Booking Experience at ClearSmile Dental
ClearSmile operates 22 dental clinics and launched a new online booking system three weeks ago. Across 14,000 active patients, 68% of online booking sessions are completed, but no-shows have risen to 22% from 12%. NPS is 31, down from 48. Patients complain that reminders arrive after the appointment time or not at all; some say the booking flow asked for insurance details twice. Clinic staff are using a parallel spreadsheet to rebook patients and override slots. The vendor reports no system outage, but clinic managers say the confirmation screen often times out. The operations director wants to remove the online booking option until 'the bugs are fixed'; the marketing director wants to promote it more. You are asked to assess the service experience.
1. Why do the completion rate and NPS tell different stories, and what would you investigate?
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Different measures, different questions. 68% completion is a behavioural, operational measure of the booking flow. NPS is a relational perception measure across the whole service. A patient can complete a booking and still have a poor experience if the reminder arrives late, insurance details are re-entered and staff later override the slot. The 22% no-show rate, complaints and staff spreadsheet workarounds are stronger warning signals than completion alone. Investigate the moments of truth: finding a slot, entering details once, confirmation, reminder timing and arrival. Segment by clinic, appointment type and patient group, interview patients and staff, and observe the workaround. Do not conclude from NPS alone, and do not assume the vendor's 'no outage' means the experience is healthy.
2. Design a 90-day experience measurement and improvement approach.
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90-day approach: baseline the journey with a map and a service blueprint; add short feedback at booking, confirmation, reminder and visit; combine survey sentiment with operational data such as completion, no-show, reschedules, override rates and complaint reasons. Run patient and staff interviews to explain the numbers, and close the loop with complainants. Prioritize the reminder timing defect and duplicate insurance entry as high-impact fixes, then test a simplified confirmation screen. Use a pilot in a few clinics before scaling. Measure no-show rate, completion, NPS, complaint volume and staff override rate; avoid survey fatigue by sampling and by using existing interactions. Report experience and operational metrics together.
3. What should be done about the proposal to remove online booking versus promote it more?
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Do neither extreme. Promoting a journey with late reminders and duplicate data entry would amplify a poor experience; removing online booking would discard a channel that 68% of sessions complete and could disadvantage patients. Keep booking live with safeguards: fix reminder timing, simplify the form, add confirmation clarity and give staff a clean override process. Pause marketing promotion until the critical moments are stable. Use patient feedback and the service blueprint to decide whether the problem is design, vendor configuration or clinic process. Set a review point at 30 and 60 days with no-show, complaint and completion thresholds. If safety or trust issues persist, restrict specific appointment types rather than removing the whole channel.