Page 147 - The Voice of Authority

Temporary teams are becoming more and more the
norm—groups of bright people joining temporarily to
work in cyberspace toward one specific goal. They link.
They communicate. They work. They accomplish. They
disband. So the plan for getting information to them has
to be efficient and quick; otherwise, they no longer exist.
They’ve been left out of the loop altogether.
Delay is deadly.

Everyday Operations: The Need for Speed

A few months ago, an account manager in our own office
reeled from the bluntness of an e-mail from a would-be
client when our server went down for six hours. When ser-
vice was restored, the account manager immediately
checked his in-box and found an e-mail from a prospec-
tive enrollee in one of our public workshops. He sent her
an e-mail, answered her question, and apologized for the
6-hour delay because of the computer glitch. She zapped
back a to-the-point response: “Too late. I’ve already en-
rolled in your competitor’s seminar—someone who pays
attention to their e-mail!!!!”
Expectations from customers grow higher and higher
every week. According to a survey by Hornstein Associ-
ates, only 42 percent of businesses respond to e-mails
within 24 hours. The federal government gives itself two
business days to acknowledge and respond to phone and
e-mail inquiries and up to 20 days to respond fully to
“complex” inquiries (according to the Consumer and
Governmental Affairs Bureau Web site).
Yet surveys show that a whopping 88 percent of cus-
tomers expect a response within 24 hours, and 13 percent
expect a response in less than an hour. Customers don’t

Is It Current? 135