Today I want to talk about customer service for event and wedding photographers. In particular the first point of contact and how in general photographers are slow to call new customers back.



I had a bride contact me and say that she had been emailing and calling different wedding photographers for 2-3 days, and I was the first photographer to answer her enquiry. 



This is a worry!



I’m seeing a growing amount of new customers contacting me, saying that they’re glad I answered their enquiry, because the other photographers they contacted never got back to them, either via email or by phone.



I find that mind blowing! because we all know how hard it is to get customer leads, good quality leads that is. 



I felt very bad for this customer that called me last week. She said that she spent three days trying to contact a photographer for her wedding.



I don’t know the circumstances of the other photographers, and it could have been their day off. Maybe they could have been shooting elsewhere, who knows.



But the fact that nobody got back to her after almost three days, is just bad customer service and it gives all professional photographers a bad name.



First interaction with a client is the beginning of your photography workflow



Let’s start with the basics of customer service,  setting expectations. 



My idea of a photography workflow is from the moment you interact with a customer, to the moment you deliver the final product.



If we can just look at how customers contact us, and our websites are probably one of the most common ways that we will receive leads. 



It doesn’t have to be complex, it just needs to be repeatable regardless of your workload. This means, listing one to two ways your customers can contact you and will receive a response within 24 – 48 hrs during your hours of operation. 



Set expectations on your contact page



What I do is put a couple lines on my contact page, that says, 



“Please fill out the form below and I will be in contact within 24 hours. If you wish to speak to me sooner, you can contact me via phone.” 



This does two things. One, for the people that aren’t in a rush, they’re more than welcome to use their email and they will know that I will get back to them within 24 hours.



If it’s something a little bit more urgent, because they need to move their wedding date, which has happened many times to me, having my mobile number on the contact page is convenient for them. 



Plus I have seen a growing number of new clients that simply prefer to talk over the phone and not deal with email.



Setting the expectations of how long the client has to wait for an answer, is one area you can start to improve your customer service. That is if you don’t already list it on your website.



Using templates to streamline your customer service  workflow



Using templates, for when a prospective customer contacts you, will help to be consistent with your customer service.  It means that regardless of how busy you are, the service you provide will be the same.



If someone contacts you via email, and they’re asking about pricing or availability. There’s no reason why you can’t have a simple template on our phone to answer the question in a clear and concise way. 



I’ve had 20 templates for different parts of the customer onboarding ...