Deirdre Reid writes about association and business management, with a focus on building communities in the association, non-profit and business world. She also shares her ideas at Reid All About It and on Twitter.

I saw a tweet recently from a Twitter friend Jan Dobson (@j8nd) who was attending Tallahassee SAE’s Education Day. She was tweeting sound bites from a session by Dr. Jerry Osteryoung on time management. One said, “Telephone is a business tool. Let calls go to vm, schedule set time to return calls. Get on and off biz call asap. @TallySAE #EdDay09.”

Jan later told me that Dr. Osteryoung advises having a precise voice mail greeting that says you’ll return calls within four hours. Sound reasonable?

When our day is interrupted by calls and emails, it is difficult to focus on and complete thoughtful work. Assuming you get the approval to institute this policy, will the four-hour promise work for members? As association staff, we work to serve our members. Will they get cranky if they can’t reach a real live helpful person when they call? Will that call result in a round of voice mail tag? That’s frustrating and time-consuming for everyone. After all, they’re subsidizing our salaries; they expect member service in return, on demand.

I was one of the go-to people at my former association. I fielded all kinds of calls, many about functions or issues unrelated to my job, from members who either knew me or were referred to me by other members because I was “always so helpful” or was “the only one answering the phone – isn’t anyone else working there?” Thanks for the compliments, glad to be of service, but geez, it did slow me down many days.

We had a receptionist, but, unfortunately, he didn’t have the answers to many questions. He wasn’t expected to; it wasn’t part of his job description. Here’s a solution — change that position to make it a member service position, in addition to its existing responsibilities of serving visitors. It would require continual training, more interdepartmental communication (yay!) and probably more pay but wouldn’t it be worth it for the return? That person could contribute a great deal of insight about member and prospect needs, helping you with decisions about content for your web site, publications, social media and educational programs. Plus it makes the job more interesting and valuable (i.e. respected) resulting in a more motivated employee who might actually stay and grow within the organization.

What if you’re a small association — a staff of three juggling huge workloads — how do you handle this? Perhaps phone duty gets passed around throughout the day, or the voice mail greeting has prerecorded options for frequently asked questions. Would members sit through that or want to reach a live body?

I’m curious as to how you find the balance between providing member service on-demand and encouraging staff to manage their time wisely and productively. Do you think the four-hour policy would work at your association?