An important aspect of good customer service and customer relations is being able to keep in touch with your customers and prospects. So many businesses are bad at this - which is hurting their bottom line.
Recently I tried to contact someone to purchase a product from him that costs around $1500. The only method listed to contact him on his website was email. I emailed ... and waited .... and emailed again ... and waited. A week later and no return email - a $1500 sale lost.
I have no idea what's going on with this person - maybe he got hit by a bus, maybe he's on vacation.
I assume that one of the goals of your business is to make money and not to thow money into a pile on the floor and light it on fire. You might as well do that when you do not return phone calls or email from prospects and customers. Even if you are incredibly busy there are solutions.
- Schedule 1/2 hour a day where you do nothing but answer email.
- Schedule an appropriate amount of time to return phone calls.
- Have a live person (even outsourced - as long as they speak english) answer your phone.
- Have an intern (paid or unpaid) go through your email and sort out the junk - and you respond to the important ones.
- If you are on vacation or otherwise indisposed have an out of the office reply set up that tells people when you'll be back. Set that day for the day after you'll actually be back - that way when you return you can spend the day catching up and returning the most important emails.
- Get yourself a laptop with cellular Internet access and answer your emails from your hotel when on the road.
Basically any systematic thing you can do to make sure you are getting in touch with prospects and customers will help ensure you aren't letting piles of money walk out the door.
J D Moore - Marketing Comet
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