Chapter 15
Defending Your Day from Interruptions
In This Chapter
Within the past two decades, people have embraced communication technology. But in many ways, these miracles of convenience have robbed workers of their ability to control their own time. Multiplying points of access — voice mail, email, instant messaging, audio and video conferencing, social media, texting, and of course, the cell phone — can shackle you like a house-arrest ankle bracelet, sentencing you to a life-term of perpetual availability. Business colleagues can track you down on vacation, and friends can interrupt an important client presentation. I'm not sure I'd describe this as progress, but it's inarguably a fact of modern life.
Consider this: Every one of these interruptions — no matter how small or insignificant — robs you of at least 5 additional minutes of productive time. Whether your spouse calls and talks to you for 30 seconds or 30 minutes, you can subtract at least 5 more minutes from your day. And then there's the text from a friend about last night's date … by the time your focus is rechanneled again, you have just lost another 5 minutes. Tally up 20 to 40 interruptions over the course of your day, and you lose nearly 2 to 4 hours of productivity — and that totals to the loss of 36 to 72 hours a month!
Distractionitis is the scourge of time-block adherents; the fastest way to render a time block or even a whole day useless is to not deal with distractions well (see Chapter 5 for more on time-blocking). So now's the time to gain control of the interruption game, whether you're at risk from wandering bosses and colleagues, demanding clients, or the technological tools that can slice through your best defenses. I show you how in this chapter.
The Fortress: Guarding Your Focus from Invasion
Being successful in time management and adhering to your time-block schedule happens through controlling access: You need to limit the frequency of the interruptions you allow. Recognize that I use the word allow here. You're the one who controls your time and allows other people and situations to pull you away from your goals, dreams, objectives, and time-blocked schedule. You're in control, and you're the master of your time.
Think of yourself as the castle guard: Your workplace is a fortress, one that must be protected in order for it to remain a happy and productive place. Your best strategy is to establish an impenetrable wall between you and interruptions. In this section, I explain how to protect yourself from invaders on foot and how to disconnect from the electronic devices that can cut through your physical defenses. Finally, you discover how to screen your calls so only the essential information gets through.
Protecting your domain from interior intrusions
The biggest interruptions in your workday frequently come from within. Your co-workers pose a great threat to your effective time management. What's doubly scary is that you don't always recognize your colleagues as threats. Hey, these folks are on your team — they're the good guys, they're there for you! However, it's important to recognize the signs of danger from time-wasting co-workers. If not, you're at risk of falling to friendly fire.
The modern work environment is often designed on an open-office, open-door, and open-exchange environment. Workers are connected through instant messaging, and employees text with co-workers in the office as well as out in the field. The days of working remotely and virtually are here to stay. The physical proximity of working in an office can be a help or hindrance. Few if any employees are granted an office with a door, and most workers are parked in open cubicles, often with partitions that do little to block views (and definitely not the noise) of co-workers. It's supposed to manifest a more unified effort and team spirit, I guess. But it doesn't do much to protect you from your teammates’ intrusions on your time. Unfortunately, the same open-door philosophy that allows employees to drop in on their supervisors at will is often carried throughout the workplace, so co-workers may stop by to talk about a mutual project — or the office football pool.
The following sections look at the traditional work-space environment and how you can work a little more intrusion-free.
Creating virtual barriers
When you have little in the way of a physical barrier, defending your border from invasion becomes a challenge. But it can be done — just because you don't have a door to keep people from entering your space doesn't mean you can't create virtual barriers when you're unavailable:
- Communicate subtly through the posting technique. Put signs on your office door or cubicle letting others know you're busy.
The best action you can take is to post a do-not-disturb sign outside your cubicle, perhaps indicating the critical project you're working on. Your co-workers and supervisor may be more sympathetic to your plight if it's a project they're familiar with.
- Verbally communicate your schedule to others so they know when you're unavailable for interruptions. I call this communicating the standard. For repeat offenders, the posting alone won't work. You have to explain to them verbally and with authority that you don't have an abundance of time.
- For electronic invaders, set your status to “away” or “invisible” on instant message. This way, you're less likely to receive a message. Or sign off from your messenger. For some people you just need to close off access points. For that Facebook friend who has nothing better to do but message you when they see you online, sign out or change your settings to reflect you are offline.
- Threaten to put them to work. If you're in sales, for example, inform the would-be interrupters that you're prospecting and that if they interrupt, they have to come in and make calls with you. That'll usually stop any salesperson from the interruption because he or she won't want to join you in the prospecting quest.
Set your unavailable time for the hours before 11 a.m. It's uncanny, but the world seems to start delivering problems to your doorstep just before midday. I've dubbed this phenomenon the 11 a.m. Rule. If you set your “closed” hours prior to 11 a.m., you can get your important stuff done before you start to hear the buzz of trouble brewing outside your cubicle wall.
Scheduling time to manage and interact with your staff
If you're a manager, you walk a fine line: It's important to be available to staff to address issues and offer encouragement, but a manager who loses control of the border may discover that the flow of employee communication is akin to a circus parade with a never-ending line of elephants connected by trunks and tails.
Fortunately, you have a few additional ways to keep those elephant invasion forces at bay, preventing in-person interruptions while maintaining your role as a teamwork facilitator and employee go-to resource. Both management techniques center on blocking time in your schedule to interact with staff so you put constraints on the open-door policy. Creating specific time blocks to interact with the staff allows you to shut your door and focus a greater percentage of the day so you follow your schedule more readily. The times before and after lunch — when you're likely between projects — are excellent for open-door hours.
Creating an open door of specific appointment times for your people, whether they are physically present or work remotely, can help you be more effective with your time.
Here are some options to approach this scheduled time for interaction:
- Making the rounds: A popular preemptive tactic that managers have followed since the first workplace self-help books came out, management by walking around, puts the time control back in the manager's domain. It suggests that making the rounds on a scheduled basis allows you to establish your availability and deflect those interruptions that could otherwise come later. Instead of getting snagged on the way to get a cup of coffee, you proactively seek out your staff, asking how their projects are going or if they have any concerns or issues you can help with.
A good manager can make the rounds as well with virtual staff members. By setting a time to call, text, or instant message remote team members daily or weekly, you can open up communication but also limit and control the time. Most virtual or remote staff members feel somewhat disconnected from other parts of your team; however, the regular checkins, even by instant message, can create a lifeline of connection.
Setting your rounds for the morning is a sound strategy, though it's a good idea to wait until everyone gets settled in at their desks, computers, and remote work areas, and the caffeine kicks in so they can respond to your “How's that proposal coming?” with some clarity.
- Having employees come to you: Establish your scheduled interaction time as open-office time for staff to drop in. Or require employees to make appointments to meet with you during that time.
One danger in setting up specific drop-in hours is that it puts you in a state of waiting. You may not get any takers of your time, but your ability to focus on any other work is more challenged because you're expecting to be interrupted at any moment. To avoid this, I've implemented scheduled-appointment hours in my office. I still set aside the same time block to be available to my staff, but I insist that they make appointments. They can't just stop in without notice.
You can require whatever advance notice you're comfortable with — 15 minutes or 15 hours. That way, if some of the time goes unbooked, you can schedule something else in that slot. You can choose to limit these appointments in length — 15 minutes, a half-hour — and you can require that employees explain what they want to talk about when they schedule so you can be prepared.
See Chapter 22 for more guidance if your job involves managing others.
Scheduling time offline
Used effectively, the use of the telephone, text, instant message, social media, and email can enhance performance, increase productivity, boost profitability, and expedite career growth. But there's a flip side: Because modern communication allows for easier interruptions, it creates a greater loss of production, performance, profitability, and advancement than ever before. And to a certain extent, these easy forms of electronic communication have taken many people hostage. Do you feel compelled to open all email immediately? Do you feel obligated to respond to a text or instant message within moments? Do you jump on to the next email even before you've responded to or resolved the previous email? Just as with cell phones, the fact that you can be reached easily and at any time seems to dictate that you must be available to anyone — all the time.
When you stop to open each and every email as soon as it arrives or answer the phone every time it rings, or the ding of the text or instant message, you are, in essence, multitasking, trying to perform one or more tasks simultaneously. And as I frequently point out, multitasking is just not time-efficient.
To keep your focus, set aside time — daily or several times per week — during which you simply do not take calls, respond to text or instant messages, check email, or allow other interruptions. Such prescheduled segments ensure blocks of concentration, a tactic certain to raise productivity and lower frustration. If you're concerned about being unavailable for too long of a time, then limit these periods to one or one and a half hours, with time afterward to return messages.
Letting email wait in your inbox
I am a firm believer in working offline. There's no way I can resist the temptation to check my email every time my computer tells me a message has arrived. The interruptions of texts, instant messages, and social media would take over my day. During your offline time, turn off your email notice, mute your cell phone, or disconnect from the Internet. Schedule your email, text, and social media time, and devote a reasonable time block to take care of it. Then turn email those programs off so you don't see the You've-Got-Mail icon on your computer or hear the ding in your ear until your next scheduled email session.
Or compose all your own email correspondence in your word processing program, and when you've completed, reviewed, tweaked, polished, and made sure each message says exactly what you want, you can go online and send those email messages. If you compose your email in a word processing program, you gain yet another advantage: This tactic serves as a safety precaution — you won't inadvertently shoot off a critical email before you're completely satisfied with it; no more “recalls.”
The toughest decision you may face is whether to check your email messages and social media first thing in the morning when you fire up your computer. Wait and knock out a few priorities first? Or open it up and relieve the suspense — and possibly get waylaid by some marauding issue you feel compelled to pursue? It's your choice — do what works best for you. But by staying offline for the bulk of your workday, you're likely to stay focused on the tasks at hand and get much more accomplished.
Stopping the ringing in your ears
Let your voice mail or assistant take phone messages. Voice mail is your not-so-secret weapon for dodging phone interruptions and taking back your time. If your system has a do-not-disturb button, push it or put your ringer on mute and you won't be tempted to ponder who called. If you're an executive, forward the calls to your assistant for a time or ask the receptionist to let your callers know that you're in an appointment and will call them back.
Additionally, give yourself times when you turn off your cell phone. The most brilliant innovation with these amazing devices? You can turn them off! Without missing a message, you can continue with your conversation, errand, or work without distraction and get back to the call when you're through. Of course, you may already protect yourself against uninvited interruptions by limiting who you give your cell number to. But unless you're awaiting an urgent call from your kids, your boss, or the state lottery commission, you can likely afford a period of off-time while you attend to important tasks that require your full concentration.
Screening interruptions before letting them through
You may need to make sure certain types of information can get through to you, even while your barriers shut out everything else. The solution is to screen your calls using caller ID or to have your assistant screen your calls for you.
If you're the boss, you're the wizard who turns business transactions into gold, and your assistant or receptionist operates the drawbridge, keeping out those who attempt to foil your efforts. Your administrative staff needs to adopt the gatekeeper philosophy. The first step is to set your business up as a fortress, making it hard to get in to see the royalty — you.
The administrative staff has total control of the drawbridge that grants access to the fortress. They should have a militant approach to allowing people access to you. You need to clearly identify to your staff who is to be granted access and who is not. Only a few people should pass easily through the gate; the rest should be screened thoroughly to see whether another team member can assist them first.
Arm gatekeepers with the tools necessary to identify and keep out intruders and the knowledge to recognize for whom to lower the drawbridge. Their role in managing access is instrumental to your productivity and that of the department. A properly armed assistant is able to
- Answer most questions from callers and eliminate the need to talk to you
- Capture enough information so that you're prepared with a response, which means a shorter interaction when you do get back to the individual
- Schedule an appointment for you
- Know which issues or requests require your immediate attention
- Take messages from people who must talk with you
Taking a message is more than just noting the caller's name, phone number, date, and time of the call. A highly trained assistant finds out the specific reason for the call and tries to handle the question right there on the spot. This is one of the biggest time-saving techniques of all. If unable to handle the situation on the initial call, the assistant finds out the answer and then returns the call.
If it's absolutely necessary for you to speak to the caller, set a specific time when you'll return the call, effectively making a mini-appointment for the return telephone call.
Those who don't have a loyal staff can turn to technology. What a miraculous invention, caller ID! By glancing at the phone number ID on your receiver, you can determine in a second whether it's a call you want to take. Not only is caller ID helpful for screening out unsolicited telemarketing calls, but you can also use it to determine whether a call is critical to take now. And at work, if you're on a roll on that big proposal and you'd only take a call from your boss, your phone helps you make that decision.
If you're working from home, you face some unique challenges in handling phone calls (they don't call it telecommuting for nothing!). Not only do you have to contend with more calls from the office (if you were there, you could at least put up a do-not-disturb sign on your door), but you also catch all the solicitation calls you'd miss if you were out of the house during the day. Plus there's a strange phenomenon at work for telecommuters: Both friends and business contacts seem to feel more comfortable interrupting your workday when you work from home. Then you add all the instant messages, texts, and social media in the mix. It can be harder to work from home because the lack of administration staff members that screen and protect you from time-wasters.
Limiting phone interruptions from loved ones
In some cases, family calls are the primary source of telephone interruptions. Have a frank talk with your family members about when it's appropriate to call you at work.
If you have young children, you know how they want to tell you all the cool things that happened during the course of their day, well before family dinnertime. You likely expect and welcome these calls. Certainly you want to set opportunities for them to reach you, but it's good to establish boundaries at the same time. You may, for example, ask your kids to call you and fill you in on their day at a certain time — say, after they get home from school or in the case of preschoolers, after lunchtime. Same goes for your spouse or partner.
Warning: Most job environments allow for some personal-call time, but few are tolerant of employees who receive calls throughout the day. That type of phone interruption can undermine your productivity, not to mention your career. At work, you really don't need the kinds of emotional distractions that'll dramatically affect your performance and productivity for the next 30 minutes, an hour, or even the rest of the day. Calls from family can move your mind to home even though your body is still at the office.
Caller ID for telecommuters is even more effective if you have two separate lines, one for work and one for personal calls. That way, you can tell by the ring which is which. When you're “at work,” you can choose to disregard the personal line — and if you're sitting down to a family dinner, you can ignore your work line with a clear conscience. Only my work number rings into my home office. I can't hear our personal residence line, so it doesn't distract me. A second phone line is a small monthly investment that helps me manage my time and increase my productivity.
Secondary Defenses: Minimizing Damage When Calls Get Through
If you set up the defense mechanisms and blocking techniques I cover throughout this chapter, you can avoid more than 90 percent of the interruptions that most people experience each day. But no matter the system or strategy you use to protect yourself, telephone interruptions are certain to penetrate your defenses. When this happens, your best strategy is to accept it and go with the flow. Okay, so an interruption slipped past your perimeter: Instead of expending effort to repel the breach, just deal with it. A negative attitude or reaction is likely to cause more damage and waste more time than simply resolving the matter that made its way to you.
The most effective technique to help you adhere to time-blocking is to plan for the distractions that'll undoubtedly come. You may use the preemptive strike technique, which allows you to deal with distractions from others on your terms. In this section, you discover a few plans for handling the phone calls that make it through to you.
Delegating the responsibility
When the call penetrates your defenses, attempt to delegate the call to someone who can handle it for you. Inform the caller that you're booked, buried, under a deadline, committed, or heading into a meeting — and that you're shifting the responsibility for the call as the fastest way to resolve the problem or challenge. Assure the caller that you're bringing in someone qualified to help.
You also convey a strong reassurance when you explain that the other person is better equipped to resolve the situation. Often, especially if you're the boss, clients and business contacts want to talk to you. When you confess that you aren't the best person to fulfill the request, you're more likely to gain the caller's confidence that you have his or her best interests in mind.
Shortening or condensing the conversation
When a call does sneak past the fortress guard, your best defense is to bring that call to a close as quickly as possible. Your focus has been broken, and it'll require five minutes from the point you wrap up the call to regain your momentum. You want to keep the conversation short so you can get back in the groove.
Inform the caller upfront how much time you can offer. You may, for example, explain that you're in the middle of an important project and have only ten minutes available. You can also plead an appointment — and if you've implemented the time-block schedule (see Chapter 5), you've blocked out your day, your claim is true.
Some people feel uncomfortable about cutting calls short in this way, especially with clients or prospective customers. Giving the caller a time limit feels abrupt. But it doesn't have to. Here's one way your speech may go:
“I know we can resolve your problem, but I have an appointment in ten minutes that I have to keep. If we can't resolve the problem to your satisfaction in the ten minutes, then we can set a time to talk later today to finish up.”
This approach still gets you off the phone in the allotted time but gives you an out. The customer can also feel better that you're offering more time. I've used this technique for years with high-maintenance clients. Rarely do we need the additional conversation, but they appreciate my offer all the same.
Rebooking discussions for a better time
If now's a bad time to handle the call, then reschedule. The caller certainly doesn't know your schedule, and it probably never occurred to the caller that this could be a bad time. Offer a brief explanation — you're in a meeting, on your way to an appointment, or simply tied up at this time. Then without allowing time for a response, offer two options of when you're available:
“I'm not able to give your situation the full attention it deserves at this moment. Can we schedule a phone meeting for this afternoon after three or first thing tomorrow morning?”
By offering options, you give back some control to the caller. If you've been caught without your day planner, give a general time, such as Wednesday morning or Thursday afternoon. Then don't forget to transfer the call appointment to your planner.
Handling Recurring Interruptions by Co-Workers
Being very clear on your personal boundaries is essential with your co-workers. However, there's a fine balance between being viewed as a hermit, loner, or outcast and conveying your commitment to your job and the deadlines that you've been given, so you have to approach the confrontation with finesse.
Especially if the interruption outbreak is a department-wide epidemic, suggest to your supervisor that the team get together to talk about solutions. By coming together as a department or work group, each individual is more likely to take ownership of the situation. Call a team meeting to discuss workflow, distractions, and interruptions. As a group, you can brainstorm solutions and come up with a strategy that everyone can buy into. Because you're all making a commitment in each other's presence, everyone is more likely to honor it.
Time-wasting co-workers fall into a few categories, each of which can cause you interruptions that are detrimental to your career. You first have to figure out which category the offender falls into so you can respond in a way that'll effectively remedy the specific situation. In this section, I preview four of the most common colleague categories and some signs to watch out for. These individuals may be hard workers, possibly overburdened, and very productive. Unfortunately, they sap a lot of their productivity from their co-workers, often disrupting others in the office to seek assistance, whether it's emotional support or actually trying to pass off specific tasks.
The colleague with nothing to do
Face it: In most companies, the division of labor is rarely parceled out equally — not fair, maybe, but it's a fact of life. For you to survive with your time intact, you need to recognize who's not carrying his or her share of the work. Why? Because to add insult to injury, these are often the same people who sabotage the efforts of those who do the bulk of the work by interrupting their productivity. These folks often pop into your space, flop into a chair, and strike up a conversation about anything and everything.
If you get interrupted by someone who clearly doesn't have enough to do, ask her what she's working on. What are her priorities and deadlines? Inform her of yours and ask for her help. Asking offenders to help or to work sends most of them the other direction to their own cubicles — voila!
The colleague who just doesn't want to work
I may be in the minority on this view, but I think people who waste time on their company's dollar are stealing a portion of their paycheck from their company. Workers owe the company that pays their salaries and benefits their best efforts for the whole time they're working. The people who lumber along, encourage others to waste time, take two-hour lunches, and generally don't give their best effort have a character flaw. The problem is that you can't help these individuals a whole lot. Your boss needs to be the one to lay down the law.
Make sure your own responsibilities aren't at risk. In time-management terms, give a few minutes, and someone will take an hour. That means you can't sugarcoat the issue with co-workers. You have to be direct and firm, noting (with a smile) that you don't have time for frivolity. Better to confront your co-worker than miss a deadline and be viewed as not trustworthy of performance under pressure. Don't allow someone else's agenda to diminish you in the eyes of your boss.
If all else fails, go to your boss for help. If the time-waster is influencing your performance, then your boss will want to know. Be careful not to create a link between your frustration in telling the lazy co-worker she's lazy and talking to the boss. Give yourself a few days between each discussion so you reduce the chance of backlash.
The employee who's wrapped up in his world
Some people are excited about everything in life, especially their family and outside interests. They're constantly talking about their weekend, their date last night, their favorite team, and their family ad nauseam. Their focus is so scattered and their excitement is so high that they're almost like a Dalmatian jumping at your feet for attention. The real challenge is that like a Dalmatian, they don't get the subtle hints you drop that you're busy. It's as if you have to hold them still, bring your face to theirs, and say, “I am busy!” nose to nose. Be direct.
The person who treats work as her sole social outlet
Some people have such a limited life outside of work that they want to know all about yours. They live vicariously through your life experiences, from dating to family to your weekends past or future. Short of being their dating or activity secretary, you need to limit the interaction. The lunch hour is usually a bad option for talking with these people because it can wipe out time before and after lunch as well as lower productivity, but if you want to help them get their lives in order after work, go for it.
Dealing with Interruption-Oriented Bosses
In most companies, probably the biggest offenders who interrupt the staff are people in supervisory positions. In some ways, this is understandable. These folks are presumed to have an inside track on corporate priorities and often have to call upon staff to change gears and redirect their efforts. It's no surprise when the director whips into your cubicle, announcing that you've just been tagged to take on the company's latest and greatest new program — and you're to put anything else on the back burner. However, that's a far cry from the boss who sidles into your guest chair and launches an hour rant on executive office demands, reduced budget, and upcoming weekend plans. Or the one who drops in every 15 minutes to ask you how you're coming on that report that's due in 3 hours.
Most bosses aren't out to find ways to deliberately disrupt their employees’ work. More than likely, they're focused on their goals — whether those goals are meeting sales quotas, completing a project on time, reducing costs, or maintaining production. And in their quest to meet those goals, they're often simply not sensitive to others’ need for focus.
Enlisting the cooperation of your direct supervisor can be a bit touchier than confronting a co-worker with your interruption issues. It may take some more diplomacy and tact, but it can and must be done. Meeting with your boss to discuss your time-block schedule or to ask your boss to help you with your schedule is a good opening salvo. Get your boss's commitment not to interrupt you during a certain segment of your day — it can pay large dividends for you both.
The seagull manager
It's hard to gain control of the seagull manager. These types of managers do the aerial attack of interruption by flying over, pooping on everyone, and flying back out. Their bombing run of new ideas, changed priorities, and emergency deadlines is ever-changing because their organization and skills in management are lacking.
This type of manager is generally young and inexperienced in management and motivation. These managers can also be overly aggressive and unrealistic about the results that can be achieved in a specified time frame. The truth is that in my younger days and even once in a while now, I can put myself into that category.
With seagull managers, your best bet is to play up to their desire to achieve. Point out that you understand the importance of the department pulling together to help meet these goals. Confirm with your boss that the work you're currently involved in is in alignment with those goals. (You may uncover that it's not — and that may be the reason for your boss's repeated interruptions.)
If you get an affirmative, however, you then have an opportunity to ask for your boss's help in assuring that you fulfill your role in the process. The talk may go this way:
“I want to do everything I can to help meet our goal. As I understand your expectations, I need to devote at least X hours of uninterrupted time each day to this work. To make sure I'm investing that time on the right tasks, would you like to meet briefly to go over what I plan to accomplish during that period?”
With a response like this, you establish that you're on board with the boss's agenda and you assume an implied agreement that he or she believes that your work should be uninterrupted. But by asking for the boss's advice on your approach, you soften your declaration and offer an opportunity for the boss to reaffirm your need for uninterrupted time.
The verbal delegator
The verbal-delegator type of manager can really gum up productivity and performance. In my experience with skilled staff members, delegating small projects, small tasks, and deadlines works better through writing. The verbal delegator often delegates because something popped into his head and he wants to move it off his plate because he doesn't want to think about it again. He moves into some subordinate's world at that moment, regardless of schedule.
Your best solution is to try to turn the verbal delegator to a nonverbal delegator. To do so, urge your boss to put any work request in writing. This ensures that you get the directions straight and avoids the risk that the boss will double-assign a task. The icing on this cake is that you reduce the number of interruptions. If your supervisor has to put the order in writing, he's sitting at the computer writing up an email rather than buzzing you on the phone or stopping in your cubicle. If you're working with a boss who's still in the information cul-de-sac trying to find his way to the information highway, then use written request forms instead. You can use something as simple as the example in Figure 15-1.
Working with Intrusive Clients
Most businesses have customers of some sort — and most embrace a philosophy of placing a high level of value on their customers. From department stores to fast-food drive-throughs, most companies follow some iteration of “the customer is always right.”
That said, you know that to provide the best service to each customer, you have to seek some balance. If the squeaky-wheel clients take up more than their share of your time and resources, you won't be able to give the attention to other deserving customers. Although all customers and clients are important to a growing and thriving business, some believe they're more important than others — even if they aren't. Some customers just require more attention, and they often manifest those feelings by being more disruptive. Their interruptions are simply cries for attention — they want to be valued and appreciated.
The truth is that some customers and clients really do have more value than others to the company. Their revenue to the company is larger. They buy products and services that have higher profit margins. They're more influential in the marketplace as your advocates in sending you more business through referrals. To assume that all customers and clients are alike is a naïve approach.
When dealing with intrusive clients and investing large amounts of time, make sure they're worth it. If they're high maintenance, they must be also high revenue and high reward. In the following sections, I tell you how to handle customers who want attention.
A little attention goes a long way
I'm amazed at how taken for granted customers and clients are in today's business world. Expressing appreciation packs a powerful professional punch. When was the last time you were thanked or told, “I appreciate your business,” by your attorney, doctor, dentist, accountant, realtor, dry cleaner, gas station attendant, grocery clerk, barista, or food server? Just that simple act stands out significantly as a positive interruption for clients.
A preemptive strike can reduce the interruptions you may entertain from some of your more high-maintenance clientele. Here are a few strategies for making your customers feel appreciated and — at the same time — reducing interruptions from them:
- Send a handwritten thank-you note for their business. Then send one again any time they upgrade, add to their order, or increase their business with you.
- Remember their birthdays. Send a handwritten card or small token.
A terrific service for mailing cards is Send Out Cards. You can program a business follow-up plan for key clients or even your nephew's birthdays for years in advance with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Call them on a regular basis. How frequently you should call depends on the business, the client, and other particulars. But a check-in for no other reason than to make sure everything is going okay racks up a lot of points.
- Deliver added value. Forward articles of personal or professional interest. Alert customers to resources, products, and services that may or may not be related to your business interests. This gesture conveys that you value the relationship beyond business motives. (See Chapter 8 for tips on keeping client information with a customer relationship management [CRM] program.)
Another technique is calling customers back and telling them that they're so important that you squeezed them into your schedule or that you called them first. This technique is extremely effective when you return a call before the appointed time. If you informed them on voice mail that you'll be calling them back at 11 a.m. and you manage to get your priorities done early and can start calling the high-interruption clients back at 10:30 a.m., they'll think you walk on water.
Setting clients’ expectations
Educating customers about your availability is important. Let new customers know your schedule and the best times to reach you as well as how to leave a message when you can't be reached. As part of this education, you also want to establish how quickly they can expect a response from you after they leave a message: Within 24 hours? The same business day?
What you're trying to avoid is the person who calls you back five times that day because you were in meetings. With every call, the client gets more frustrated you haven't called her back. Or worse yet, she reaches you on the fifth call before you're walking into your most important meeting of the day, creating the worst interruption of your life because she unloads on you and ruins your focus.
Creating reasonable expectations is key in good customer relations. Taking 24 hours to return a client's call may be reasonable — but it won't seem that way if the client expects to hear from you within an hour.
As for existing clients and customers, be sure to update them whenever your availability circumstances change. If, for example, your work hours are changing — maybe you're switching to part time or a four-day work week — notify customers of the schedule revisions and your new availability. Depending on the importance of the client and the immediacy of the situations you deal with, you may even want to let customers know when you're on vacation or on a business trip in which you can't be reached.
You can also reinforce wait times through your voice mail message. By leaving your availability and response details as part of your message, callers are more likely to recall and retain. Here's an example:
“You've reached Dirk Zeller. I am out of the office today, Tuesday, September 2nd. Please leave a message and I will return your call by end-of-day Wednesday, September 3rd. If you need immediate assistance, please call so-and-so. Until then, make it a great day!”
I've set the scenario: The caller shouldn't expect a return call from me today. And in fact, because I'll be returning to an inbox filled with calls, email, and correspondence, I may not be able to get back until as late as the end of the day. I've offered, however, a backup plan if the situation is more urgent. This should satisfy virtually anyone who calls.
Don't be tempted to include “If it's an emergency, call me on my cell phone” unless you're prepared for lots of interruptions. After all, isn't interruption exactly what you're trying to avoid?