Always Have Someone Monitor Your Contact Methods
- August 26, 2021
- Bradley Taylor
Traditionally, people would contact a business and if they were closed they would just leave a voicemail. They would patiently wait 24-48 hours for a response. Those days are gone. With the advent of smartphones, people are accustomed to fast responses. That is why if you do not respond to a lead in some way within 30 minutes, you have probably lost that potential customer.
In fact according to ringDNA.com , a response of within 5 minutes dramatically increases your chances of closing the deal with that new customer. Whereas a wait of 30 minutes or longer greatly decreases your chances, to the tune of 100X to be exact.
Your response message should be a human being. People don’t treat automated responses or bots the same way. If a real human contacts them back they feel committed to following through with this exchange.
If it is late at night and you are not at work, a simple “I will get with you first thing in the morning when I get into the office” will work perfectly. The customer feels like they started the ball rolling and they can take a break themselves.
Social media and email via contact forms are the best way to stay on top of your new contacts. You probably check both throughout the entire day and well into the night anyway, so what better way to stay on top of important client leads?
Yes, it is important to set boundaries between your home and work life so that you don’t feel like you are always working. But, it is also important not to let a great lead slip by. Like I said, a quick acknowledgement and conformation that you will get to them first thing in the morning suffices 9 out of 10 times.
If you are not personally able to monitor these inbound messages, you can hire a web company to do it fairly inexpensively. Here at Olympus Web, we often respond to messages for clients when we notice a lag time starting to build or when it is late in the evening. We simply tell the contact that their message has been noticed and someone will get with them in the morning or later in the day, whichever the case may be. We then contact the client and let them know the situation.
