Adjusting opening hours: Why match opening hours to customers' needs

As a company or institution, why change your opening hours to what your customer would like? Surely that costs a lot of money, it is unnecessary: between 09:00 and 17:00, enough comes in; so people take our opening hours into account anyway.

Personally, I think slightly differently. Because in my opinion, what are the main reasons to do look at the moment when your (potential) customer is engaged with your products or services?

5 reasons to make sure you are more accessible than the average municipal office

1: You miss customer contacts with existing, as well as potentially new, customers if you don't adjust your opening hours.

When are your customers engaged with your product or service? Sometimes that will fit in with your organisation's opening hours, but increasingly not. We order clothes, arrange insurance or apply for a new bank card when it suits us. At least, that is what we want. Working people often have busy lives, making it difficult to arrange everything between 09:00 and 17:00. If I want to call my municipality after dinner, when my children are in bed, it is simply not possible. The advantage the municipality has is that there is no alternative. For some things, you just have to go to the municipality. For most other businesses, however, this does not apply; there are often plenty of alternatives. What is striking, for instance, is that many webshops are hard to reach. They simply cannot be reached when I am shopping on their website. It gives me a nice feeling that I can also call the company where I want to order something online at that moment at 9pm. And not that if my order fails, I have to wait until 09:00 the next morning.

2: If you do be available until, say, 9pm, you send a clear message: Call us at your convenience.

We probably all know the one webshop that advertises that itself: Call us at night if necessary if you are attacked by your lawnmower. And just let this "webshop" be 1 of the fastest growing online businesses. Being there for your customer when needed is still a very powerful signal. So adjusting your opening hours gives you a very powerful message to your (potential) customers.

3: You have a competitive advantage if you are reachable when your competitors are not.

If you are not reachable, your competitor might be. So then you are missing opportunities. Imagine, you are looking for a new laptop at 20:00 on Tuesday evening. On 2 different websites you find exactly the same model, the same price and the same conditions. At shop A, there are few contact details and you can get in touch between 09:00 and 12:30 on weekdays. At shop B, the website prominently states: "Questions? Call us, every day from 07:00 to 22:00". I would still choose webshop B. In my view, Webshop A has not organised its business properly and is not there for their customers. Webshop B is more likely to sell its laptop to me than webshop A. So adjusting your opening hours gives you a nice competitive advantage.

4: There will be fewer spikes in the supply of customer contacts

Wider opening hours will almost automatically mean that customers will not all call at known peak times. Peaks in the morning, and in the afternoon will decrease. Customers, as well as potential customers, will simply have more space to call and thus no longer need to do so before work, during breaks or after work. And oh yes: Being unreachable during lunch really can no longer be done. Companies that have an answering machine from 12:30 to 1:30 no longer take us seriously.

5: With your opening hours adjusted, you can start working with flexible working hours

Working hours of 08:30 to 17:00 are not comfortable for everyone. People with children, students, etc. The moment you expand your opening hours, or at least your accessibility for potential customers, the possibility suddenly arises to work other hours as well. In my experience, this gives both current and new employees more opportunity to work when it suits them.

In short: Attuning the times when you are available to your (potential) client does not have to cost you anything extra. Hours you would use during the day are now used in the evening. You can easily add the extra contacts because you won't have to deal with huge peaks in supply. And last but not least: it is a powerful signal of customer focus and thus a possible competitive advantage.