Doing Business in the Virtual World
Sunday, August 31st, 2008In my last blog post “How to provide customer service online“, I generated some discussion from people at Hubspot regarding the speed in which they respond to customer inquiries. Needless to say, my comment section was filled with people from Hubspot within an hour plus I got a follow up email from Bonnie Lieberman, the person who was handling my account. Bonnie raised a great question that got me thinking for 5 days through my sleepless nights (no Bonnie didn’t cause me to lose sleep). The question she asked was:
“…we are mostly virtually connected – would you feel differently if you knew the person writing back to you at midnight was wearing PJs and bunny slippers…?”
Now I will have a good idea what people might look like when I get a response at 9 pm or 12 am. Maybe I can let my imagination run wild when I get a response from people at any time of the day if they are “virtually connected”. 
In the old school business world, how you look was (and still is) very important. People judged you by the location of your office, how you dress, how you present yourself, and how you speak. In the new virtual business world, people still care about looks, but now, it is about how well the website is designed, how well the content is presented, how well the product / services worked, and how well you respond to social media comments and client inquiries.
When I first started in the online retail business 5 years ago, I was a doctorate student who was doing the customer service for an online retail store. I tried really hard to answer email and phone inquiries within office hours to make it look like I was working from an actual store location somewhere. Weekends were the hardest, someone would call my “office line” and it would be ringing in my bedroom and I thought I needed to ignore those phone calls and let them leave a message. This way, it will appear like we had “office hours”.
Fast forward 5 years to 2008 and things are now drastically different. I am now running my own business and getting emails from people at all hours of the day. Maybe this is because our clients come from all over the world. There is no such things as “office hours” anymore and I certainly do not feel like I have to confine myself to an “office” from 9 am to 5 pm. Last week, a client who is using our online accounting software called from Singapore at 11:30 am my time. He told me that he had to make sure he was awake at 2:30 am his time to reach me during my “office hours”. Poor guy! I told him next time he could book an appointment with me over email and I would happy to talk to him at 9 am his time (6 pm my time). He told me he thought sending an email would be too slow. Personally, I don’t know who he has been dealing with to make him think that email is slow. Since then, he and I only communicate via email and it has been fast enough for him not to bother calling on the phone anymore.
I also like the level of authenticity and comfort people have with regards to disclosing that they are “virtually connected” i.e. “working from home”. In fact, I really appreciated Bonnie’s authentic email response because I feel like I am connecting with someone like me! 
