Closing Over the Holidays Without Losing Enquiries

What actually goes wrong

Not the closure itself, which everybody expects at this time of year.

The problem is silence: an enquiry sent on the twenty-seventh, no acknowledgement, and by the time anybody replies on the fifth the person has arranged somebody else.

Which is a lost job that nobody knows was lost, since the enquiry simply stops.

An acknowledgement saying when you will reply prevents nearly all of it, and takes ten minutes to set up.

Where the dates need to appear

• Your business listing hours, which is where most people check.
• A line on the website homepage.
• An autoresponder on the enquiry email.
• Your voicemail message.
• The form's confirmation message, if it can be changed.
• Your social page, if you have one.

The first is the one most often missed and the most consulted, since a business listing has a specific facility for holiday hours and an unchanged one tells people you are open.

The listing hours specifically

Worth doing properly, because it affects more than convenience.

A listing showing normal hours over a period when nobody answers produces phone calls that ring out, and repeatedly unanswered calls are a poor signal.

Most listing systems allow special hours to be set for specific dates, in advance, which then revert automatically.

Setting them in December for the whole holiday period takes a few minutes and handles itself.

The same applies to any directory listing showing hours, and to anything else stating when you are open.

A worked example

A business that closed for two weeks and did nothing else.

The website continued accepting form submissions, the listing showed normal hours, and the voicemail said the usual thing.

They returned to nineteen enquiries, of which they estimated a substantial proportion had already gone elsewhere.

The following year they set an autoresponder saying they were closed until a stated date and would reply then, and updated the listing.

They returned to a similar number of enquiries and lost noticeably fewer, because people had been told when to expect a reply and several had said they would wait.

The difference was an autoresponder and five minutes on the listing.

What the autoresponder should say

Short, specific, and containing one thing people can act on.

That you are closed, the exact date you return, and that their enquiry will be answered then.

Where anything is genuinely urgent, a route: a number that is monitored, or a named alternative.

What to avoid: a vague reference to the holiday period, which leaves somebody unable to judge whether to wait.

And avoid promising a reply sooner than you will manage, since a missed promise is worse than a longer honest one.

Deciding about urgent work

Worth settling before rather than during.

Some trades genuinely have emergencies over the holidays, and the honest options are covering, not covering, or referring.

Covering means somebody is actually available and the message says so.

Not covering means saying so plainly, which is entirely reasonable and better than implied availability.

Referring means naming somebody who is working, which is a service to the customer and reciprocated in practice.

The worst arrangement is ambiguity, where somebody with a genuine problem cannot tell whether ringing again will help.

The counter-case

Where none of this applies.

A business staying open throughout, which still benefits from confirming that on the listing, since customers assume otherwise.

Anything with no enquiry route to leave unattended, such as a business working entirely from a booked schedule.

And a genuinely emergency trade where the holidays are the busy period, where the message is the opposite and should say so prominently.

Being explicit about being open is worth as much as being explicit about being closed, and fewer businesses do it.

The form itself

Worth a decision, since leaving it running unattended is the default and not obviously right.

Leaving it open means enquiries accumulate and are answered on return, which is fine provided the confirmation message says when.

Turning it off means people are told immediately that nothing will be received, which is honest and loses the ones who would have waited.

On balance leaving it open with an honest confirmation message is better, since somebody who submits and is told the reply date has made an informed choice.

What is worth avoiding is a confirmation saying you will reply within twenty-four hours during a fortnight when nobody will.

Telling regular customers directly

Worth doing separately from anything public, and it takes ten minutes.

Anybody with work in progress, a job booked for January, or a maintenance arrangement should be told the dates by name rather than left to read a notice.

That is a short email or a text, and it prevents the specific problem of somebody with an ongoing job wondering whether they have been forgotten.

It also gives them a chance to raise anything before you go, which is considerably better than discovering it on the second of January.

Coming back

The part that determines whether the preparation pays off.

Work through the backlog on the first day rather than easing in, since the oldest enquiries are the ones most at risk.

Reply to everything, including the ones that are now too late, because a business that replies late is remembered better than one that never replies.

Turn the autoresponder off, which is routinely forgotten and produces the odd impression of a business permanently closed.

And check the listing reverted, if the hours were set manually rather than as dated exceptions.

Saying it early enough

A small timing point that changes the outcome.

Putting the closure dates up in early December, rather than on the last working day, lets people who need something before the break arrange it.

Which frequently brings work forward rather than losing it, since somebody who knows you stop on the eighteenth will phone on the fifteenth.

A line on the homepage and one post saying the last day for bookings is enough.

The version that loses work is announcing the closure once it has already started.

Before you close

1. Set holiday hours on your listing.
2. Set an autoresponder with the return date.
3. Change the voicemail.
4. Add a line to the homepage.
5. Decide about urgent work and say what you decided.
6. Diary the day you turn it all off.

The sixth prevents the January version of this problem, which is an autoresponder still telling people you are closed in the middle of the month.

Keeping those hours current generally is covered in opening hours nobody updated.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.