A customer or consumer is what businesses want. The concept that every customer matters should be embraced. Even if you do not have the accurate information the customer is asking for; there is nothing wrong with being the first to acknowledge his or her question; even if your answer is let me get that information for you!

Depends on your platform. The more "online", you are, the shorter the patience from your customer. On emails, I am thrilled, if I get answer within 30 minutes. Happy within a couple of hours. Unhappy, if I don't get response on the same day; I will assume, you have forgotten about me.

I think all experience from marketing and sales is, that time is of the essence. So the sooner you solve a problem, the better.

I hope this answers your question. If not, feel free to set up a call to talk further.

In general, you should try answer as quick as possible, But, we are all very busy running our business and don't always have time to answer immediately, and therefore you should set an order of urgency based on the issue/subject/question - in the following order from fastest to least fast.
A) Questions regarding potential sales - answer asap.
B) Questions regarding a product recently purchased - answer asap.
C) General inquiries/suppliers/admin etc... - same day or next day. If it requires a long time to answer, try at least respond with a short sentence saying: "Got your email. Super busy, but I will do my best to get back to you tomorrow" - or something similar.
Good luck
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One of the value adds a consultant/advisor brings is familiarity and convencience.

Let's say I want to improve the SEO ranking for my website. I can solve for this myself, probably it will take me a few weeks, but I can eventually get there.

So in many cases, the answer is not impossible to be responded to, but your value as an advisor is that your know how is at hand.

So as much as possible yes! that will buy you credit for the times you will not be in a position to respond to the question immediately - either cause you are otherwise occupied, or because the response needs research time.

So use those quick wins to your advantage. By the way, you can answer so quickly because you are knowledgeable, not necessarily because the question was an easy way.

Your clients, will learn to appreciate that it is not a given to get such immediate service