What are your hours of operation?

[SilverLeaf]

Most people seemed to be closed on Sunday, myself included. I'm wondering if this might be an under-served niche for residential service. Just curious, anyone have any experience with offering Sunday service at regular rates?

 

[PCSupportGlasgow]

Far too many in this thread working far too many hours every week.

working 10 Hours a day 6 days a week will only lead to burnout.


Our office is
9-5 M-F
sat: 10-2 (paperwork day & by appointment)


We used to work all hours like some of you are listing here but in the end we learned... Clients don't think any better of you for working all hours.
Now making an exception to goto a client out of normal hours = goodwill from them.

 

[PCSupportGlasgow]

Most people seemed to be closed on Sunday, myself included. I'm wondering if this might be an under-served niche for residential service. Just curious, anyone have any experience with offering Sunday service at regular rates?

wouldnt thinks so around here phone very seldom rings on a Sunday but then again your area maybe different.

 

[Rosco]

7 days a week 9 am to 8 pm. i work out my house so if no one calls its no sweat. Sundays are some of my busiest days. no one else is open

 

[TenYardFight]

Far too many in this thread working far too many hours every week.

working 10 Hours a day 6 days a week will only lead to burnout.


Our office is
9-5 M-F
sat: 10-2 (paperwork day & by appointment)


We used to work all hours like some of you are listing here but in the end we learned... Clients don't think any better of you for working all hours.
Now making an exception to goto a client out of normal hours = goodwill from them.

To clarify, the shop is open 65 hours but I'm not always there...

 

[chrisaroz]

Forgive me for resurrecting an old(ish) thread, but this we're evaluating our hours and I was curious how many of you have seriously crunched the numbers for Saturday to see if it's worth being open. We're currently open Sat 10-4, and while it's nice to catch up on a few things here and there, we never get any new business or calls. Has anyone changed their Sat hours since they originally posted?

 

[mkeathley]

We are open Mon-Fri 10am-6pm.
I have a shop.

We did try Saturday opening. Because at one time I picked up u-haul business. Uhaul was a bust. But even more so my the computer repair side. Yes we had customers come in. But I found no real increase in business. I have found when not open Saturday most customers just come when we are open.

 

[NYJimbo]

I think its a good idea to bring this thread up now and then.

I am re-evaluating Saturdays too. I find that more customers wish I was open earlier Monday to Friday and don't care that much about Sat or Sun if they can drop off or pickup during the week.

Right now we are 9:30am to 6pm mon to fri and 9:30am to 2pm Sat. Shops in my area get very little Saturday business and most of my traffic on Sat is from other shops dropping off or picking up ( I do a lot of tech to tech work).

I would prefer to do 8am to 6pm Mon to Fri and closed all weekend because so many customers can actually come in before work (8am to 9am) and don't want to deal with this stuff on their weekend.

Still tossing the ideas about but I think we are heading towards closing all weekend but being open 8am to 6pm during the week.

 

[SilverLeaf]

We are open Mon-Fri 10am-6pm.
I have a shop.

We did try Saturday opening. Because at one time I picked up u-haul business. Uhaul was a bust. But even more so my the computer repair side. Yes we had customers come in. But I found no real increase in business. I have found when not open Saturday most customers just come when we are open.

That's pretty much what happened here....mostly because I'm located downtown. I was open on Saturdays when I first started up, but hardly had any traffic at all. It wasn't worth the long drive to and fro. So, now I'm "Saturday by appointment". My shop phone does forward to my cell, so if someone calls on the weekend, I can at least answer their questions. During the week, I'm 10-6 or later, depending. But after 5, downtown is pretty deserted.

 

[callthatgirl]

24x7.

I don't take calls at 2:30 am, but will work on a project with a client overseas at 2:30 am if need be.

 

[NYJimbo]

Original question:

"Just curious what hours you guys run your shops."

24x7.

I don't take calls at 2:30 am, but will work on a project with a client overseas at 2:30 am if need be.

But you don't run a shop.

 

[14049752]

We're a two man shop. The office is open M-F 10-6 and most Saturdays 10-2, but I personally work any and all hours if it's something scheduled in advance. We close on Saturdays that are "home" during college football season, because we're very much inaccessible on those days.


For us, Saturdays are very hit and miss. Some weeks Saturdays will be our busiest day of the week, others there won't be a single call. We keep the day on the schedule, mostly because it's only four hours every other week for each of us, and it's a courtesy for the working class.

 

[Cornerstone Technologies]

Original question:




But you don't run a shop.

She used to.

 

[stro]

I had done Saturdays for several years. About 3 months ago I did a years worth of math. I did not add up raw sales on Sat exactly. What I did was add up parts sales for Sat, and profit for repair jobs done entirely on Sat or dropped off on Sat.

By the time I added up the overhead I found I was averaging 100-300 profit for 2 stores depending on the time of the year.

Given the fact that many of the repair jobs would just come in the following Monday and the fact that non of my store front competition is open on Sat I decided to shut it down on Saturdays.

It has made such a huge improvement in my and my employees quality of life/family life. My employees are more productive during the week, and I feel that it translates to employees that have more patience and treat customers even better.

Happy customers are more than willing to wait until a Monday for service if you treat them right. It is surprising how much customers will work around your schedule when you provide high quality customer service.

There are techs that are very sharp tech wise, but have bad people skills. There are techs that have good people skills, but their weak tech skills eventually drive the customers to someone else who will fix things correctly.

Truth be told a weak tech with good people skills will usually have more business success than the opposite, but when you have both skills, people will work around your more than willing to work around your hours.

 

[PCX]

Our shop used to be open from 10am to 6pm Monday through Saturday. We started opening up at 9am to get more work done not thinking too many people were going to come in. Well I guess since we are the only shop including Best Buy who is open at 9am we get tons of early birds. At this point we are considering opening at 8am. Because of how busy we have gotten, we started staying open till 7pm to get more work done. Same thing happened and we are just checking in more customers. Because Christmas is around the corner and because nights are generally slower for computer repair but super busy for cell phone repair we are considering staying open till 8pm or 9pm. This will allow our computer techs to get more done without too much interruption (hopefully) and I suspect the phone repairs will keep coming in as they usually do and hopefully we will sell more retail in the process. Now obviously I am not doing this all by myself. We have 6 techs with 2 shifts, daytime and nighttime and the main thing that would change for them is when they come in and leave.

So as it stands we are open 9-7 Monday through Saturday with Saturdays being the absolute busiest day, especially for phone repair. It helps that none of our competition opens as early or stays open as late as we do and only about half our competition is open on Saturdays and because of this, we end up with their potential business. You would be amazed at how many times we get people coming and saying that the came in because we were the only shop open. Anyways we will probably be changing our hours again soon and i will report how it goes in a few months if i remember.

 

[Maniaman]

We are officially open 10-6 M-F & 10-3 Sat, however I usually get in between 9 and 10 and go ahead and flip the sign over to open.

I'll probably be moving the official hours to 9:30-5:30 M-F as I've gotten more business between 9:30 and 10 than I have after 5pm.

 

[callthatgirl]

I guess I don't have stores anymore, but my current "Shops" are my home office and an office I rent about a mile away in a business suite. I run my remote jobs from these locations. My computers I do my remote jobs on are "My benches" as I can manage up to 20 computers if need be. My shops are open 24x7 if I need them to be, just like anyone with a store, retail walk-in or home based shop.

@CS, thanks

 

[14049752]

I guess I don't have stores anymore, but my current "Shops" <snip> My shops are open 24x7 if I need them to be

No, you don't have a shop. Rather, you have a "call center", if you feel the need to be grandiose. And it's not 24x7, because you said yourself that you don't take calls at 2:30am.

The point is that there's a difference between running a shop and working on demand as calls come in. Running a shop means that you're open and at the office during set hours, because you say you'll be. You (or someone) is there because those are the hours that you advertise.

 

[Cornerstone Technologies]

No, you don't have a shop. Rather, you have a "call center", if you feel the need to be grandiose.

Exactly, just who in the hell does she think she is? Her advise and expertise was only as good as long as she was running a shop. The second she closed her last doors to a shop, she became irrelevant, thus we should sharpen our pitch forks and light our torches!

Her experiences, good or bad, makes her important in discussions in which she chooses to participate. In fact, 'failing' is seen as a perfect moment to learn and gain wisdom. Discounting it makes detractors look like a bunch of dicks.

 

[nightkingdoms]

No, you don't have a shop. Rather, you have a "call center", if you feel the need to be grandiose. And it's not 24x7, because you said yourself that you don't take calls at 2:30am.

The point is that there's a difference between running a shop and working on demand as calls come in. Running a shop means that you're open and at the office during set hours, because you say you'll be. You (or someone) is there because those are the hours that you advertise.

No need for trolling people on their word selection in comparison to your personal opinion. Plenty of people already replied they don't even have a brick-and-mortar location and you didn't nit pick them on it.

Adding to that... I am mobile only but my business can take calls 24/7 due to having an automated menu system. The hours I will receive a call is 10am-10pm daily. All other times those calls are answered by an answering service and responded to during the normal times. It's also the same hours for email responses.

Some people don't like the automated system so it's a one option press to speak with a person. Great for weeding out the telemarketer calls, though. lol

As for answering calls, I can have the hours I have because I truly don't get that many. Most of the appointments/drop-off requests are made entirely online and clients can check their status through the phone menu or online easily - and they do often.