The globalization of electronic commerce has provided your customers with unlimited choices as well as the ability to conduct instant side-by-side comparisons. Nowadays, all customers (both consumer and B2B) are convinced they can get anything they want anytime they want it at their complete convenience. And, quite honestly, they're usually right.
Think about it; your cable or satellite TV service makes it possible for you to watch, pause, rewind, or record a television show to watch later at your convenience (even zipping through the commercials, if you like). Amazon's Kindle (just discussed) lets you download the latest best seller from any Wi-Fi connection and begin reading it in minutes. Netflix will stream your favorite movie to your computer or TV almost before you finish reading this paragraph. Facebook allows you to find long-lost friends in an instant; in fact, you can create a network of new and old friends with a few clicks of a mouse. When you sign up for an RSS feed (on virtually any subject that interests you), the very latest information is pushed to you the moment it happens.
Anything and everything is available online. If you want to buy concrete, steel, cattle, rum, or any one of 10,000 vintage Corvette parts, reliable e-commerce sites are ready to take and ship your order 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Your customers can, in essence, make time stand still!
Can you see why this matters to you? Your customers are accustomed to being served in real time. Most of their daily activities—from getting drive-through meals to ATM banking, from TV-DVR recording to self-checkout at Home Depot, from digital photography to text messaging, to anything you can think of—allow them to truly manipulate time to suit their schedules. On-demand buying is their way of squeezing you into their compacted lives. You can't use the excuse, “That doesn't apply to us because we are not an Internet company.”
Please, don't delude yourself. You are being compared to the rest of your customers' worlds, which are ramping up to respond more quickly to their impatience. Frankly, if you don't respond at digital speed, your customers will consider you substandard. If you don't make their time a priority, you could be perceived as arrogant, too old-school, and maybe even lazy.
Smart organizations recognize the importance of a hyper-quick turnaround. We believe so strongly in this trend that our company has retitled our customer service education program Customer Urgency.