How often do you want to reach through the screen, put your hands around a lead’s scrawny rediculous-question-creating neck, and squeeze?  Don’t do it - and put down the stapler.  You will only hurt yourself in the longrun.  Remember, YOU are the expert and your visitors attend your website because of that.  They ask questions because they want your guidance - and hopefully, your products.  Please don’t expect them to always know how to ask for it.  In fact, you should embrace the chance to teach them. 

Always respond positively and politely to emails and contact form leads.  You will receive questions that seem stupid, downright ignorant, rude, or as if the visitor thought he was on a completely different site.  Expect those leads and respond to them as positively as if they had just told you the lottery picked your number.  There will be times when you (or your email response person) will want to respond sarcastically or even not at all but you must reject those urges and teach your salespeople to as well.  Some leads will be more valuable than others and it is tempting to dismiss some as worthless but you should always respond positively and politely to every lead. 

Even though you might not be able to profitably help a customer, respond with appreciation and offer an alternative product or the name of a competitor that might serve them better.  If you can help them with a link on your site then help them.  If you can reply with a referral, copy the company to whom you are referring that visitor and you will have made another friend in your business (colleagues in your industry will often repay the favor).  Look at every site inquiry as an opportunity to give someone something great to say about your website and business.  Many of your leads (however they come to you) will purchase your products and some of them will not but they should all have something nice to say about you. 

Define what level of service you want your site to be known for and clearly communicate that expectation to your employees from site designers, email responders, and salespeople.  You can really boost the word-of-mouth publicity for your site by dedicating yourself to well-written valuable information and fast and positive responses.  The best (and cheapest) traffic you can build is traffic created by people telling other people about your site and adding links to their own sites because of the wealth of information you have and the impressive rate of response to site inquiries.  When you impress a lead with your fast response from an email inquiry he or she might be more inclined to purchase from you because response time is often an indicator (or perceived indicator) of the level of service they can expect from the rest of your company. 

Contact form leads from your site will increase if you post your promised response time.  Visitors tend to prefer the known versus the unknown.  Above the “contact us” form say something like, “Tell us how we can help you with your project and one of our associates will respond to you quickly.  We always respond to inquiries from our Contact Us form within 12 hours and often much sooner.”  Post your average response time if you know it.  I would be very impressed with a site that posted its average response time of 2 hours and 23 minutes and even more impressed if I heard back within 2 hours.  Your service level can be tailored based on the days you operate and how you operate.  If you are not open on weekends, state that clearly but state that someone will respond early Monday morning.  If you or someone on your sales or design team will answer emails on the weekend, you can maintain your level of service over the weekend.  You might find that commissioned salespeople are eager to accept the responsibility of the email leads over the weekend in exchange for the opportunity to take those leads themselves. 

It might be more difficult to respond to fax leads on the weekends.  In this case, build the expectation and guide them to the email with something like, “We will respond to your fax inquiries Mondays through Fridays.  If you prefer a response during the weekend, please use our Contact Us form for a response via email within 12 hours.”  Remember to set up your after hours and weekend voicemail system to guide leads in the same manner. 

Give your visitors options for contacting you, guide them to the best option for them, live up to your promises, and respond postively.  Your dedication to your service level is ultra-important so here is the overview. 

• Define your service level and dedicate yourself to maintaining that.
• Post your promised response time. 
• Guide leads through to the best contact method for their needs. 
• Respond positively and politely. 

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