What do you do if your client is a no-show?

One of the many virtues of living in Napa is that, relative to its size, it punches way above its weight when it comes to food and wine, with scores of outstanding dining-out options.? Roberta and I like to dine out, so I took particular note of The New York Times story, “When Canceling Your Reservation Costs as Much as Dinner.”?

My first thought after reading the headline:? “It costs how much to whom?? Me?? Or the restaurant?”

The answer is both:? the restaurant, for a booking (and revenue) they cannot recoup when a diner who made a reservation fails to appear.? The no-show diner, who in ever-increasing cases pays a hefty cancellation fee that helps the restaurant recoup some of that cost, while discouraging repeat behavior.

The story quotes a restaurateur who points out,

“Cancellation fees bring people back to reality when they make a reservation…. They remember it’s an agreement.”

So what about advertising agencies and their clients?

As a consequence of Covid’s global assault and the of-necessity reversion to remote, Zoom-based meetings, in-person connections with clients are on the wane. ?But such face-to-face meetings still do happen, and still should happen – nothing matches the relationship-building effectiveness of sitting across the table with a client, instead of sitting across from your laptop – in particular ?with local clients that require going across town rather than across the country.

If a client fails to appear for a scheduled Zoom meeting, it might screw up your day and it for sure screws up your project schedule, but at least it doesn’t screw up the agency’s bank account.

In all the years I worked at advertising agencies, I had only a very few clients who were a car drive away; most required getting on a plane for a visit.? In fact, when I worked at Digitas, I spent as many of my days (and often nights) in Manhattan, visiting American Express, as I did in our Boston office.?? The same was true at Ammirati Puris Lintas; there were weeks it felt as if I called Houston home, so often did I fly there from New York to devote time to Compaq Computer.

I recall once flying with colleagues to see a client – Minneapolis-based Investors Diversified Service, or IDS, now known as Ameriprise – for an agreed-upon appointment so we could make a prepared presentation.? We arrived, only to discover the client had an “emergency” and was unable to meet with us.

“Could we wait and do this later in the day?” I asked, trying to salvage the unsalvageable.

“I’m sorry, we can’t, she’s fully booked for the balance of the day,” was the answer.

“Could you maybe move another meeting and squeeze us in?? We’ve come a long way.

“I’m really sorry.”

No-shows thankfully are not common in the advertising and marketing business, but on occasion they do.? They remain a chronic problem in the restaurant business, not just in the U.S., but elsewhere.? According to the story,

“A?2021 report?by the reservation service OpenTable found that 28 percent of Americans surveyed admitted to not showing up for a reservation in the last year. A 2023 survey?by Barclays Bank?revealed that nearly half of 200 British restaurants reported a 40 percent rise in no-shows over the previous year, while cancellations with less than 24 hours’ notice jumped 35 percent.”

How do restaurants address this?? By imposing those cancellation fees on no-shows.

How can those of us in advertising address the problem?

Much the same way.? With IDS, we charged it full freight for the busted visit, unapologetically issuing an invoice.? If any one were to apologize, it should be the client, to those of us who wasted two days of billable time, in addition to incurring significant travel expense, all for naught.

Our client contacts weren’t happy about it, but to their credit, understood and paid the bill.

Looking back at this now, it clearly was an easily averted disaster – cancel the meeting before the agency boards a plane – but it did lead to one positive outcome: ?it was the last time the clientcancelled a meeting without notice.

I hope you never need to invoice a client for a meeting that you attend in good faith, only for it to not happen, but if you do, I suspect you will need to do it only once.

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• #no-show
• #advertising
• #marketing