How I Got My Response Rate Down: The Secret Sauce to Success!

How I Got My Response Rate Down: The Secret Sauce to Success!

Hello all. You may remember a while back I was asking about how to get mobile updates/alerts or notifications on my mobile about order updates (basically push notifications) to reduce my response time. In the end I managed to set something up using IFTTT and the Do Button App. It's not perfect but it does show a notification on my phone that there's an order update.



Well basically, it's helped me to decrease my response time knowing that whenever there is an update in one of my sold services (order), I can immediately attend to it, whether on my phone or on the workstation (my desktop pc).

This is what I wanted it for and why it would be very good for the whole marketplace if push notifications were available with a dedicated Seocheckout app. Ahem. ;D

But as you know, having a low response rate shows that you're active and increases your chance of people ordering from you. Nobody wants to order from a freelancer that has a 48+ response rate! Some peoples response rate is 7+ days and they don't get many orders for it too!

Well recently I noticed that my response rate had increased to around 14 hours and I wasn't really happy with that and set about trying to decrease it which I've managed to do over the course of a couple weeks. Even if only by about half as much. Basically instead of not knowing that I've got an order update until I refresh my tab or visited SC or got an email about it which I wouldn't and don't always check and can be working in other tabs for hours sometimes before I even check SC. But getting the notifications on my phone has enabled me to know about when there is an order update, and then immediately attend it and update it.

Thus reducing my response time over time.



I do believe this has helped me because I am having a fairly good start to the month with sales and it could very well be because of my currently much lower 7 hour response time.

My Recent Upgrade Could Be A Contributor!

I was just recently upgraded from a Level 3 to a Level X3 user also so that might have something to do with it as well. Something I'm very pleased about as that's a real achievement around here and an amazing milestone and I'm working on a success story which I'll post in the success stories cat soon before summers out!

But if you're looking for how to reduce your response time. Here's the trick!

How To Reduce/Decrease Your Response Time

It's called "response" for a reason. Because response means, responsiveness. And responsiveness is a measure of how responsive (fast at responding) you are. So to reduce your response time, you need to respond fast and update your orders as soon as there is some activity in them. Even if it's just to say "You're welcome!" to your buyer when they say thanks. ALWAYS have the last say and say it fast!

How is response time calculated?

According to what it says on the User Levels page.

Response time is calculated by the amount of time it takes you (as a seller) to respond to any comment or update to an order for the last 30 days. This calculation does not include your inbox, only the messages within orders.

So it's anything to do with one of your orders as a seller. I don't know if how fast you update your orders as a buyer is taken into consideration too. Need some confirmation of that! But I've also been updating the orders I'm buying fast as well and trying to have the last say in them. Something that can end up quite funny when the seller is trying to do the same thing and reduce their response time too!

But the main things to do as much as you possibly can are;

• Always update your orders within an hour of them being ordered/updated by the buyer.
  
• Always update your orders within an hour of any update by your buyer.
  
• Always leave your rating within an hour of the buyer completing/rating it.
  
• Always reply to all questions/comments left on your service comments area.
  

I'm trying to get my response time down to one hour but I don't know if that is going to be possible. The fact is I've got to sleep and sometimes I get orders in the middle of the night while I'm dreaming about being the captain of my own super yacht.

But doing this, using the IFTTT notifications on my mobile, I'm more "connected" to SC than before and it's helped me to reduce my response time considerably!

So there you have it! That's what you need to do to reduce your response time.

I hope you find this useful and it goes on to make you a better, faster, smarter, more responsive freelancer on seocheckout!

Cheers!

Mike.