How long do you take to respond to customers?

mostly within 24 hours.

I look at it this way, when I myself need support I really like it fast. That is why I provide support fast and answer question as soon as I get the chance to do it

24-48 hours at most. Really isn't any excuse for taking any longer than that.

I usually try and do it within 12-24 hours.

As both a customer and a vendor I know how annoying it is when you have a technical question and each back and forth takes 2-3 days. It's a nightmare and it means even simple issues can take days, sometimes weeks, to resolve.

Your customers are your business and therefore your customer support should be one of (if not THE) most important part of your business. Without good customer service you have no repeat customers.

I try to make it under 12 hours, as we are a new startup.
If you do it faster the customer feels safe to buy something or to make some decisions on that

He is more secure and safe about what he is doing with your sites or products.

Most replies are within 1 business day but if the customer needs more technical input than our frontline can provide it can take up to 3 business days (we notify them to that effect).

It's far less about "how long" and far more about managing the expectation. 90% of customers are happy to wait the extra time so long as you tell them when it's happening and then follow through on what you've said will happen.

Hi there

I try and give answers to any support questions with in 24hr's depending on what comes up in life the quicker the response i find the clients appreciate it more.

Craig

It's the modern world if people cant get an answer out of you in 24 hours your doing something wrong. In most cases you should be getting back to them with a solid answer in 10 min.

Most of the time I reply immediately or with in 24 hours. I'd like to mention one thing here that how I respond immediately is I set push Email on my mobile phone and when Email receives, it alert me and I can see my E mail subject in to my home screen and when I click it, I can check and reply immediately without much effort, this is common that most of the people easily reply clients.

According to my experience, my immediate response earned me huge bucks than normal response, because people need immediate responses/solutions.

as an support office it depends on the customer really and the type of customer he or she is.....if there is a project manager then the support needs to be there.....and needs to be much quicker than 48 hours.....for example a customer may have a severe IT problem....even enquiries.....if somebody makes an enquiry you would want to get back to them before your competitor does......

I have worked as a Support Staff early in my career and from my experience i would say that, a customer should get an acknowledgement as soon as he raise his query on the support desk or via email.

A response from the customer service executive should be sent within 24 hours with a solution or an explanation of how they will solve the issue and how long it will take.

In my copywriting business, I aim to provide a response within 24 hours! I think any-more than this can show that a business model is quite inefficient.

I always make a point of replying within 24hrs max. I know if I have a question I want answering that's preventing me from moving my business forward I would start to get a little impatient if it went beyond that point, so I try to treat others as I would want treating.

Andy

I must say this thread has me startled.

Most of the businesses and marketers I deal with these days, I always end up waiting at least 24-48 hours to get a response -- usually longer.

It seems everyone in this thread is saying they respond less than 24 hours. It's good to hear.

I guess the others out there who are slack with their response times probably aren't about to speak up in this thread.

It looks like most everyone agrees how important it is to provide a 24hr or less response. I mean this gives the customer a sense of satisfcation to a large extent. I know from personal experience if I have to email a couple different vendors, usually the one who replies first gets bigger points, all else being relatively equal. Am glad to see many of you also perceive the importance of it. Having an iphone with email ready to go helps heaps when away from the office too.

Most of those auto responders that say "We got your message" are a bit of a waste time in my opinion. Although when I first see it I think wow that was quick, only to realise 'doh - autoresponder! '

When it comes to support, I always respond within 24 hours or less. This has become one of my standard operating procedures.

For general correspondence through a standard Contact Page form I enforce the same policy.

One of the most important ways you can build your brand, reputation, authority, and trust that will lead to repetitive sales from existing or future customers is to offer great customer service.

Even if it is a complaint or a refund, you should respond promptly and attempt to appease the customer's concerns immediately.

If your time is so limited that you have trouble achieving this level of service it is time for you to outsource it. Period. It is both cost effective and affordable and will definitely pay dividends (and a positive ROI) in the long run.

As soon as I possibly can. Rarely takes longer than 24hrs if I get the message.

Hey friend,

Most of the time I respond with in 24-48 hours. Customer focus is my main concern everyday and providing high customer service is a passion and fun for me.

Carl

Immediately, or at least within an hour.

Add 8 hours to that if I'm asleep

During business hours, our acknowledgement response is in real time which includes an array of contact options such as automated help desk, email, telephone, mobile (texting), and even fax. Most inquiries are pre-sell affiliate product questions, which not only drives up conversion rates considerably, but also effectively minimizes refunds to almost zero levels. Excluding Sundays, all issues are resolved well within 24 hours.

24 hours or less is important - even if I don't resolve the issue or have the answer, I answer the email. Sundays are the only day I don't answer email and that is plastered all over my customer areas. THEN I try to have it resolved within 24-48 hours - unless the problem is out of my hands.

People move so fast these days the sooner you respond the better. If I respond to someone in 5 minutes my sales rate is much higher than if I respond to someone in 24 hours.

DM,

There are online businesses that need 'almost' no interaction with customers. I said 'almost' because in my case the customer only needs to provide limited information only once and from that point I almost never need to interact with them for the length of our business agreement.

It is my staple income and customer service is paramount to my success or failure. Once I showed my target market that they would be more successful in their own business with "My Support Services" and "Almost Zero Need For My Support Services" the business became almost free of support.

In other words, clients pay a yearly fee and I provide the products and services without almost any need for any interface between us and almost no support is necessary.

It depends on the business model in my opinion. And 'technical automation' that is almost 100% doable which a lot of people think is not possible or at least other people convinced them is not possible.

I'm just rambling again, lol.

Jeffery 100% :-)

I respond immediately when possible. On a number of occasions I have had people say to me I am shocked you responded so quickly. Many times people never respond or take week to respond when I contact them online. Best way to get and keep customers.

Also, the battery in my mouse is dieing, so I ended up editing my last post a lot.

@ MYOB

Have any job openings?

Jeffery 100% :-)

I work towards responding within 1 hour and definitely respond within 12 hrs weekends included.

My partner and I take turns having our support requests go right to our phones. He does one day I do the next. The point is most of our support requests are answered within 20minutes. Even if its just a personal message saying were out of the office and will get back to them as soon as were back at our desk. I have never had a customer wait more than a couple of hours total for full support.

As fast as I can. I recommend at least within 24 hours if at all possible. If I cannot respond quickly, I just send a note saying I will respond when I can do so in detail.

Those considering doing business with you have high expectations about response time with e-mail (due to the perception of instantaneous receipt). Since they assumed you received their e-mail within moments of them clicking the Send button, how long you take to respond will be correlated into how important they are to you.

Usually within 24 hours.

My old 9-5 had me answering 100+ emails almost every day, so it's 2nd nature to me.

I answer almost all emails/questions immediately, within 2 hours on the outside, only exception is if something comes in while I'm asleep, so that's 8-9 hour max response time. Taking a full 24 hours to answer or longer is insane, inexcusably bad service.

Before buying something from someone I'll often send in a pre-sale question just to see how long the response time is; if it's 24+ hours I won't buy, since that's a symptom of awful customer service.

As much as possible, within 24 hours. The faster you respond to clients, the better. The customers trust you more. If they think they can trust you, they'll buy from you again. Also, after-sales service is important to me. I'm grateful to my customers for trusting me and buying my products/services, so responding fast is my way of thanking them.

My business is mainly offline but some of the services are the same that people are offering here. I can tell you personally I try to respond to all requests within an hour. If i am a meeting or in some situation that will tie me up for a while I change my voicemail to indicate my response time. I also turn on an autoresponder doing the same for my emails. With smartphones today it is all possible which is why I love today's tech so much.

My clients appreciate it also, plus the more important thing it does, is give people confidence to refer me to their friends because I always will respond quickly.

I can tell you many people have called me after a referral because the other guy has not responded yet.

In a similar thought think of it this way.

How likely are you going to go back to a restaurant where it took at least 5 minutes before a server comes by and takes your drink order versus the one that happens as you immediately sit down.

24-48 hours will piss me off, it may also piss off your clients and lose out on future business that you do not even think of.

I always answer the fastest possible. I deal with many email messages. I spend a lot of time answering questions.

Target within 24hrs (as soon as possible)

I'll reply with my answer between 48-72 hours from now.

Sal

Its good to be return in few hours but anything will be good if it is less than 24 hours but depends on B2B.

Good customer service is paramount, especially if you're selling your own products. Word of mouth is the best and cheapest advertising there is.