The clocks have gone back and most of us enjoyed an extra hour of free time. Sometimes we all wish for a couple of extra hours in the day. But if this is a regular occurrence for you, you may need to work on your time management.

Time management is an essential tool for keeping work levels under control, achieving goals and minimising stress levels.

In theory it’s simple – create a schedule of priorities, and work on the highest priority task first. Unfortunately in the real world it isn’t always that easy.

Here’s our quick 5 point plan to help you manage your time more effectively – without taking up very much of it:

1. Set Goals.

First things first, decide what you want to do with your time. Set goals. Once you know where you’re going you can work out the quickest way to get there. Make the effort now to set clear, achievable goals and then work backwards from them.

2. Priorities, priorities!

Once you know what your goals are, decide exactly what you need to do to achieve them. Then list all of the other daily tasks that you need to do too. List all of these in order of importance. In other words, what would be the consequences if you didn’t do something? This should make it easier to prioritise. It’s important to not just make a generic ‘To-do’ list. You’ll be overwhelmed and probably won’t do any of it.

3. Scheduling.

So you have a list. You know what’s important. Now you need to make sure that you have the time set aside to complete the things that need to be done first. Avoid procrastinating. Putting things off until later will leave you firmly back at square one, overwhelmed and short of time.

4. Be Realistic

If you know something takes two days, don’t try and finish it in one. If you need help to complete a project, ask for it. If you know you work best in the morning, don’t start your most important project at 5pm. Avoid distractions where possible. Allow for interruptions in your schedule and plan accordingly.

5. Managing Interruptions

Interruptions are a fact of life. It’s how you deal with them that makes the difference. Try the two minute rule. Allow yourself two minutes to deal with anything urgent that crops up and no more. Then return to the task in hand. If you’re really up against a deadline, switch off email notifications and check them once an hour (or less). Get someone else to act as receptionist and screen your calls.

With telephone answering services from CSnotepad you can manage your time more effectively.
Let our Virtual Receptionists help you to get the job done.

E-mail may seem like the fastest and most efficient way to communicate. But it is really?

A recent survey of the top 100 American internet retailers found that customers waited an average of one minute and forty one seconds to talk to a human being on the telephone, compared to an average of seventeen hours to receive a response to an e-mail.

And in addition to being a lot faster it seems that the telephone is actually a better customer service tool as well.

We all assume that the opportunity to edit our written words means that we give a better impression to clients by e-mail, but research has shown that communicating by e-mail alone can actually be bad for customer relations.

A famous study by social psychologist and law professor Janice Nadler, asked pairs of subjects to negotiate the purchase of a car. The teams were instructed to negotiate through e-mail only, but researchers secretly told half of the teams to precede their e-mail negotiations with a short introductory telephone chat.

The difference in results was astounding. Negotiators who made a phone call first were four times more likely to reach an agreement than those who communicated through e-mail only. The teams who hadn’t spoken were not only more likely to reach a stalemate during negotiations, but reported feeling much angrier and more resentful about the entire negotiation process.

The possibilities for miscommunication by e-mail are much higher than with telephone calls. It’s much harder to build rapport in writing. E-mail can lull people into a false sense of security, and the distance it creates means that it is much easier to be impolite than you would in a face to face situation, or even worse, to have your tone misconstrued when you’re just trying to be friendly.

Of course e-mail has its place, when you need to keep a record, or convey technical information. But for building and maintaining relationships with your customers and suppliers, it’s hard to beat face to face meetings or telephone calls.

If you’re already a great believer in meetings and often away from your phone, or even if you just want your customers to hear a real human voice when they call, call handling solutions from CSnotepad Virtual Receptionists could be the answer.

New sources this week reported that a UK police force failed to answer 20,000 phone calls earlier this year.

Cambridge Constabulary call-handlers didn’t manage to answer over 300 non-emergency calls a day during June and July, with the majority simply being abandoned by callers before they were answered.

Managers blamed changes to non-emergency telephone lines for the ‘decline in service’ following the replacement of a switchboard with an automated answering system, amongst other changes.

Local commentators called the missed call figures ‘highly disturbing’, with one saying that that ‘It’s all very well trying to save money, but in the end the public are paying for a quality service not a second class one.’ Some even hinted that the problems were due to cutbacks in telephone answering staff.

According to newspaper reports, the 999 system is managing to achieve its target of answering ninety per cent of all emergency calls in under ten seconds, but a report to a meeting of Cambridgeshire Police Authority’s scrutiny committee showed that over fifty per cent of non-emergency calls are not answered within the thirty second target time.

A police spokesman was reported in a local paper as saying that that the force had made several business changes to its non-emergency call handling service to ensure that it reduces costs, and that:

“A decline in service was anticipated during the early stages of implementation and this will be improved through a series of developments in call automation.

They might not be emergencies, but your business calls are still important. Make sure you don’t miss any with telephone answering assistance from a CSnotepad virtual receptionist.

The first thing you learn on most time management courses is to switch on your voicemail and screen calls. But by missing that call, you risk losing business.

Most customers won’t leave a message on a machine, and even if they do, they’re likely to immediately call the next company on the list. If your rival picks up the phone – you’ve lost the deal.

Yes, being available for inbound phone calls can seem to take up a lot of your time, and even stop you from working productively sometimes, but remember that the telephone is a business tool and as such, needs to be managed effectively.

First things first, always answer the phone with a proper business greeting. Make sure you say your company name and your name clearly. This will not only confirm to your caller that they’ve reached a business number, but save a surprising amount of time on questions from them.

Try and stay professional. You might be working from home on your mobile, but a caller doesn’t need to know that. Nor do they need to know that you have two children and a dog. Make sure you can leave the room and go to a quiet place to take your business calls.

Do you really want to discuss that potential new deal in the supermarket?

If you do run a home based business you should really consider having a separate telephone number just for the company. It’s so much more professional. And at very least this number will need to have an answering machine and voicemail for the times when you can’t reasonably get to it.

Unfortunately this brings us back to the problem of missed calls. Do you risk sounding unprofessional? Or losing a customer? Not much of a choice is it.

Well there is a solution. The virtual receptionist service from CSnotepad.

Have your telephone answered by a professional and fully trained human being who will deal with the call appropriately, as per your instructions. You’ll easily recoup the cost by not missing those important calls from potential customers.