When I sent my first international email to Illinois, it felt unreal receiving an answer back within minutes. Despite one’s technological background, this kind of instant communication was brand new in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
In today’s world, email seems so trivial and common that one does not think twice about it. Everyone has an email address or two – or ten – and they use SMS and IM to communicate even faster with the most remote places in the world.
From a business perspective, it’s not simply a matter of responding within a reasonable amount of time, it’s also how you respond to any type of inquiry via email.
A few weeks ago I described experimenting with an approach that utilized the “fear factor” of companies towards the birth of potential competition. It was definitely an eye-opener, with regards to how fast companies seize the opportunity offered to them.
It was also an eye-opener about how slow some respond.
The two emails that I dispatched during my sales pitch, had return-receipt enabled. This nifty feature allows you to receive a notification when the email was opened, read, or wasn’t read at all and deleted. It relies on the other party having that feature on as well, but that’s the default setting in any Microsoft environment.
Long story short: a full month later, I am still receiving notifications from companies that failed to open, or have just read these emails. Considering how I targeted the particular emails as potential bidders of the domain auction, I can’t but shake my head at the incredibly slow response times with regards to email.
Your business is only as good as your email response time; you might be losing out on some serious business opportunities if you fail to respond quickly or in a proper way.
The early bird catches the worm. I’ve received email responses in the past which were pitifully slow.
But in the case of government agencies, they don’t have to respond to your emails because they’re the government… and they have no business to lose, despite their expectation of incorporation fees and taxes among other things.
This is part of why I encourage the use of chat platforms to get questions answered. You don’t have to stay on hold on the phone, don’t have to wait a long time for an email, and don’t divulge any information to receive a response.
Great tips, 702domainer 😀