When you’re a soloist providing great customer service and being responsive without getting drowned by emails and telephone calls is difficult at best, and downright impossible at worst. However, one of the most important things you can do for your customers is to be contactable.
I don’t mean that you have to answer the phone every time it rings, and I don’t mean you have to respond to every email within seconds of it’s receipt, but you should make it easy and painless for your clients to contact you.
A few things to keep in mind are:
- Whenever possible, a client should be able to contact you at their convenience, they shouldn’t have to leave a message and wait until you get around to contacting them.
- A response should be made to every enquiry within 24 hours, even if the response is something along the lines of “I’ve received your email/call and will get back to you within the next ## days”
- If you have a high volume of incoming calls and emails from clients it may be worth outsourcing call answering and/or email monitoring.
- If you find that you’re getting a large number of similar enquiries you should look at why that is. You may end up creating a FAQ for your website, or maybe making changes to your Terms & Conditions or client induction packages.
- If your client interactions are feeling like a chore or a problem to be dealt with you really do need to look seriously at why that is then find a way to resolve it ASAP. It may mean getting rid of a few clients that don’t suit your style so that you can concentrate on being available for the ones that you enjoy dealing with.
CALLS
If you have a set time for returning calls, make sure you do return all your calls, and let your regular clients know that you return calls at specific times. Make it easy for them to leave a message and make sure all messages are responded to.
The same goes for checking emails, by all means set aside a certain time of day to deal with emails rather than be distracted all day, but make sure that you DO respond as you check them. If you provide links to a variety of email addresses, make sure you check those addresses regularly.
OTHER SERVICES
If you provide links to chat services or Skype or anything similar, make sure you’re regularly logged in. And don’t leave the services open on your PC when you’re out and about. Make sure if they say you’re’ available, that you are. If you go out, start them on your mobile, log out, or change your status to “busy” or “unavailable’
It’s entirely up to you to decide where your priorities lie. Whether every contact is important, whether you want to concentrate on calls from existing clients, whether you’re more interested in new clients. However you work, you need to decide how to approach it and then make sure you put in the effort to keep on top of your responses.
