• Of workers: "get the management layers off their backs, the bureaucratic shackles off their feet, and the functional barriers out of their way. "

• Jack Welch, CEO General Electric

• Positioning – the battle for your mind

Author: Al Ries & Jack Trout. Publisher: Warner Books.

The marketing classic on how to be seen and heard in the overcrowded marketplace.

• www.darwinawards.com This funny, but sad, but true site has many stories of people who have contributed to improving the gene pool by removing themselves from it.

Just because the opening hours of your business are Monday to Friday, 9 ‘til 5, doesn’t mean that this is the only time your customers wish to make contact or do business with you.

As I have stated many times before, like it or not we live in a quick-fix, instant gratification, "I want it now’ society where customer loyalty has almost ceased to exist. Customer logic now says that if company X can provide me with 24/7 service, then every other business that they deal with should do the same.

This new level of customer demand does of course have to be balanced with the simple economics of running a business. Sustaining happy customers requires maintaining healthy profits. Just as no customers equals no business; no profit ultimately equates to the same thing. So whilst providing around the clock customer service may be your desire, funding that level of service has to be financially viable.

The level of 24-hour service you provide obviously depends on the type of service industry you are in. Plumbers don’t have the luxury of being able to say "give your broken pipe an aspirin and call me in the morning if it’s no better". Burst pipes need to be fixed NOW no matter what time it is. Financial planners need not be on call 24 hours a day, however if customers have a question that they want answering at 11 o’clock in the evening, then you need to have some way of them either contacting you, or at minimum being able to leave a message for you to call them back.

The absolute minimum level of after hours telephone service is either an answering machine or your telephone providers message bank service. The message should include your ‘normal’ business hours, and an emergency contact number for customers to ring if they so desire. Be sure that your answering machine or message service has enough recording space for them to leave a decent message. Make sure that the emergency number is ‘manned’ by someone who is both available and can answer their question.

The next level of service is an ‘outsourced’ answering service where the telephone is answered in your company’s name. Whilst it is good to have a human being answer the call, my experience with these services is that they are unable to provide any assistance what so ever and very few of them have been given an emergency number for customers to call. As such they tend to increase frustration levels and you run the risk of your customer phoning a competitor who is ‘open’ for business.

The preferred option is to have someone from your business rostered to handle after hour’s calls. A couple of my travel agent clients have the office phone diverted to the company mobile phone that they keep close to them at all times. They are also equipped with laptop computers enabling them to remotely link into their respective reservations systems thus being able to provide a full service to their customers whatever the time of day or night.

A word of caution, make sure you have some clearly defined rules for those on after hours duty. One of my clients lost a valuable corporate account because the rostered person was somewhat inebriated when they took the call. Not impressed, the client took their business elsewhere.

As a one-person business, I divert my office phone to my mobile whenever I leave my office. This allows me to receive calls wherever I am and now with ‘roaming’ technology I can be contacted all over the world.

One option you may wish to consider is to form an alliance with others in your industry to pool your resources thus providing a 24 service to all your customers. Here’s how it works. If you are a veterinarian, contact three other vets in your area and draw up a roster whereby you only have to be on call once every four weeks. For the other three weeks, you simply divert your business phone to the other vets when you leave your surgery. This way, your customers get the 24-hour service that they want and you get the break you deserve.

A final word of advice. If you advertise a 24-hour service, make sure that you provide one. I recently changed Internet Service Providers as the formers after hour service was simply a messaging service with no further contact number. My new ISP has professional qualified staff on duty around the clock to handle my calls.

Until next week, many happy customer returns!

Graham Harvey APS

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