How to get an answer within 5 days

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Hi all, does this happen a lot to you merchants/customer service advisors out there too?:

[Jan 1] Customer Resident: (Saved Jan 1) hello

[Jan 2] Arduenn Schwartzman: hello
User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[Jan 2] Customer Resident: (Saved Jan 2) are you there

[Jan 3] Arduenn Schwartzman: Hello. Yes, I'm here.
User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[Jan 3] Customer Resident: (Saved Jan 3) I have a question

[Jan 4] Arduenn Schwartzman: Sure. What is your question?
User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[Jan 4] Customer Resident: (Saved Jan 4) Do you sell a ***?

[Jan 5] Arduenn Schwartzman: No, sorry, I don't.
User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[Jan 5] Customer Resident: (Saved Jan 5) oh ok. ty

I'm not looking for any suggestions to deal with to this curious communicative phenomenon in order to speed up customer support. I'm kind of treating this as a sport, finding out how long it takes for a certain person to get to the point of their problem. Yet, I'm curious if you guys have similar experiences and how you deal with them.

Edited November 22, 2018 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Tari Landar]

I have dealt with similar situations myself, though in the case you listed here, you're just as guilty of taking a day to answer, lol.  Honestly, it doesn't bother me in the least. I figure, we're all human, humans have other things to do, real lives, not everyone logs in everyday...so, it's all cool to me. I "deal with it" the same way I deal with any customer service issue..I answer, wait as long as needed (by the customer), provide further assistance if need be, and wait some more, again, if need be. I rather enjoy it, lol. I once had a customer who had sent me an offline asking me to let hr know when I came on next, I did so, but she was not on. I actually sent another one the next day, but again, she was not on. About a week later, I got a reply, and her question. I replied back, but she was offline by then. This went on and on for about a month and a half, in total before the entire issue was remedied.  We're friends now, btw, lol, but it was actually pretty amusing (and the issue was an odd one, but nothing that wasn't fixed relatively easily, in the grand scheme, differing schedules notwithstanding, it took less than an hour to actually fix, lol). 

[Paul Hexem]

I stopped answering those years ago. Get to the point or I don't care.

[Tamara Artis]

On 11/24/2018 at 6:28 PM, Gadget Portal said:

I stopped answering those years ago. Get to the point or I don't care.

Something similar to this

I wrote in my profile pics several ways customers can contact me and said that I will not reply to message saying "hi" and similar. 

Sometimes I reply back and if they are not online I will write a polite notecard and ask can they write inside, save and send back to me? I name the notecard with my store name and their Avatar name so they can see an example how things like this can be done. It usually works and people are cool. 

If you want people to act a certain way, or make them not act, it is best to offer a nice alternative, something that is useful but not hard to do.