out according to your desired reminder schedule. Just set it and let IKS do the work for you. It’s guaranteed to reduce no-shows!

4. Follow-up after a cancellation or no-show.

It is important to follow up when there are no-shows at your child care center. By following up with no-shows, you may be able to determine when is the best time for most parents to visit the center or other important information that can help you improve your enrollment process.

IntelliKid Systems allows you to automate tour follow-up communication via email or text so parents remain engaged. Automated re-schedule reminders can help reduce additional no-shows and save you the time of a telephone call.

5. Offer virtual tours to reduce in-person no-shows.

Parents appreciate the convenience, flexibility and time saving that virtual tours offer. Virtual tours offer flexibility to parents or anyone that wants to see your center. The ability for grandparents or other family members to virtually see the school can make the difference in an enrollment and will reduce in-person no-shows.

IntelliKid Systems offers the ability to conduct virtual tours for busy parents who may not be able to tour your center in person. Parents have the ability to self-schedule virtual tours based on your criteria of available times or you can schedule a time manually for parents to virtually see the school. Meeting links are automatically sent to parents as well as reminders. Offering alternative options to in-person tours can reduce the amount of no-shows for those tours.