If your team spends a meaningful part of the day answering "is it ready yet", that is not customer behavior to be managed. It is a signal that the business is not telling people what is happening.
The arithmetic
Each inbound status call costs a few minutes of somebody's attention plus the interruption cost, which is larger than the call. Multiply by the number per day and it is a real number.
A proactive update costs almost nothing and prevents most of them.
What people actually want to know
Not detail. Three things:
- Has something happened since I last heard?
- When will it be done?
- Do I need to do anything?
An update that answers those is enough. An update that says nothing has changed but confirms the timeline is still enough: people are usually chasing certainty rather than progress.
Where to put the touchpoints
Map the process and mark the points where a customer would reasonably wonder. Typically:
- Confirmation that it has been received and what happens next.
- When work actually starts.
- If anything changes the timeline: this is the one that matters most.
- When it is ready, with whatever they need to do.
- A short check afterwards.
Most businesses have the first and last and nothing in between.
The one that prevents the most calls
Telling somebody the timeline has moved, before they find out by asking. A customer told about a delay is mildly disappointed. A customer who calls and discovers a delay is annoyed, and they will call again to check.
Automate the routine, keep the judgment
The updates above are triggered by things already recorded in whatever system tracks the work. They do not need a person.
What does need a person is anything unusual: bad news, a complaint, a decision. Automating the routine is what frees somebody up to handle those properly.
Measure it
Count inbound status inquiries for a week before you change anything, and again a month after. It is one of the easiest before-and-after measurements in operations, and the difference is usually obvious.