The following article was featured in our September edition of The Perceptionist. The statistical results pertain to maid services but the service can be applied to all Perceptionist customers.

How did your industry stand up against our Internet Inquiry Lead Test?

· Only 14% of maid services responded by phone or email within 1 hour of receiving an internet inquiry

· Only 40% responded within 24 hours!!

Your website has a “Contact Us” page or an internet inquiry box for good reason. But are you using it to your advantage? Perceptionist performed an internet lead test on the maid services industry and the results were less than impressive. We understand the predicament: you’ve got things to take care of that fall higher on the priority list. The customers you already have need your attention. You have to manage your employees to do the best job possible. New supplies need to be ordered… etc. As owner of a business, you’re too busy to sit around and wait for emails to respond to. But what would happen if you responded to these customers more quickly?

When we ran our response test we measured efficiency with two different classifications: Professional and Exceptional. Professional response would answer inquiries within 24 hours, 100% of the time, as well as make a minimum of three attempts over three days. Exceptional response would make an answer attempt within less than one hour of the inquiry and make a minimum of eight attempts over three days. Both of these classifications would make both phone and email attempts. So how did your industry do? 40% responded within 24 hours but only 11% made both phone call and email attempts. The results also averaged only 1 attempt over 7 days. Additionally, only 14% responded within 1 hour. So what does this mean in terms of Professional and Exceptional? A whole 0% of the results qualified as Exceptional and a mere 5% of the results qualified as Professional. This is an opportunity to gain more customers without spending a ton of money and you need to take advantage of it.

So what can you do to increase response time for internet inquiries? Let Perceptionist take care of it. When you have your internet inquiries forwarded to Perceptionist your business will benefit from increased customer satisfaction and more scheduled appointments. The customer won’t have time to continue surfing the web for your competition. When we receive the internet inquiry for your business, a highly trained Perceptionist will be able to respond to the customer within a quick and timely manner, always achieving Professional response rates. The more quickly we respond, the more likely it is that we will schedule an appointment. We will provide the same great service by offering pricing and service information.

In addition to capturing more sales, Perceptionist Outbound Internet Leads enables you to more effectively measure your internet advertising. We are able to provide you with the amount of inquiries received, the outcomes, our response times, and lead sources. Since Perceptionist schedules the appointment, we can follow that appointment all the way back to how the customer found you. Our tracking staff can put a code on each web-based advertisement that you have placed in order to see where the leads are coming from. The best part about Outbound Internet Leads is that the price is exactly the same as our regular scheduling. We only get paid for the appointments we schedule, so signing up for Outbound Internet Leads is risk-free.

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