Quick response time is imperative
Your customers don’t want to wait when it comes to online communications. Not a second. If they mail you, they want a response yesterday. If they contact your business on Twitter they expect you’re monitoring your account and want a reply ASAP. If they call and leave a message on your voicemail what sort of response time do they expect? A day? An hour? Ten minutes? You can bet some customers go elsewhere if you don’t meet their expectations.
With the technical innovations of the last few years, better mobile phones, cheap mobile broadband, not even a small business – your business! – can expect to be out of the online communication loop for more than a few minutes.
If the time it takes your business to respond is too long, your customer will have gone elsewhere.
What Are Your Communication Strategies?
I personally make sure I have access to my email at least once every 60 mins during work hours. I don’t reply to everything when I see it. Only the important stuff. Owning an iPhone or Android helps!
To ease email reply times, I have an assortment of email templates on file that I tweak to fit a customer, enabling me to reply quickly. The customer benefits from a snappier response and it also cuts down my own time.
Still, email is stressful. Do you have a better solution?
Some clients like to work with Skype on so we can live chat about an ongoing project. That means being in close contact. It can be a bit of an interruption if I’m working on something but it certainly cuts down the response time compared to mail or mobile phones. And clients like that. It also makes it easier for me to get quick feedback.
Where’s Communication Headed?
No matter what your business is, it’s probably time to think about how quickly you need to respond to customers and potential customers. Even your staff probably want your immediate attention. Hell, no one likes waiting anymore. We’re increasingly getting conditioned to juggle mail, phones, conversations simultaneously – especially when it comes to online communication. And being visible online is getting to be imperative.
It’s pretty stressful, isn’t it?
There’s no point resisting change. The companies that embrace the new online communication channels are likely to succeed. But it’s about finding balance; finding strategies to cope yet still maintain your edge.
The Net has made the world global. Business is getting global. If you can’t respond at once, someone else probably will.
How are you dealing with this?
Image:FlickrCC
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