46 | The "Always On" Problem [TDTH Challenge #13]

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Transcript

Welcome And The Weekly Challenge

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey y'all, welcome back to Turn on the Hustle. I'm really glad you're here for this week's challenge because this is one of those things that sounds extremely simple on paper, but it can completely change how your business feels day to day. Today we're talking about setting business hours and actually sticking to them. And I know for some of you, it's going to hit a nerve just a bit because if we're being honest, a lot of us, including me, are running our businesses in between everything else. You're answering messages while making dinner, checking your phone before bed, replying while you're sitting in the pickup line, and waking up to messages that came in overnight and feeling like you need to get right on them. There's currently a video going around on the internet that says that running your own business looks like you're in a toxic relationship online. It's like people standing off in like random corners intently glued to their phone. If you've seen it, it's really funny. Either way, though, it gets exhausting. If you're new here, the Turn Down the Hustle challenges, they are short practical episodes for t-shirt sellers just like you who want to build a business that feels easier to run. Every week we focus on one small but strategic action that helps reduce chaos, build clarity, and save you time. And this week's challenge is all about protecting your time without making your customers feel ignored either, because setting business hours is not bad customer service. It's actually part of good customer service. It's giving your customers those clear expectations and you some room to breathe. Today we're going to talk about why business hours matter, how to decide what yours should be, how to separate customer service time from actual work time, where to tell your customers to contact you, and where to display your hours so they can find them. By the end of this episode, I want you to feel confident enough to put some boundaries in place and stop feeling like your business gets access to you at all hours of the day.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

You're listening to Turn Down the Hustle, the podcast dedicated to transforming how you run your creative online t-shirt business by working smarter, not harder, so you can spend more time with your wife, people, and passions that matter most in your life. So throw on your favorite graphic tea and turn up the heatfrost. Because it's time to turn down the hustle. Here's your host, digital marketer, culture lover, t-shirt maker, freckled hype girl, and owner of Sunkiss virtual assistant, Amy.

Choose Hours That Fit Real Life

Separate Support Time From Work

Pick Your Official Contact Channels

Set Response Times And Auto Replies

Where To Display Hours Everywhere

Best Practices And The Challenge

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Let's start with the mindset piece because I personally think this is where many of us get stuck. A lot of sellers may feel weird about setting business hours because their website is always open. It's not like the traditional sense of my business is open from nine to five. It's different when we are running it online or from home. And yes, your website is open 24 hours a day. Shout out for another plug for having a website and why I like it so much. Because even if you are not taking orders to send invoices via messages, your website can still clock all of those orders for you. So if you don't have a website, that's something you should start thinking about. Your Facebook page exists all day. Your email inbox keeps receiving messages whether you're awake or asleep, but your website being open does not need you to be open as well. Those are two completely different things. Your customers are not expecting you to respond at midnight, the majority of them, if just because they send a message at midnight. Most reasonable people understand that a small business owner is not sitting by their phone waiting to reply to every message instantly. I've always thought to myself, like, I want every customer to feel like they're my only customer, like my customer service is just that good, but at the same time, I need that customer to know they're not my only customer. What your customers do want is clarity. They want to know where to reach you, when can they expect to hear back? What to do to do if they have questions. When all of those things are unclear, it can get a little bit frustrated for a customer. That's when you get the double message. We love the double messages. Who thought that if you someone didn't respond, you should send it again? That's when someone comments on a post, then sends an email, and then follows up in your inbox because they don't know where they're supposed to go or where you're supposed to reply. I just recently had that where someone had an issue with an order like accessing a file, sent an email, opened up their email. I was actively getting them access to a Google Drive or the Shopify download link. And then at the same time, I got a notification that so-and-so commented on my Facebook post, stopped replying in the email, went to the Facebook post, and noticed that the person sent me the exact same thing. They just sent me an email on a Facebook comment. Which side note, email is the best place to reach people. But I was just like, oh my gosh, can you just give me one second? I am actively responding right now. But because you double commented, it actually stopped me from getting you the customer service quicker. So yeah, no one cares for a double comment or a double message, but you want to make sure that they get some sort of email reply or something to let them know what to expect. So anytime you send me an email, it has an auto email that goes back to you that has a list of what you can expect for a reply time, so you know when you can reasonably expect to hear back. And then to add to that, it feels like on your end as a business, it feels like business is always tapping you on the shoulder. Hey, you got a new message. Hey, you gotta do this, hey, you gotta do that. That's what we want to fix. Clear business hours don't make you look unavailable, they just present your business as organized and thought through. It truly, to me, does signal that you're running a real business, not just reacting all day. And I think that helps customers trust you more, not less. When a customer sees that you have support hours listed and a response window in place, it tells them you have thought through your processes. It says, I know this business, I know how communication works here, I know what you can expect, and that to a customer can be calming and it's calming to you. Now let's talk about real life because not every t-shirt seller is working the same kind of schedule. Nine to five versus five to nine schedulers. Some of you are working your business during the day, maybe this is your full-time thing, or maybe you have blocks a time in the daytime where you can focus on it. Others of you, like me, you are five to nine sellers. You work a full-time job, come home, handle dinner, work out, maybe you have kids, you're taking care of life, whatever, kitchen up with your spouse, and then you squeeze in your business into the evening hours. Both are valid. I really want to say that because I think a lot of people feel like their business hours need to look quote unquote professional, which means to them Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. But if that is not your life, that does not need to be your business hours. Your business hours should reflect when you are realistically available to provide customer service. If that's seven to nine at night, that's okay. If that's Tuesday through Friday from 10 to 2, that's okay. If you do admin work on Sunday afternoons and customer support on weekday evenings, that's cool too. The goal is not to necessarily mimic another business's schedule or what you expect. The goal is to create a schedule you actually think you can honor. The problem is not that you do not have business hours per se. The problem is usually that you're operating with invisible ones or you think people can read your mind in your head when you're available, but your customers do not. So they reach out whenever, and then you feel guilty if you do not reply right away. That's where the burnout starts. It's so much easier to stick to your boundaries when you actually have to find them. Now, I'm not saying I want our customers to refrain from reaching out to us. I want them to reach out to us. However, this is just guiding when they can expect to hear back from us. Now, I want to help you think about this in a way that makes it easier to set up. I don't want this to be overwhelming. You're not just setting business hours. Essentially, what you're doing is you're creating your customer support strategy. In other ways, in other words, how do you want customer communication to work in your business? So think about that for a minute. That starts with deciding your customer service hours. And I want to be clear here, customer service hours are not the same thing as work hours. So maybe business hours are interchangeable with customer service hours as an e-commerce business. Just because you are working does not mean you are available for customer support. You might be pressing shirts, sorting inventory, photographing products, working on your website, like building listings, working on your blank order or batching content. That is all work, but it doesn't mean you have to stop every 10 minutes and answer a message. If you're constantly interrupting yourself to answer people in real time, you're not just losing focus. You are training your customers to expect instant access to you. So ask yourself this when am I available to answer customers? And separately, when am I available to work on projects and orders? Those don't have to be the same. And then whenever you decide your production work hours are, that's what's helping you shape your turnaround time. So that doesn't necessarily need to be factored into your customer support hours or business hours. Those are two different things. So you might decide though that your customer service happens from eight to nine in the morning and six to seven at night. Like when are you logging in to check emails or messages? Dedicating set time to time block to do those things. But your production work might happen from seven to nine at night after all the messages are answered. You can break it up like that. You might decide that you only answer customer questions Tuesday through Friday and you use Monday for catching up. Whatever you choose, just make sure you decide on it for whatever works for you and whatever is realistic. And then you want to set a response expectation. Something like messages are answered within 24 business hours. That sentence works really well because it gives you some room and sets a standard, and it takes away the feeling that you have to respond instantly to show like you're there or you care. And don't get me wrong, a lot of us are not overwhelmed by the messages themselves. We are grateful to have customers to respond to. Sometimes we just get overwhelmed by the pressure feeling like we need to respond right now. And when you clearly say your response time, that pressure starts to lift. I want to hit on something a little bit more. Customer service hours versus your working hours. This is worth slowing down on because I think it's one of the biggest shifts that can help your audience. Like I mentioned, customer service hours and work hours are not the same. If you're in the middle of pressing a stack of school shirts, that doesn't mean you're available. If you're packaging porch pickup orders, that doesn't mean you need to be checking Messenger. If you're recording content, building a listing, making gang sheets, you don't need to be toggling back and forth between work and your inbox. That constant switching is one of the fastest ways to make yourself feel burnt out. Ask me how I know. It makes everything take longer, it makes you feel scattered, it makes your business feel a little bit more stressful than what it needs to be. So I want you to give yourself permission to protect your focus. You are allowed to have work blocks when you're not answering customers, you're allowed to have customer service blocks when you're not trying to do production at the same time. That separation can make your business feel a lot more manageable. It also helps you communicate better, in my opinion. When you're intentionally in customer service mode, you are more president, you are not half answering a message while trying to weed a design or package in order, and that improves the customer experience too. I notice that whenever I'm answering messages on the go, like in the car at a stoplight, you name it. Sometimes I'll hit a response and then I realize I didn't include everything. So I have to message again to send them more information about their order or something like that. But whenever I'm home sitting down at my desk, I feel like I can get the first message, one message, just all well thought out and sent the first time versus trying to get them a quicker reply that might not be as high quality. Okay, how do you want customers to contact you? Now let's talk about communication channels because this is a big one. You need to decide where you want customers to contact you, not where they currently message you, not every random place they have access to you. Where do you want them to go? For some, this might be your business page messages, it might be your business email, it might be a contact form on your website. Either way, I would strongly encourage you to pick one or two main places and consistently direct people there. Because when messages are spread across personal Facebook, business page messages, Instagram DMs, comments, emails, text, things are going to get missed. And when things get missed, it's frustrating for both parties. And this is also I want to hit on where boundaries for your personal account matters. If people are constantly reaching out to you on your personal profile and you don't want that, it's okay to adjust your settings or turn off message request where possible. For a while, I noticed I started when I lived in Japan, that was the primary method of which I would communicate with friends and family. But I noticed I started dreading opening up my Facebook Messenger app and I didn't know why. That's where I talked to all my loved ones. I was getting an overwhelming amount of people commenting, actually messaging me to my personal account, even with message requests on. Like I was not in a moment where I wanted to be focusing on business, maybe as a weekend, whatever. And I wish that I could just filter all of those business inquiries somewhere else. So the fix for that is you can turn message requests off. So if they aren't your friend on Facebook, they can't request to message you at all. It's okay to stop answering business questions from your personal page and redirect them to your business page or email. The best way to do that is typically people we usually message the place they see you engaging most. So if you want customers to reach out to you through your business page, I want you to be posting and commenting more from your business page. Reply to comments from your business page, post from your business page. But if you're constantly engaging from your personal profile, that's where it's easier to just click your profile and hit message. Whereas if your business page is constantly appearing in your group or wherever, that's going to make it easier for them to just click that profile and message. So for that strategy, it's not just about telling people where to contact you, it's also reinforcing that by how you show up and which page you're commenting from. Okay, once you know your hours and your main contact method, now you need to communicate what customers can expect. And this is where you tell them how long it usually takes to hear back from you. And again, I'm a huge fan of simple language here. You don't need anything fancy. Something like customer messages are answered Monday through Friday during business hours. Please allow up to 24 hours for a response time. And you can even include the specific business hours listed in that message. It's clear, it's realistic, and it puts you on a path to protecting your piece. You can also back that up with simple after-hour support messages. It doesn't need to be like a big fancy chatbot or a paid subscription software. It's just thinking about how customers can still get help even when you're not active online. Maybe that looks like an automatic reply on your Facebook page that says thanks for reaching out. We'll respond during our business hours and get back to you within 24 hours. In the meantime, you can find common questions to answers here and then link your FAQ page. You don't have an FAQ page, that was a prior episode, so make sure you go check that out and get that built. You could also add it to your order confirmation email that includes tracking your policy links so they don't need to message you for basic info. Maybe a pen post in your Facebook group explaining where to reach you and what your hours are. My point is, either way, customers don't always need you to be live. They just need a path to contact you and an expectation set of when to hear back from you. I mentioned earlier in this episode, I have an automated reply email to where it allows people to see all of my FAQs and then also when they can hear back. But it just basically confirms, thank you for reaching out, conf confirming that your email has landed in my inbox. I'll get back to you soon. Where are we going to display all of these business hours? Let's make sure that people now see the hours because if you know them in your head, they're not helping anyone. Easiest place to start, I'd say, is your website footer. That's visible across your entire website page, no matter where they go. And customers naturally know to look at the bottom of a website page for important information. You can also add it to your contact page. That's one of the first places people go when they want help, so it makes sense to put them there. You can put them in your email signature block, put them in your automated replies, Facebook page, email, bio. The more places you repeat it, the more normal it looks and the more visible it is, the less awkward it'll feel to stick to it. Like it won't become as a surprise to anyone. Now let's finish up with a few best practices here. First, I want you to prioritize self-service wherever you can. If a customer can find the answer in your FAQ page, a tracking email, policy page, that is one last message you have to answer. So make sure you have common questions listed to where maybe they don't even have to reach out at all. Second, know that your hours can flex during busy busy seasons. If you want to extend your customer service hours during a holiday rush or sale week, that's okay. Just make it the exception, not the expectation, please. And third, just keep it simple. You don't need to overthink this. You don't need a complicated help desk or ticketing system unless goals, that's where your business is right now. It's not where mine is. Clear hours, clear contact methods, clear response window. That will do for most small businesses. So here's your challenge for the week. Set your business hours. Pick the days and times when you're available to respond to your customers. Make sure they fit your actual life, not just assuming it needs to be nine to five. Then decide where you want customers to contact you and how long they can wait for a response. Once you have that, update your footer, contact page, signature, auto replies. And then the hardest part is sticking to it. That's probably the hardest challenge. Not just writing it down, but actually honoring it. As we wrap up, I want you to remember this boundaries in your business do not mean something bad, like bad customer service. They are good systems. They create clarity for your customers and freedom for you. Freedom inside your own business. And that is what Turn Down the Hustle is all about. Putting simple systems in place that make your business easier to run and let you stop feeling like you have to be available every second of the day. Thank you for hanging out with me for this week. Next week, we're gonna keep on building on the systems that support your business behind the scenes. Until then, set those hours, protect your peace, and turn down the hustle.