Are you responsive?

There’s a lot of commotion about responsive websites these days. These websites have been programmed to recognize the device that’s viewing them and quickly reconfigure the elements on the page to be read and navigated easily by the visitor. If you are on a smartphone, and the website you try to visit is not easy to read, you will probably leave the site in frustration.

Google recently announced a rankings penalty for any website that does not respond to the small screen sizes of mobile phones and tablets. Websites built only for the larger screens used by desktop computers and laptops won’t cut it anymore. In my Web marketing agency, we’re burning the midnight oil to rebuild our clients’ websites to meet Google’s new requirements.

All this talk about responsive websites has me thinking about the importance of responsiveness in other areas of business. Your business is judged by the amount of time it takes to react to requests and questions. In this industry, it’s common knowledge that if you get a destruction lead, you must respond immediately. If you wait too long, your competitor already might have quoted, closed the deal, completed the service and have the money in the bank—all because of a lack of or too slow of a response from you.

How quickly do you respond to phone call and voicemail requests? Do you return emails promptly? Is there a standard response speed your entire company abides by?

What about disclosing issues to your clients when things go wrong? Is that done in a timely manner?

Your responsiveness matters to your prospects and clients. But it also matters to your staff or co-workers.

As a records and information management (RIM) company owner or manager, do you react quickly and appropriately to the training opportunities you observe in your team? When you need to fire someone, do you act decisively?

As an employee, are you responding to the opportunities you get to make a bigger and better contribution to your company?

A slow or ineffective response or nonresponse to these situations may come back to haunt you.

This month, make it a priority to do a responsiveness audit on your business. Shop your company as if you were a prospective client. Send an email or leave a voicemail and then observe the response. Test your whole company, including your website. Are you and is it responsive?

Tom Adams is an executive coach and strategic advisor to RIM services companies. Check out his “Thrive in 5” videos at www.TomAdams.com.