Who Is Minding The Store When Your Away?
July 2, 2009 by Admin
Filed under Business Basics, Direct Sales
When you are going to be away for more than 48 hours, who do you have answering your business email? Do you have an autoresponder set up?
Last week I contacted an online Direct Sales consultant for a cosmetic company as I needed to order a few things. I emailed the consultant as I had a few questions that I wanted to discuss with her before I submitted my order.
I waited for 48 hours and didn’t get a response, so I resent my email again. I waited another 48 hours and still had no reply. After I didn’t hear from her, I moved on and found another consultant who promptly answered my email within 18 hours of me sending it. After getting my answers, I went through her consultant site and made my purchase.
About 10 hours later, I finally heard back from consultant #1 who apologized that she was out of town for the past 8 days on vacation. If she would of set up an autoresponder for her email to let her customers know that she would be away from such and such date, I could of made the decision to wait on her or to move on.
I feel that if you are going to be off for more than 48 hours and won’t be answering your emails, that you need to set up an email autoresponder to let your customers and potential customers know that you will be away. If possible, provide another way for them to contact you. By not having an autoresponder, consultant #1 lost me as a customer.
~Shelly~
I couldn’t agree more. I always set up an autoresponder that I will be out of town when I go, but I will check my email several times in the week that I am gone and answer any important mail that can not wait. This way people know that I am not ignoring them, but away from my computer. I think it is just common courtesy.
Completely agreed! Autoresponders aren’t hard to set up and it’s just common business sense to do this. It should be on the top of anyone’s list who won’t or doesn’t have computer access to check emails on a daily basis.