Everybody is busy. Your boss is busy. Your colleagues are busy. Your customers are busy. The people who cut the grass, the mail carriers, the construction workers waving the flags. Busy. Even the cat is busy, if the task of converting everything in the house into a cat toy can qualify.  Why we are all busy is another blog post but everyone has their reasons.

Yesterday it hit me. Nobody is really any busier than anyone else. Really. We all work at a different pace and respond to requests for our time and services in different ways. But if I am someone’s customer (defining the term as someone from whom I am expecting some material goods or service or intellectual property), the last thing I want in a response is “I am busy.”

Here is what hit me. Telling me you are busy is really telling me that I am unimportant. The needs of someone else come before mine.  OK, maybe someone is paying more for your service, or has been your customer longer than me, or has a more stringent deadline, or someone else got in your queue ahead of me. I get all that and it is likely you do too. A response of “I am busy” does not artificially inflate your demand. Hopefully I am not your only customer, acknowledge that to yourself but never make your customers feel like you’ve consigned them to the queue.

So don’t tell your customers that you are busy. Nobody wants to hear that. Treat them like they are your only customer. How do you think that will impact your customer retention efforts?