Why Knowing Your Service Threshold is Vital
As business owners, we each have limits in our capacity to take on new clients at any given time. After all, there are only so many hours in the day and only so many people we can serve in them. This capacity is called your ‘client service threshold’ – or, more simply put, your service threshold.
Your service threshold is where your ability to successfully and sustainably offer your services to new clients stops.
And it has the ability to significantly impact the customer experience offered by your business.
To determine your service threshold, you can consider several factors. Including the following:
- The number of people on your team and their availability
- Your operational hours
- Your commitments outside of your business
These factors (and many others) vary wildly for online business owners. Because the digital space operates differently than a brick-and-mortar business, where you have specific open and close hours, there are less hard and fast boundaries between your business and personal life. This can be both a blessing and a curse.
As a digital business owner, it’s fantastic that you can set your own hours, which can differ from day to day or week to week. Perfect if you need a flexible schedule!
Unfortunately, it can also feel like you’re always working or should be working during your spare time. And it’s tempting to go past your client service threshold.
Because you know if you take on just one more project or client, you can increase your profits — which is particularly important in the early stages of your business. You may also be tempted to say yes at any stage because you hate turning people away when they need what you offer.
However, saying yes to new clients when you shouldn’t is one of the quickest ways to burn yourself out and hinder your relationships with your existing clients!
Knowing your service threshold is crucial to your customer’s experience with your business.
Because when you’re spread too thin, things get missed, and your clients don’t get your best work.
And it’s often those smaller retainer clients who take the back seat when it comes to you serving at your fullest potential.
This is unfair to them because they didn’t choose for you to take on their project or join their team when you were already past your capacity. And they don’t control the fact that other clients are paying you more and demanding a larger percentage of your time.
All these clients know is that you aren’t holding up your end of the bargain or serving them well. This stops them from raving about and recommending you to others and may even prevent them from continuing to work with you.
No matter how many hours you devote to one client versus another, your customer’s experience with your business shouldn’t be damaged because you took on more than you could handle.
BOTTOM LINE:
Determining your service threshold will help you improve your customer’s experience with your business. And when you honor your personal workload capacity, you not only do yourself a favor but set your brand apart by continually providing the best service possible to all of your clients.
Want to dig even further into the importance of customer experience in the online space?
🎧 Check out the CX Legacy Podcast on Spotify – a mini-series podcast focused on all things CX.
