An old consultant told me to track every client phone call for 30 days

I thought it was a waste of time, but after 3 weeks I noticed I was spending 40% of my time answering the same basic questions. Put together a FAQ document and cut my call time in half. Has anyone else found a simple habit that saved them that much time?

2 comments

2 Comments

mark_chen622d ago

My neighbor works in shipping and she started tracking how many times a week she had to retype the same address corrections. After two weeks she made a template for the top five mess-ups and saved maybe three hours a week just on that one thing. Its funny how we don't notice these patterns until we actually write them down. The big lesson I keep seeing is that the 20 percent of effort that causes 80 percent of the repeat headaches is usually hiding in plain sight. What small task did you finally automate or simplify that you wish you had done years ago?

morganmartinez2d ago

That's a really good point about tracking first before automating. I'd gently push back on the 80/20 rule though, that's not quite how Pareto's principle works in practice.