Wedding Business Solutions

Are you using Auto-Replies or Out of Office messages?

August 28, 2024 • Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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Are you using Auto-Replies or Out of Office messages?

Are your auto-replies costing you potential clients? Do your out-of-office messages set unrealistic expectations? In this episode, I delve into the importance of timely responses and how setting the right expectations can be the difference between gaining and losing customers. Learn how to craft auto-replies that are both friendly and efficient, ensuring you never miss out on future business.

Listen to this new 8-minute episode for insights on how to optimize your autoresponders to enhance customer satisfaction and boost your business.

If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

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Want to see about having me come for private sales training, or a mastermind (bring together some industry friends to have me spend a day with you all)? Reach out to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or text or call +1.732.422.6362

I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

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©2024 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

Are you using an auto reply or out of office message? Listen to this episode and see where I'm going with this. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. This one was prompted by me sending out my emails to you guys and my email list. If you're not on my list, go to connect with allenburg.com. you can get on the list, get all my updates there, where I'm going to be speaking, et cetera. And every time I send out an email which is about the latest podcast or where I'm speaking of things, I get a bunch of auto replies. Now that's normal.


I'm sending out to seven or 8000 different businesses. I'm going to get some auto replies there. I don't usually pay a lot of attention to them because there's so many, especially if it's towards a holiday or something. I could have 50, 60 or 100 of these go into my inbox, which I do have to. I go to a different email address, by the way, so it does make it easier to go in and delete them or mark them red or whatever. But I just happened to notice some the other day and it prompted me. This was one where somebody talked about how it's now wedding season for them. Because I know wedding season is different depending on where you are in the world, where you are in the country.


And what it said was basically that we're busy because it's wedding season and it could take us up to three days to get back to you. And I saw that and I've seen things like this over in the past and I know I've spoken about this as well, but it prompted me to think, you know what? The customer doesn't care. First of all, when does a customer expect to reply? If they fill out your contact form, on your website, on your ad, through your social ad or whatever, or send you a message through social, when do they expect to get a reply? Now. When do they want to reply is right away. When do they expect to get a reply? Realistically, within 24 hours. If it's a business day.


 If it's in the morning, they would expect to get a reply the same day because you're a business. If you're open from whatever the normal hours would be for a business, 09:00 a.m. to 05:00 p.m. or whatever, they would expect to get that. Again. Expect. I'm not saying when you should, you should reply as quickly as you can, but to set the expectation that it could take three days because you're busy in wedding season also lets them know that if they were a customer, it might take you that long to get back to them as well. And you could actually be losing business because of that. So what do you do when you're busy? What should you do now? An out of office reply. I only use those when I am out of the office.


Now, many of you know that I travel a lot, so I'm out of the office a lot, but I set the timer. So actually today, which is when am I recording this on a Thursday. I'm not leaving till next Wednesday, but I've already set the auto reply to start Tuesday night and then turn off when I get back. 11:00 at night, the day that I get back. It's already going to do that by itself. This way, you're not going to get an out of office message that's two weeks old. You're only going to get it then. Now, the truth is, even when I'm traveling, I'm going to get back to you as quickly as I can.


But because of the timing of events that I'm doing, because of different time zones and things, it might take me till the next day. Now, I say on my out of office that I'm traveling, I'm on stages, I'm on planes and things that it could take me, you know, my normal response time will be delayed and then I get back to people anyway. And they're always like, oh, gosh, I thought you were away. And the answer is I was, but I took the time to respond to you because that's what you would want. So you're always exceeding the expectation there. But I'm not. I'm not going to tell you it's going to take me three days because it will never take me three days to get back to a customer. If you're that busy that you can't respond to new inquiries, you're missing out on future business.


And I would suggest that you can do a couple of things to solve that. One of the things you can do to solve that is you could use a virtual assistant. It doesn't have to be an employee. You could use a virtual assistant who could respond to inquiries and then get to you when there are things that you have to do, and then they can handle the things that you can't. Or at least getting back to the customers for phones, you can use answering services. I mean, this has been going on for decades and decades and more than that, where there are answering services who can answer the phone for you either in the nighttime hours and early morning hours or 24 7365 when you're really busy. And then they can get to you and say, this is something you need to address right away, or they get it to you and then you decide what you need to address right away. But for the people that are saying, it's going to take me two days or three days or whatever to get back to you, you have to think about what's your average sale? How much business could you be losing? Because you'll never know, right? You'll never know who chose not to do business with you because of that.


You might see the ghosts in your inbox, but you don't know if that was the reason why they chose to go someplace else. But how many sales per year would it take for you to cover the cost of someone to do this? Respond to your inquiries and answering service or whatever? For a lot of businesses, it's not that many. So if I, your calendar is not already full in the future going forward? Not already full. Youre losing out on that future business by setting an expectation that if you were a customer, you probably wouldnt find acceptable if you needed something. So you reach out to a company and they say, hey, were really busy, well get back to you in three days. And youre like, no, I need an answer now. I want to talk to somebody now. This is what Im thinking about, or this is when I need it, youre going to go find somebody else.


So your customers are doing that as well. So I certainly wouldn't put that in the out of office or the autoresponder to say that it's going to take that long. I would just say that it's wedding season. I would make it really friendly. We're helping couples like you have amazing weddings, or if you don't do weddings, talk about the type of events, right. It's holiday party season and we're helping other companies have amazing events for their employees. We'd love to do that for you as well and then say we will get back to you as soon as we can and then do that. You have to do that.


Responsiveness is something that is valued by everybody, no matter the price point, no matter if you're selling luxury, if you're selling budget. Responsiveness is valued by everyone. And it is the core to my business, not just what I teach, but my own business, that I get to people as quickly as I can because that's what I would want. And I think you need to do that too. So if you're listening and it was you or you think it was you because it might sound like yours, I would take off the whole three day thing and go read your out of office, read your autoresponder and make sure that it is written in a friendly tone, not a punitive tone. We're busy. We can't get back to you now and add value. Don't just say thanks, we've received your message.


Duh. Okay, you got my message, but I'm no closer to what I need. So try to make it more friendly, try to make it more of your personality. And then don't set an expectation that's so long, even though you know you can get sooner than that. If you were the customer and somebody said I can't get back to you for three days, I'm probably going to go to somebody else, I think you would go to somebody else as well. So I think you really, I would almost guarantee, I would like to say guarantee it, but would be hard to track it that you're losing business because of that. So check your only use autoresponders when they add value, like if you're out of the office, physically out of the office on the weekends or whatever, and then set the realistic expectation if somebody comes to you on Friday night, you say were doing weddings this weekend, well get back to you on Monday morning. That is reasonable because its the weekend.


Id still try to get to them sooner because people are planning a lot of stuff on the weekend. But set a realistic expectation based on something that someone say, hey, thats reasonable. We also know that according to the not surveys, about half couples say they choose the first one to respond. So they dont want to do that. Well hope it gave you something to think about. Thanks.


I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

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©2024 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com