If you directly deal with customers or clients are you wasting their time? The old saying that “time is money” is true — but even more important is the saying that “time is the most valued commodity.”
If you’re wasting my time, it takes away from other things I either need or want to do.
I mentioned before that I secure speakers for one event per year for a client of ours. Tasked with hiring 6 or 7 speakers, preparing contracts, coordinating calls, setting timings, verifying travel and securing ground transportation and more isn’t a cake walk, you guys. So out of 10 speakers proposed, only ONE has me pulling out my hair by the roots.
Sadly, it’s the EMPLOYEE of the speaker that is failing hard.
Each of the exchanges below took a separate email and resulted in over an hour of my time — and this is AFTER it took 3 emails and 2 unreturned calls to even get a response:
Her: Can we set it up for Friday afternoon at 3:30PM EST
Me: That will work. Please provide the email address you prefer the MS Teams invite to be sent to.
Her: What time did you confirm with them?
Me: You offered this Friday at 3:30 PM ET (5/19/23). That works within my client’s calendar.
Her: Ok, I just wanted to make sure! Thanks for the clarity.
Me: I still need the best email address please. And thanks!
Her: I responded already, but here it is again:
Me: As you can see by reviewing all correspondence between us below, I received nothing with those 2 email addresses until this most recent message. Thanks so much!
Her: Yes, I’m sorry, I see that now, it was stuck in my outgoing/drafts.
I thought it was rude to say, “I responded already, but here it is again.” Even if she HAD provided the email address once — which she didn’t — it was still an ugly way to treat a person wanting to spend around $30,000.
The worst part of all?
The speaker we’re trying to hire is great on stage, and is a very nice guy.
Don’t be that ugly employee that is a poor representation of the company or person you work for or with. Don’t waste the time of people that pay your salary. Just stop it already! 🙂
If this sounds like you and you think you’re doing the best you can — or if you think that you don’t have to work for the customer and at the minimum treat them kindly — then I know who would be much better at your job than you are!
TIL (Today I Learned): Only a slim majority of Americans realize Puerto Ricans are American citizens.