Customer Service vs. Time Management: When Two Fundamental Business Practices Conflict

I’ve been in the business of providing training solutions to clients for about 12 years now. Over the course of that time span, some behaviors have become second nature to me, and I really don’t give them a lot of thought. My personal organization and time management are two examples. We’ll come back to these in a moment.



One day about a year ago, as I was going through a typical afternoon, my phone rang. I answered it, “Hi, this is Rob, how can I help you?”.


The woman on the other end said (I swear, verbatim), “Um… wow, you actually answered your phone!”


I figured it was someone who already knew me joking around, so I joked back, “Yeah, that’s what I do when it rings, I’m funny like that.”


Turns out, this person was a random call-in from a web lead who apparently had been trying to reach a live person for the past 2 hours. I wasn’t the first person she had called (far from it, and I guess I need to work on my web presence), but I was the first person to answer the phone. She had spent the last 2 hours in a voicemail/automated attendant hell.


Now, as professional salespeople, there’s not much we can do about automated attendants, but we can do a few things about our voicemail and phone behavior.


When I started on my first day at a technology training firm those 12 years ago, my sales manager had a routine that the entire sales group had to follow. From 8:30 til 11:00am, our phones were on “do not disturb” (inbound calls went straight to voicemail) and we were to focus on outbound calling only. This was so that we could maximize our outbound effort, and not be distracted by anyone calling in. His philosophy: if it’s important, they’ll leave a message.


The remainder of the day was for returning calls, follow up calls & emails, client visits, and all of the other activities that make up “selling”.


I personally have a big problem with blocking out time to that extreme, as it relates to the situation I described above. For me, it comes down to customer service. My customers need to know that when they have a question, I’ll be there to answer it. My company is relatively small, and I don’t want inbound callers deciding to reach out to a larger firm instead. Even in a larger firm with a bigger sales force, you don’t want the person who should have bought from you buying from another salesperson instead.


In my position, I have to wear many hats, so good time management skills are important to ensure I can get through my day. However, time management ALWAYS takes a back seat to good customer service, and that begins with answering the phone.