One of the most difficult aspects of a small business is that customers call [OR STOP IN] constantly and expect you to be instantly accessible. Once they reach you, they expect you to drop everything to deal with their matters. Most business people, feeling they are obliged to respond to their customers, divert themselves from the tasks at hand and acquiesce to the customers' wishes. By the end of the day, you may have had 10 customer calls and have been diverted 10 times from the important matter on which you intended to work. You now have 10 files open on your desk, on each of which you have spent about 15 minutes. It is difficult to create any continuity of thought working this way.
It is estimated that for each interruption you have you lose 2 to 3 minutes of productivity on the matter from which you were diverted. Each time you return from an interruption you must take some time to reintegrate your mind with the original task. You have to answer the question, "Now, where was I?" If you have 10 interruptions a day, you spend 20-30 minutes a day answering that question. This translates to 80 to 120 hours a year in lost time and revenues just trying to find your place.
There is also the issue of your work product. Every business requires analysis, assimilation, problem solving and creativity. The more continuity you have in your thought processes, the better your work product will be. The more pushed you are for time, the more shortcuts you will be forced to take. Therefore, constant interruptions not only cost you time, but quality.
The key to producing more productive work is to understand the difference between accessibility and responsiveness.
Accessibility means the businessperson can be reached whenever the customer wants him/her. Though this is a great comfort and convenience to the customer, it is disruptive for the businessperson. Ultimately it is detrimental to the customer because it will cause the customer's work to take longer and the sum total of the interruptions will erode the integrity of the work product.
Responsiveness means the customer can depend on having a conversation with you in a reasonable period from the time from their call. It means you return calls promptly. Ironically, businesspeople that are highly accessible are often not very responsive. The result of being accessible is that they get so far behind, they don't have time to return calls. This exacerbates the problem because customers learn that the only way to get through to you is to call relentlessly, leading to more interruptions, more delays, etc.
To increase your productivity, you should limit your accessibility and be fastidious in your responsiveness. Contrary to popular belief, though customers want you to be instantly accessible, most do not expect that you will be. They do expect you will respond within a reasonable period of time. That period is within 24 hours (or the same day if possible).
If you have a pager or cell phone, NEVER give the numbers to customers. Your staff are the only people who should have the numbers. If you give the numbers to a customer, that customer will take it as a license to contact you any time he/she pleases (including 4:00 am on a Saturday morning) and will be indignant if you don't answer or return the call within 3 minutes. From the customer's perspective, if you don't answer or call immediately, you are obviously ignoring them, which is a brazen insult. Though it seems like the ultimate in attentive service, giving customers your pager or cell phone number is almost guaranteed to inflame customer relations and cost you your sanity. You may as well just reserve your room at the asylum now.
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