The Advisor’s Corner

In today’s world, things move so fast that we believe it is very important to be (and to clearly appear to be) accessible to your customers/clients. Despite all the new technologies, we continue to hear customers/clients complain that the people they do business with are hard to get ahold of. Sometimes that’s true, but often it is merely perception. For example, do you frequently use email and cell phone greetings to let people know you are unavailable or on an extended absence? Why? Today, you can return emails and phone calls from anywhere in the world. Before we had cell phones, we put our home phone number on our business cards and told clients to use that number if they needed to get in touch with us. In more than 10 years, my partner and I only received one phone call at home — but our clients knew we were always available to them. Contrast that with our former doctor’s office. It was impossible to get through to our doctor. So, even though we liked him, we left his 20-doctor medical practice. We now have a new doctor, and we have his cell phone number (we have never used it, but knowing that we can if we ever need to is very comforting). What do your customers/clients say about the accessibility of their key contact at your company?