Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
Example: Email asking a question after 11PM on Sunday night. Three minutes later another, shouting with the subject in all caps about the first not being answered. Following morning one saying that they should be notified if I'm not available for a day or two.
After giving it some serious thought for a couple of days I replied Wednesday night that since there had been over 100 emails from them this month, a good number of them having been already replied to, I'd have to collect and sort them all and would reply all at one sitting.
Granted that there are questions that come up - it's called "consulting" - but it's not an on-call flat rate arrangement, it's monthly SEO maintenance with a 3 hour time cap.
I'd like to get some feedback from others on how they handle situations like this. How are you dealing with the number of emails from a particular client? Setting limits or boundaries? How about turnaround time for replying, and what type of billing arrangements?
Any ideas, or experiences with this type of thing?
What's wrong with that answer?
We charge our time against the retainer for any sort of email reply that takes me more than 30 seconds and is not a client service issue (such as a billing or contract question).
I keep a record of communication in a spreadsheet that shows my time spent talking to the clients, via email, phone, or in person. They get this every month.
[edited by: bakedjake at 8:51 pm (utc) on Oct. 30, 2003]
We had a client who rang on a weekday night at 11.30 and when we didn't pick up, he hung up and rang us again. He was a complete nightmare all through the project and wanted everything done yesterday. When he asked for a quote for the next project, we told him to find someone else. It just wasn't worth it.
I think you gotta ask yourself: Is it worth it? If not, sack 'em.
I try to turn around email to all of my clients (and in general, really) within 8-10 hours (any time of the day). During the day, turnaround time is generally less than an hour on email. I'm also available to most of my clients after business hours at a semi-reasonable level, as are most of the members of my team.
If I know I'll be going somewhere that will not allow this to happen, I will notify my retainer clients of this. I extend that courtesy to them because they do expect the level of service they are normally provided. But they are certainly not unreasonable when notified that there will be a temporary change in that service.
We do offer a 24-hour a day on-call service with a contracted response time of less than one hour. It costs SIGNIFICANTLY more than our normal rate. In all honesty, this is never necessary because a client can get a hold of a member of our team in a reasonable amount of time, 24 hours a day, just about all of the time.
But if he wants instantaneous service, he should pay an appropriate rate for it (if you're willing to offer it).
[edited by: bakedjake at 9:02 pm (utc) on Oct. 30, 2003]
Mr. Client... I can see you place a high value on your web business from your frequent commmunications.I pride myself on being responsive and productive, and I am concerned that with our current 3 hour cap I am not able to service you at the level you expect and deserve.
Because I know we would both be disappointed if I fail to meet your high expectations, I'm recommending that we upgrade your plan to a cap of ___ hours per month. (Please note that services will be provided during normal business hours; night and weekend work, if desired and if time is available, will be billed at the additional rate of $___.) This higher cap will allow us additional time to deal with your high level of correspondence (100+ contacts this month already) as well as perform the actual work necessary to promote your web site.
It's a pleasure to work with a site owner who is so involved in the details of marketing his site, and who communicates his objectives in such explicit detail. I trust you will find this revision acceptable. If so, please sign the attached agreement and fax back to me at ____.
:)
As an individual SEO consultant myself, I find it's difficult to be juggling a bunch of overlapping client schedules along with my own life. I've tried to avoid the additional burden of becoming a de facto webmaster who's always on call.
Nevertheless, when my best client called me in the middle of the night because there'd been a hacker attack and his e-commerce site was down, I stayed up for a few hours sorting out the damage and uploading the files he hadn't backed up himself. But he apologized for calling, and he recognized that what I was doing was over and above.
If a client was giving me grief and I saw no big upside coming down the road, I'd probably walk away from the deal if I could afford to do so.
Email asking a question after 11PM on Sunday night. Three minutes later another, shouting with the subject in all caps about the first not being answered.
I had a colleague, who had a client a bit like that, in another life. He handled it slightly differently.
He set his alarm clock for 4.30am, and started ringing the guy to discuss the contents of the email, until he answered the telephone. If it was urgent at 11pm - he took the attitude that it must be really really urgent by 4.30am .......
: )
Personally - I think rogerd is the best approach!
