Service
Customer Service Response Time – What’s Yours?
Response time is one of the most important parts of the job for First Responders – Paramedics, Firefighters, and Police. These divisions of services for cities all over the world focus on their response time as a large part of their business planning. They have goals around it, they review it often and also analyze it looking for ways to improve. The improvement and focus is needed because for First Responders; 30 seconds can actually be the difference between life or death for their ‘clients’.
Small business owners sometimes do not realize how important response time is as well. Response time? As a Small business owner?
Your response time to inquiries for business and to service requests is vital to your success. Especially, (ESPECIALLY!!!) as a small business. You need to be certain you have a system in place to respond to customers, potential or current, if you want to grow your business. If you don’t you may simply be letting business walk out your door!
I bring this up, because over the past two weeks I have personally experienced very bad response times to two different requests. By sharing them, and one is really amazing, I hope to open your eyes to how important your own response time is.
EXAMPLE 1: Coaching Services offered via a website
After I returned from a conference in July, I made the decision to hire a business coach. I had some names in mind and set up two interviews and then a friend recommended another person; so I went to her website and did some research. It looked promising and I filled out the online coaching application form that asked for specific info from me and promised a response within 48 hours. (I was a little concerned by the mentions over and over to white list her email to make certain I got her reply).
Two days later, still no response. So back to the site I went, (after checking my spam folders) and sent an email via the online contact form. I asked how long the coaching application takes as I had sent it in 2 days earlier. Again I wondered about the excessive warnings to whitelist the email.
By the next day I had completed the other two interviews and was mulling over my choices to make a decision.
One week to the day from when I filled out the application, I received a response. And in my opinion, a sad response for what I was considering. It came from a colleague who apparently helps with the coaching, but did not really explain the relationship and why it was not the actual coach responding.
My response was very simple:
I had sent my original application and then a followup email a week ago as I had not heard back on anything sent to XXX via her website.
I already interviewed with two others and have made a decision on which coach to sign with and we have started the process.
Sorry, but your followup, or lack thereof, put XXX out of the running after 48 hours.
And that last line was true – She was absolutely out of the running when she did not respond to me by her promised time. My thoughts?
If she can’t even answer something like that in a timely way – how is her coaching process?? I also let the referrer know about this and you can bet she won’t be passing her name around anymore.
EXAMPLE 2: Local Service to fix our driveway and repair the stone wall beside it.
We wanted to make our driveway wider, which meant tearing our part of a stone wall, replacing some and also the driveway repaving and a new set of stair to the house. A BIG Job.
I had been given two names from a neighbour in a related industry. So, in early July I called them for quotes and booked appointments. “Mike” showed up exactly on time, “John” was not close to his window of time, a day late.
Both got the idea of what we wanted and said they would work up an estimate and get back to me.
Mike called to book a time and drop his off, on Monday. His estimate was done with the two additional options I asked about and was very detailed.
John never showed.
Mike got the job and we are in the process of getting permits etc to move ahead.
Response Time!
Do you see how important it was in both of these examples? 
As a follow up (and my inspiration for this post today) Yesterday, that is August 10th… Yesterday ‘John’ showed up at my door. His truck was outside the house for about 15 minutes before he knocked on the door.
He smiled and said, “I bet you thought I forgot about you?”
I honestly was dumbstruck… was he actually here to deliver his estimate??? 40 days later. That’s forty!
Indeed he was.
He handed me a piece of paper as he finished writing on it (hence the 15 minutes parked outside!!!) And there I had it in my hand. It was 3 lines, not detailed at all and missing parts of what we asked to be included.
I took the paper and said thanks. He took me by such surprise that I did not tell him what I should have, I did that by phone call today.
I let him know that I had hired and chosen someone 5 days after I saw him. Telling him that when I look to someone for business, once I am told you will send me an an estimate, I wait and don’t chase them down. You didn’t give me one.
His response was simply : “Oh…”
I took that to be a good reality check!
Response time is VERY important
This will be how your customers view you and your actions will be a determining factor in their opinion on your service. You might not be a First Responder, but your response time dictates many things to a customer.
I have a system in place on my website. The contact email goes to a special email account, and they get placed in a special folder automatically on my email system. I KNOW when I see one there that someone has contacted me via my website. My response time has a goal of 24 hours maximum, and sooner if possible. It is important to be aware of how long it takes you to respond.
Today, in fact I spoke with a business owner who was getting lost in these very emails. She was not able to respond in a timely manner to website inquiries and had realized her time management issues were costing her money and clients. She has now hired us to take care of her email and calendar management. Her forte is making beautiful cakes for weddings and special events; and making time to get to emails was difficult. So… we now are setting up a system to make it more efficient for her, and we will monitor and help her with contacts, inquiries and appointment bookings. What will she do? Simple.
Serve more clients and grow her business.
What goals do you have in place for your response time to business inquiries? Have you ever really thought about how important it is before, if not I hope this post inspires you to do so. And please, any other response time tips are most welcome in the comments section. Share your systems!
Follow Up ~ a vital task for any business
Following up is often one of the most overlooked tasks with a business. It’s easy to put follow up on hold because, as a priority item, it tends to lose out over doing ‘work’ for an upcoming client or meeting.
Sometimes this can be a grave mistake. One phone call, email, or contact of any method, can make or break your relationship with a client or joint venture partners. Keeping in touch keeps your name in the minds of others. When it’s time to do business again, if your name is in someone’s mind they are more likely to contact you. If they have forgotten all about you and your service, they may not think to call you again.
I am reminded of a mortgage broker I spoke with last summer. One of her main issues was that she had no time for contact management of her clients; no time to keep in touch. She worked on current files and clients and kept up with those, the list of names to email and call kept growing. One day she had time and spent an afternoon calling clients to say ‘Hello. How are things?’.
What she got that afternoon was an eye opener. Read the rest of this entry »
Newspaper in Halifax – looking for ideas
Last month I attended the Third Wednesday meetup in Halifax at the Foggy Goggle – people from the area interested in and using social media. It’s a group that gets together monthly to discuss and share. At this meet the group was discussing how social media is affecting print media.
There were a few first timers there, including myself,a few others and also Dan Legere from the Halifax’s Chronicle Herald newspaper. The Herald has been in the news lately itself, due to cutbacks and a few layoffs. But it was great to see someone there listening to ideas of others. And listen he must have.
Today, I see that the Herald is hosting a live chat on social media. They want to hear directly from people how they can change. How can print media translate itself into something new, innovative and cost-effective?
If you have any ideas to help them make changes that will keep print media devloping audiences, please join in. I will be and am very interested to see how it goes and what people have to say. More importantly, what will happen in the future.
What are your features and benefits?
The topic tonight at my regular “Starting a Business” workshop (I am enrolled in Program with CEED), was Marketing. It was presented by Louisa Horne, who has her own consulting business as well owning the Sylvan Learning Centre here in Halifax. I have been finalizing the business plan for my Virtual Assistant business, and had finished my marketing plan, or at least, I thought until tonight’s class. Ms. Horne had many great ideas that I had not thought of before and I will probably go back and tweak my plan a little now.
The biggest revelation I had was when we were discussing the Product section of the four P’s of Marketing (you know those famous word – Product, Price, Placement and Promotion). I was really stumped by one of the questions she had for us, “What features and benefits of your product are better than those offered by your competitors?”
I know I addressed this in some manner in my marketing plan, but not this specifically. It was one question needing an answer and it was hard.
My product, essentially, is me. How are my features and benefits better than those of other Virtual Assistants. This is much harder to answer when you are not talking about something tangible, like those widgets, we always discussed in marketing class.
MOO Cards – what the …???
Sometimes I realize the titles of my posts are bizarre… but they are what they are!
My sister has an online store, Scotiamade at Etsy and keeps busy creating cards when she is not working at her day job. Etsy (as in Betsy without the B) is a site where people handcrafting items can have a “Store” and sell their wares. You can find almost anything here… Etsy.
My point here is about the MOO cards however… Cheryl has been telling me about these great cards for a while, and I didn’t really get it until I was helping her at a local craft show last weekend and she showed me her MOO cards. MOO is the name of a company in England that prints business cards and more.
Wow! They are so great and what makes them memorable to me is the way they feel…. so smooth. The printing is very clear and they come in a neat little box. So, off I went home and immediately did what she had been telling me for a while – and looked at their website.
I am now in the process of ordering more of my own cards. There are many neat options available such as ordering 50 cards but with several designs, or 100 mini moo cards all with a different design – they don’t all have to be the same! The things you can do at MOO!
One of these days I will have to look up why they are called MOO .
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