Response standard

A response standard is your promise about speed: in this channel, during these hours, a person replies within this time. You write it per channel, because a phone, a messenger and email work differently. It also names who replies and what happens outside working hours. The time to write down is the one your team keeps every day, the bad days included.

You set the standard yourself and check it against CRM data. For each inquiry the CRM holds the arrival time and the time of the first reply by a person; together they give the lead response time. Compare each inquiry with the standard for its channel and count how many were answered within it. Every channel has to land in the CRM. A channel outside it cannot be checked.

For example, in a messenger during working hours, within an hour.

Example (invented numbers): a team of four promises one hour in the messenger and four working hours for email, weekdays from 9:00 to 19:00. Whatever arrives later gets a reply by 10:00 the next morning. Each channel has one named person and one backup.

Each week, look at the share of inquiries answered within the standard, per channel, next to the median lead response time. The head of sales picks up today’s misses in the daily check and the trend in the weekly meeting. The owner sees it in the report, because the standard is a promise to customers.

Two decisions follow from it. A low share in one channel is a question of cover: lunch, evenings, sick days. A high share with few inquiries reaching a conversation points to what the first reply says. Tighten the standard only once the current one holds.

• Copying someone else’s standard. A fast promise you break on busy days does more harm than a slower one you keep. Start from your own last two weeks and pick a time your busiest day can meet.
• One standard for all channels. A phone call and an email cannot share a time. Write one line per channel.
• No rule for nights and weekends. Customers write then too. Say when the clock stops and what the customer hears in the meantime.
• A standard nobody checks. If the share within the standard is missing from the weekly page, the promise is quietly forgotten. Put it next to the other weekly numbers.

By Friday, the head of sales pulls the last two weeks of inquiries from the CRM. Find the median reply time per channel and the slowest working day. Write a draft standard: channel, hours, time, who replies, who covers. On Monday, agree it with the people who answer each channel, and start counting the share within the standard that same day.

A weekly meeting on stuck deals that ends with a decision and an owner for each.