Suitable Times To Call a Client?

One of the team asked me today a question I’d not thought about before – at least, not in detail. It’s one of those things that you tend to develop an unwritten law about – and each person has their own law. She was responding to a job request late in the day and asked up to what time would be suitable to call the client? We discussed some times and I suggested that anything up to 8.30pm is often ok for many people but not for others. Probably best to call and ask if ‘now is a convenient time?’ or arrange a suitable time to call back.

We agreed that it depends on people’s different lifestyles and she then commented ‘Email is easy ;-)’ and I had to agree. But it reminded me of something that happened only a month or so ago.

Late one night, around 10.45pm I was responding to emails before packing it in for the night when suddenly the phone rang. My husband and I looked at each other and wondered who it could be at that hour? Thankfully that particular phone doesn’t ring through the house to wake the family and only rings in my office – if I wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have heard it. I picked it up thinking it’s probably someone from overseas as it’s not unusual for someone to call in the late hours of night or early hours of the morning without checking to see what time it is here (in Australia).

Sure enough, it was a lady from India – she’d just received my email and took that as an invitation to ring me. She was rather surprised to find out how late at night it was and I have to admit I told her I wasn’t impressed. This same person had been contacting several members of the team asking for work and making a bit of a nuisance of herself and I’d been emailing her about it, giving some advice on ways to seek work. When I shared this with the team member mentioned above, she laughed and commented that ‘it takes all types’.

So, going back to our original discussion – what is a suitable time for calling a client? Do you have any thoughts about that? I’d love to hear about it. KMT