Be responsive on your contact us webpage

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Gary Chow | No Comments » | Trackback URL

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been busily house hunting. So one of the websites I’ve frequented a lot in this period is a real estate site that advertises properties for sale.

On this website (advertised as the ‘biggest address in property’), agents list the houses they are selling and if you want to make an inquiry, say, seek an inspection, you write a message in the message box, and also enter contact details such as email address and phone number.

Now, if you did so, what would you expect would be a reasonable timeframe for the agent to contact you? One hour? Two hours? Three? Remember these are people supposedly eager to sell you a house on behalf of sellers they represent and from whom they will extract a juicy commission.

Well, in my experience, the typical response time has been over 3 hours and in several instances I got a call back after several days!  In a number of cases, I received no response at all.

This unimpressive response time to queries made on websites is not unusual. In fact, in Australia I’d say it is quite common. Companies big and small more often than not respond tardily to queries made online. It’s as if they don’t pay much attention to that area of customer service. My message to them: lift your game! If you have a website and you have a ‘Contact Us’ page, monitor the incoming emails and respond promptly. Not in three hours, not in two but how about in one hour or less. If the message came in overnight, how about answering back first thing in the morning after opening time. To ensure you respond quickly to queries made online and via your website, assign a staff member and add this task to their job description. This person should check for queries at least hourly and respond within an hour. If the query can’t be answered in full straightaway, at least acknowledge receipt and give the inquirer the courtesy of a reply.