24.7.365
That is the minimum acceptable availability time you should offer.
Ever order anything on the internet after 10 o’clock at night? Of course, you have. Everyone has. Could you have gone out to the store at 11 o’clock at night? Or bought that toy at midnight? People buy automobiles nowadays at 1am and think nothing of it.
Ever try to call someone five minutes after they close, or call too early in the AM before they open? What happened? Probably something between disappointing and maddening.
Do you think your clients are any different?
Clients have questions all the time. Clients need service all the time. Clients want to buy something all the time.
And they will buy from the source that is most available. Take the bookstore model. It took Barnes and Noble almost two years to realize that Amazon.com was not a joke. Since then, they have spent the last ten years, and millions of dollars, trying to catch up to a competitor they thought was a mere gnat when they began.
That gnat has now grown into a swarm of locusts that descends on Barnes and Noble’s sales like a plague.
Yes, Barnes and Noble is big. Their bookstores are the best in the world. But their inability to recognize that clients would buy books at midnight cost them hundreds of millions of dollars.
24.7.365
That is the minimum acceptable availability time.
Here are a few things you can do to ensure that you are ready when your clients need you, and will ensure that you are ready when your client wants to give you money.
- Answer your phone with a live, friendly, human being 24.7.365. Yes, it costs a little more, but the phrase, “In order to serve you better, please select from the following seven options” is not only an annoyance to every customer that calls, but it is also a bald-faced lie.
- Make your web site “service friendly”. Can your clients find service answers on your website?
- Make your website “question friendly”. Everyone has “frequently asked questions” (FAQ) but it seems as though those questions are never the questions I want answers to. Just how interactive is your questioning capability?
- Make your website “sales friendly”. Can your customer place an order? Is your e-commerce user-friendly? Can your customer buy in one click?
- Make your website “information friendly”.
- Create automatic or rapid responses to all online and email inquiries. Your clients expect immediate. We all expect immediate.
- Make yourself available before and after hours. Give clients your cell phone. Give clients your email address. Give them more ways to buy and make it easy for them to spend their money with you.
On the surface, these things don’t look hard to do. So then why does not everyone do them? Global mystery.
Take the availability test:
Go to your competition’s website. Try to buy something at midnight. Try to schedule a call. Try to ask a question or contact someone by email. Now go to your own site and do the same thing.
Did you win? Or will the next person who visits both websites go do business with your competition?
Availability trumps satisfied or loyal clients. Availability trumps price.
24.7.365
That is the minimum acceptable availability time.
Also, please check out my new training program, the Build Your Practice Fast Academy and let me know what you think. This program can help you transform your practice/agency and learn from my years of experience and success, in which I created over 6 million customers.
MY MODULES are also available as INDIVIDUAL E-BOOKS. (Download the e-books here)
Virtual Assistant Talent