Episode 055 - Your Response Time Impact

that they want that good user experience, they're going to be monitoring and penalizing people for, you know, delayed response times or even non-response times. That if you turn this on and you don't have a system in place to have somebody monitor this and reply, they're going to just automatically turn it off or disable it because it's not a good user experience. So today we're going to be talking about the importance of response time. And by that I mean how fast you respond to somebody filling out a form on your website, somebody messaging on social media, somebody leaving a voicemail for you. This is absolutely critical in a prospect making decision of who they do business with. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and Shaun, I'm going to start off with a couple stats that I found because I think they're really shocking. Also eye-opening to a lot of business owners. So these all come from a survey done by Forrester. So, um, 73% of their respondents claimed that valuing their time is their most important customer service value. And then on top of that, 53% of the respondents give up on a purchase if they can't find quick answers to their questions. And 70% of consumers when browsing for different options will buy from the first company that answers their questions quickly and accurately, oftentimes replacing price. So beating price, price is their second place priority in terms of decision factors.

Absolutely. And I can attest to this in my own personal shopping experience. And I think this is really leading into where people are in their, their buying cycle now and just even the amount of information that is in front to somebody to do their initial research points. So you know, you're, you're shopping around for a different product and you find all the information, but maybe there's something that's missing or you want to really find out, you know, something unique about that business and you message them whether they have a message on their Facebook or whatever. You're not probably going to just message one, you're going to message a couple. And then the first one that comes back to you with that answer, usually where that conversation begins. So you're seeing a lot more people putting live chats on their website. By making sure that they are monitoring their social media messaging a lot more attentively, and we're going to talk about ways to do that. Because in reality, it comes down to that. I mean, the first person to respond usually gets the sale, right?

Yeah, and I remember last Christmas, I was shopping for shoes for a Christmas gift, and I was a bit of an early shopper. I think it might have been end of October, early November. One of the questions I had was the return policy for Christmas and I ended up emailing a company because they didn't have an option for live chat or, you know, quick messaging and by the time they answered, you know, a day, 2 days later, I had already bought from a different company who did answer and responded right away to their special— about their special Christmas return policies. So it really does have a huge impact on your buying decisions.

And actually, Google's completely aware of this, and it comes down to that convenience. And if you haven't heard this yet, and you probably haven't, because I only heard of it a couple weeks ago, is that Google is going to be introducing a messaging, a live messaging option to their Google Places listings. So I don't have an exact date of when it's going to roll out, but there is information if you look for Google Business Messaging. If you've got your Google Places listing now, people can go there, they can call you, look at your website. But they'll give you an option in the future where people can go message, uh, and it will come through. You obviously have to turn it on, um, and they can live chat with you. Now why they want to do that is they want to make people stick around their platform more, right? That's where Google makes their money is through other ads and staying on that platform. So people can message and stay on the Google search and get those answers versus going to your website and doing it. Um, it's a win for them. Now being aware that that they want that good user experience, they're going to be monitoring and penalizing people for, you know, delayed response times or even non-response times. That if you turn this on and you don't have a system in place to have somebody monitor this and reply, they're going to just automatically turn it off or disable it because it's not a good user experience.

Yeah, and I think that just, that just makes everybody aware of how important it is because I think that what people don't realize is they're probably already being penalized. Um, They're doing it to themselves by not having fast response times. And now this new Google feature is just kind of reinforcing that. And I think it's going to make a lot more business owners aware of, of this, this really important metric.

And, you know, speaking of penalization with Google, there are things that you're probably doing or your website has that is negatively impacting you, you know, not having the security features turned on. So you have that lock icon next to it. You know, they're, they're giving negative marks to you if you don't have that. If your, your site's not exactly mobile responsive, right, bad user experience, they're going to penalize that. Now, if your site's stagnant, there's not new content on it, again, a negative impact. So there's a lot of things that come into play, and Google's king. I mean, everybody goes to Google to search, right? Very rarely people are going to go unless they already know who you are and type in your website address. They are finding you through a Google search.

Yeah, exactly. And something I want to touch on too, because I made it pretty clear with even just my one example with the shoes that it impacts the instant sale or that one-time sale, but you also got to look at lifetime value of a customer, right? And that's a lot of times where the real money is and the real value is, is in loyalty and brand loyalty. And if you're having, a customer email you or text you or call you about a problem that they have, warranty, anything in that follow-up process, and you're not having a quick response time too, that's likely gonna impact their future buying decisions. People don't often forget customer service and how well they were treated and how fast people responded. And, you know, I even have an example of this in my own life too. Like I had a, problem with the shipping. I emailed the company and within, I think, 5 hours there was a response, um, you know, saying complete refund and that. And I will always remember that, that that company responded that quickly and treated me that well. And I will likely have a positive, um, not only referral for them but also for myself. I will likely buy from them again because I can trust them and I know that my time is valued.

[Speaker:SHAUN] Mm-hmm, and it doesn't have to be complicated. I mean, the bare minimum, if you don't want to implement like a whole software for live chat or anything like that, if you're carrying a cell phone around, and you're a solo business operator, and you don't need to be interrupted by phone calls and that kind of stuff, just changing your messaging that says, hey, text this number, right? People prefer these days to text versus call. So just allowing that to happen, you already have the mobile phone, it can receive text messages in its bare sense. If you don't want to have your personal phone texted, you can easily get a service that'll allow people to text a number and it comes into an app on your phone and you can text back. Keep does that, we use it all the time with our clients. Not only internally for messaging, and we get far higher response rates,. But we could utilize that number and people can text into it as well.

So yeah, exactly. And I really think that texting is kind of the solution that is both going to make the business owner happier and make their life easier, as well as the customer. Like, I think a lot of people underestimate how much a customer— and from a customer point of view— they appreciate texting because it's way easier, it's way faster, it's way simpler. People just I just much prefer that. Now I do have a question for you, Shaun, because I think that some people would, or some business owners might think that offering texting might come off as a little bit less professional, especially in perhaps a service industry. So what do you think about that?

I don't think it would be, compared to what, I guess? Let's preface this.

So, you know, more traditional, so email or a phone call or Yeah, those kind of traditional sorts now that have become standard.

I think texting has been around long enough, it has become mainstream that I think it's just another acceptable line of communication. Ask that 5 years ago, then maybe it might have seemed a little wonky, but you know, every phone number can receive texts now. Very few people only have a landline. I mean, when you're getting people putting a phone number into a web form, you now pretty much don't even have to say enter your mobile number because the number they're going to put in is their their cell phone number. So you've got a high level of people that can do that as well. So I don't think it's gonna come off, you know, unprofessional. They still, if you were calling, they still have to type in the number, right? So whether they're typing it into a phone for the calling side or they're typing it into text, that's even better. And actually, it's, think of the user's experience. I mean, if you're calling and then they get your voicemail, right, then they have to like leave the voicemail right, and respond. Whereas if they're just typing, they can actually get the question they have exact, and they don't have to worry like, okay, is somebody gonna answer? Do I have to leave a voicemail? And they have to think about that. So, and they also have that record of what they asked. So if you didn't respond back, they could follow up. But if your competition responded first, they're probably not gonna follow up.

Yeah, right. And, you know, since you've been in marketing for so long, Obviously you've kind of witnessed how much more important average response time has become, and so why do you think that is? And do you think that a lot of business owners are kind of slacking in that front? Do you think that's a pretty common, common issue?

I think it's a big issue that's impacting a lot of business owners that are there, and I think it's not something that has been, you know, consciously decided upon that, hey, I'm not going to respond. It's just that they probably haven't thought of it. And, you know, from my own personal experience of, you know, looking right now at buying a utility trailer, you know, I've been on, on sites where, you know, you can buy them from people, but there's also businesses listed in there. And I've had questions, you know, I found, you know, let's say 5 on the weekend that I was interested in, and I would message people personally to buy it. But then there were businesses when I'm like, you still have this in stock? And they would write back, yes, right? Or in some I wrote and I still haven't heard back from it. So it was like, okay, well, maybe they don't respond on the weekends, that's okay. But having something that would at least auto-reply and say, hey, you know, we don't check your messages on the weekends, but we will reply, you know, beginning of the week. So just coming back to that, you know, businesses need to have something in place. And you can have virtual assistants to monitor that stuff, to answer some questions. You could use things like chatbots. So we can talk a little bit about the difference between a chatbot and live chat. But it comes down to just being there to answer questions. So if somebody messages you and asks a question, you always wanna follow up with something else to say, is there anything else I can help you with? So if I said, you know, is this available? Or do you have this in blue? Or do you have this in extra large? Or whatever it is to a business, replying with yes is not enough. It's like, yes, we do. Is there anything else that, you know, I could help you with, or, you know, would you like to see a photo of it or something like that? Just the same thing as if you were doing one-to-one communication, you just got a digital means in between.

Yeah, yeah. And I think a pretty common topic, I guess, that will come up when you start that conversation with business owners about average response time is their busyness, and there's too many messages coming in for me to manage. And, you know, the first thing that I would touch on with that is make sure that you have a detailed frequently asked questions page, because the faster they can find that information, the better. Like oftentimes customers, especially online where the purchase process can be completely basically contactless, like you don't have to talk to anybody, they don't want to have to message you. So making sure that you really do have a detailed FAQ section, but then following that, obviously there's always going to be questions that come up that you can't really foresee or that are very unique to an individual or that even you just may not have thought of or whatever it might be. And that's where, like you said, you know, a chat box versus a live chat. So why don't you touch on that now?

Like, yeah, and that led into perfectly with, with you talking about the FAQ section. And the difference between live chat is, is live chat is you click chat and then you're connected with a live person, right? Whether it's the business owner or there's a service where there's actually people in a call center monitoring that to answer questions. A chatbot is a pre-programmed software that will ask key questions to see if it can answer some of those common questions for you. So, um, if you click on it, it may say something like, how can I help you? And then they type in their question and it will actually analyze that and say, oh, you know, based on what you, you said, maybe we think that you want to know our hours of operation. Or maybe you have the question, there's a whole FAQ section, and it will pick an article from that and and suggest it back. But the idea of a chatbot is to be programmed to find answers to those common questions that can be answered over and over again that doesn't need a live person. But at a certain point, it may say, oh, it looks like that's something that you'll need to speak with somebody live. I'll connect you now. And at that point, the software can then ping you and say, hey, you know, there's somebody that needs a question answered. So You know, in the first stage, I would say go with a live chat if you can monitor it or have somebody monitor it, because you may not have those FAQs yet. But when you start to develop it, then let's move to a chatbot element to see if we can kind of offload some of that first and then really have you answering the questions that are one-off or very specific.

Yeah, and I think When it comes to the chatbot as well, I think you, if you don't know anything about it, you need to hire help or do some really in-depth research because I know we had a client not too long ago who was telling us about the automatic Facebook responses and how they'd be having a conversation with somebody, a client, and then in the middle of it, it would just go off. Or, you know, other clients who have actually bought softwares and haven't really figured out how to use it, so it's not super effective. It's definitely something— it's a tool to help you and to improve your average response time, but you need to be knowledgeable about it to make sure that it actually does the job properly and doesn't just end up really frustrating customers and, you know, basically talking them around in circles and just sending the same messages.

And you want a system that's gonna notify you when there's a message. I mean, I have a pet peeve with Facebook and their Facebook business page where you know, so many messages and you may not even get notified of it. It's hit or miss. Sometimes you get that notification unless you're going to look for it. And I almost missed a conversation the other day on our page because it didn't notify me. It just, I was in there and I saw that, oh, under messages there was a message there. So, you know, there are other softwares that will connect your business messenger to it and then come through in the chat app on your phone. And it's really well laid out that way. So making sure that you use a way that you're going to be notified when it happens.

Yeah, that's actually something that I had written down as something that seems kind of ridiculously simple and easy is something that I feel like not a lot of people do, which is just simply one, turning on your notifications and making sure that those are coming up, but also utilizing the softwares and the tools that you can get on your phone as well. Because I know, you know, 9 times outta 10, 9 people outta 10 are gonna be checking their phone more regularly than, um, you know, a desktop or their laptop. Absolutely.

So do you have any other questions about this before we wrap it up?

I guess in terms of automation, perhaps more in-depth than a chatbot, what sorts of automation can help you decrease your response time?

It all comes down to the expectation that you set. You know, a lot of business— I'm not saying take out the contact forms and get rid of those from your website. You know, people will still email. I'm not saying that they're going to eliminate that and switch all over to text and everything. So you still got to, you know, be aware of that. So a couple things, like if you have a web form, have it linked to a system that will at least do an auto-reply back and tell them what the frequency that you check this and expect the reply. So it's like you'll get a reply within 24 to 48 hours, that's acceptable, right? People know that going into it. Or if it's urgent, hey, call us, right? So people may write on your web form an urgent matter, but you don't check it so often, right? But if it's urgent, hey, call us, right? We want to know that. Um, same thing with an email. If it's like, you know, hello@ or contact@ or whatever you're going to send it to, have an autoresponder to that that says, hey, you know, thanks for contacting us. Same type of thing, just to the email, are some key things that you can put in into play with it, right?

Okay, and last question. So For the people who are listening to this and thinking, "Wow, I really need to get on this, what can I do?" Are there any softwares or apps or anything along those lines that you would recommend to people who really need to kind of get a start on improving their average response time?

I think the first thing you should do, I mean, you should be on Facebook, so going in there and just checking to make sure your notifications are on like you mentioned is gonna be key. And then, you know, go and have somebody message you on there and see, did you get a notification? Right? Because you can turn it on, if you don't test anything, it's not going to work. For your website, if you want anything that's like chat, you know, Drift— drift.com is a great software. They have a free version. You basically get the, the little chat button installed. There's an app for your phone, and the moment somebody chats, you'll get a push notification. You can chat right there. I think that's the easiest one that we've implemented a lot for people, has been that one there. You know, if you want to get into more in-depth stuff, there's other ones that are out there, but As with softwares, it's best to really find one that's going to work for what you want to do. So, and by that I mean, if you're going to engage with people, is there a need for them to send you files? Is there a need for you to send images back? Because some of these chats are just text, other ones will allow the user to actually upload an image or upload a file. So it's going to base on your, on your business and how you want to engage with them that way.

Yeah, and you know, in addition to that, making sure you're choosing chat options or messaging options where your customers are going to be asking questions, right? So for some people that might be on the website. For others, maybe they only really get lead inquiries on Facebook or Instagram. So just making sure you know where people, where your audience is too, and where they're going to message you.

And just to add to that too, if you listen to this and you're like, well, this is great, I need this, I don't have the time, and you're like, I don't have the time to hire somebody. There are services, and we have a great partnership with a company that offers like monitored live chat, and they basically charge you for every lead they get you, right? So you fund them for, I think it's like $700 at a time kind of thing, and then for every lead that converts— so whether they want you to call them back or they book an appointment with you through the live chat— you pay like $7, right? Which is really good, right, to get somebody that's raised their hand. So what happens is You, you work to develop like what are some of the key questions that the agent can answer and at what point, um, you know, can they book that consult. And then they'll monitor 24/7. Like there's always going to be someone on your website that's going to answer those questions and their goal is to get them a consult with you or for you to— for them to get a number for you to call them back, right? That's the goal. And for most businesses That's going to be much cheaper than trying to hire somebody to do it or the time you're being pulled away from other money-generating things in your business. Right. So if you really want to have some, you know, a sit-down and talk with that, reach out to us. You can do so. You can email us at hello@bluecowmarketing.ca. We'd love to just have a chat with you and answer some of your questions in depth more. So hopefully you got some value out of this and you'll be thinking about your response time.