Time management vs. good management - do you get your clients to book in a phone call with you?
I had an interesting conversation last week with a colleague and it made me think.
She runs a successful graphic design agency plus two additional small businesses (a printer and also an embroidery shop) - yes she is an overachiever. She was telling me that she has just sent out a blanket email to her clients saying that basically from this day forward, for the purposes of being efficient she will only take phone calls that are pre-booked in advance.
Basically, after speaking with her about this she said her clients were calling her for a range of random reasons and taking up all of her work day, which meant she was forever working late into the night and all weekend to make up for wasted time.
So she decided to break down the problem this way:
- all phone calls must be booked in advance
- options for phone calls are - 15 minute (quick chat), 30 minute discussion and 45 minute planning session (at the moment all of these are free however in the future she is considering charging for the 30 minute and 45 minute blocks if necessary.
On the same day, I sent an email and received an auto response from a colleague saying that he only checks his emails 2 times a day (10am and 3pm) so not to expect a reply until then.
It's funny but it made me feel like the power is moving over to the people providing the service rather than the client and I'm not sure if I feel that comfortable with this idea... I'd love to know if something like this has worked for you when it is formally structured like this or if turning your phone on silent is a better and more polite option.
What do you think?
She runs a successful graphic design agency plus two additional small businesses (a printer and also an embroidery shop) - yes she is an overachiever. She was telling me that she has just sent out a blanket email to her clients saying that basically from this day forward, for the purposes of being efficient she will only take phone calls that are pre-booked in advance.
Basically, after speaking with her about this she said her clients were calling her for a range of random reasons and taking up all of her work day, which meant she was forever working late into the night and all weekend to make up for wasted time.
So she decided to break down the problem this way:
- all phone calls must be booked in advance
- options for phone calls are - 15 minute (quick chat), 30 minute discussion and 45 minute planning session (at the moment all of these are free however in the future she is considering charging for the 30 minute and 45 minute blocks if necessary.
On the same day, I sent an email and received an auto response from a colleague saying that he only checks his emails 2 times a day (10am and 3pm) so not to expect a reply until then.
It's funny but it made me feel like the power is moving over to the people providing the service rather than the client and I'm not sure if I feel that comfortable with this idea... I'd love to know if something like this has worked for you when it is formally structured like this or if turning your phone on silent is a better and more polite option.
What do you think?
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