No this is not a story about corporate espionage, this is a question whether you’ve thought of making sure that your customers can reach you on all the channels you’re advertising.
With the way we do business, and the way tech-savvy consumers want to interact with your business changing, have you kept up with the times? If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you have.
If your business has a website, email address, blog, forum, or any other electronic communication channel, is there someone that constantly monitors all these channels as closely as what your phones are being monitored?
Even if you’re a one-man business, with today’s mobile technology, you do not have an excuse not to monitor all channels all the time.
As a tech-savvy consumer myself, when I send a request to your email, or via your website, I expect a quick response. If I don’t get it, I’m likely to take my business elsewhere.
To give you a quick example. I’m quite an avid cyclist, and recently broke one of my bike’s wheels. My first reaction was to find a wheel builder in my area, and the quickest way to do this, Google. I found one, who actually guarantees a rebuild for a lifetime, and he had a website. So I clicked the “Contact” link, and sent him an email. I’m still waiting for the response. Needless to say, I took my business elsewhere.
So, moral of the story, if you enable your clients to contact you with means other than a telephone, or in person. Make sure that it is not a one-way hole, into which all communications disappear.
If you can afford it, have the person answering your phones also monitor each of the channels that you advertise. And have that person respond to the any incoming communication. Even if only to say that your client’s request has been routed to the person that will be able to help them, and to give an estimate as to when the client can expect that person to get back to them.
In the earlier examply, if I received a reply saying that they are too busy to service my request at that point, I would still have considered them for future business. But with the lack of response, there is no way that I will ever consider that provider for future business.
How many of your potential clients have you lost this way?