What Does a Failed Viewing Appointment Really Cost You?
Not the thirty minutes on site. What makes it expensive are the three items around it:
- The trip there and back. The larger your catchment area, the more this item weighs – with a radius of 70 kilometres it is usually the biggest. It is incurred whether or not anyone shows up.
- The preparation. Documents, coordination with the owner or tenant, picking up the keys.
- The prospect who would have needed the slot. The invisible item: the time was blocked, so nobody else got it.
A rule of thumb: A failed appointment with a 40-minute drive in each direction costs you around two hours, not thirty minutes. With ten appointments per week and a failure rate of 20%, that is two failed appointments a week – about four hours, every week.
Run the numbers with your own figures
The rule of thumb above is an assumption, not a measurement. You can do your own calculation in two minutes with the calculator on the homepage: you enter calls per day, time per appointment coordination, failure rate, viewing duration and your hourly rate, and you get hours and costs per year – broken down by appointment coordination and failures, plus the payback period.
The revealing part is usually not the failure rate but the appointment coordination beforehand: eight enquiries a day at five minutes each add up to around 170 hours a year before anyone is even standing at the door.
Measure first, then believe
Most offices estimate their failure rate – and estimate too low, because the appointment that never took place appears in no calendar. Under Settings → Statistics you can see bookings, attendance rate and cancellation rate for any period (Appointment Statistics). One month of history is included in every plan, the full history in the PROFESSIONAL plans.
Separate two things here that tend to get lumped together:
| What it means | What helps | |
|---|---|---|
| Cancellation | The prospect cancels beforehand | The slot becomes free and can be reassigned – no loss if it happens early enough |
| No-Show | Nobody turns up, without notice | The full amount above is lost |
The goal is not to prevent cancellations. The goal is to turn no-shows into early cancellations.
What lowers the rate
Automatic reminder. An email 24 hours before the appointment, with the address and 2-click cancellation, is included in every plan and brings the no-show rate down from 20–30% to under 10% (Appointment Reminders). With an additional SMS four hours beforehand (PROFESSIONAL, available as an add-on), it drops below 5%.
Bundle appointments. What a single failure costs depends on the travel. If new bookings directly follow existing appointments, you drive once instead of three times – and a failure then costs only the slot, not the trip (Reduce Travel Time Between Viewings).
Check before confirming. When capacity is tight, request mode is worthwhile: you see the request before you confirm (Three Booking Paths).
Tip
Next step
Take a look at your figures in the calculator on the homepage and then set up the automatic reminder. Try for free – 30 days, no credit card.