How to deal with a 4 call a day consultant?

[happypcgal]

I pretty much know what I need to do...but I'd love to hear feedback from you all.

Here is the situation: I have a new recruit who actually resigned after time away from PC. She is a former director but she was quite new when she promoted and she left the biz pretty quickly after that advancement....a lot of personal issues were the reason.

Anyhow, she is calling me 5-6 times a day. I work full time and sometimes can take calls but often I need to let it go to voice mail. She is workign very hard to rebuild her biz -- and my style is completely different than the person she worked with previously so she is really revamping all elements of her biz. There in lies the content of a lot of her questions...the differences from her prior biz.

I'm just not sure how to handle to continuouus number of calls....and this doesn't even inlcude the 3 -4 emails a day either.

I want her to be a success...and I think she can actually rebuild and promote again to director. But...I'll be honest...she's driving me a bit crazy!

I am a very open, very available director and usually LOVE calls from my team. But...this is truly outside the norm.

I'm considering setting a 1 call a day limit and set a time to talk to her; all else via email. Exceptions would be for things like trying to answer a question for a guest while at a show, or when on deadline to transmit, etc.

Gentle advise needed to help back her down to a more normal contact rate. :eek:

[finley1991]

WOW! And UGH!

Here is what I would do. (This is what I tell my team). When you call, if you get voicemail (and usually if I have a needy consultant, she ALWAYS gets my voicemail) leave your QUESTION. If you leave me a voicemail that just says, "I have a question.. call me," you will not get a call back because it is a waste of time for both of us if I need to look up the answer. Leave the question and I will call you back with the answer within 24 hours. (I refuse to be ON CALL for my team. It's no way to run a business or have a life!)

Since you work full time, I'd let her leave all of her messages, then call her back ONCE with the answers. E-mail her ONCE a day with the response (and I'd put them all in one, not reply to each individual). If she complains, say something along the lines that you work full time and have a personal life to attend to as well and that you schedule your PC time specifically and will respond then.

I also like to add in one other thing with the needy ones... I say it light-heartedly and they get the point... "One of the things I love most about PC is that there are no cookware crises or stoneware emergencies!" That makes the point and they get it.

Good luck and keep us posted!!!

[pamperedbecky]

Great advice about limiting it to one phone call back or one email back to answer all the questions at once. And I love the comment that there are REALLY NO dire emergencies in this biz!:)

ETA "NO". I realized that didn't make sense and I missed the "NO."

[Happy Chef]

That's one thing that is really great about advancing technology. Caller ID, voicemail and email are all great tools for screening - yet they can still comunicate with us. I would definately limit your response to once a day and have her leave her questions on your voicemail or email so you can respnd specifically. I have relatives who always call and leave a voicemail to call them- but never say why. Drives me nuts!

[cmdtrgd]

I had a gal who would call me and either 1. not leave a message or 2. leave a message to call her and not tell me why. I flat out said "I don't have time to return your calls if you don't leave a message and when you do, I need you to tell me what you need so I can have the answer ready for you when I call." She also had the habit of forgetting why she called, so sometimes she calls and says "ask me about x" which works fine.