It's easy to slip into lazy habits like taking longer and longer to respond to people via phone or email. We made it one of our goals to respond to people within 30 minutes if at all humanly possible. So if they call, we call them back within 30 minutes of receiving the voicemail. If they email, we respond within 30 minutes of receiving the email. Obviously, this takes a bit of effort to stay on top of messages. In our office, we're message and email fanatics because 99.9% of our initial customer contact comes in one of those two ways.

We're not always all in the office to receive messages, so we are also making sure to call or text our team members who are out & about when they receive a message in the office so they can respond as quickly as possible. Some of us even are also able to check our email on our phones when we're out. We're not 100% perfect at this, but we have made significant improvement very quickly.

In our business, we're often called or emailed by somebody who is going down a list of potential places to have a meeting. If we don't pick up the phone, or respond to their call or email quickly, we lose the business. And we lose a chance to impress them with our customer service!

Why this is one of our favorite sparks:
This spark is a great reminder of how easy it is to slip out of good habits. However, when you commit to responding quickly, it is surprising how much of an impression that makes on people...simply because NOBODY does it. We have found that if you call somebody back within 24 hours, they often say "thanks for calling me back so quickly." Imagine what they do when you call them back within 30 minutes!


How fast does your company respond? What would happen if you put a 30-minutes-or-less practice in place? Love to hear your comments!