Response Time

Here's a post about how long it took some wineries to respond to an e-mail query about whether a particular bottle was ready to drink.  The wineries involved were Tobin James Cellars, Grgich Hills Estate, and Frank Family Vineyards.  Response time varied from 90 minutes to over four days.  Not a scientific test, but surely an interesting result.

(as a side note, Grgich prominently mentions their Facebook group on their home page)

Have you tested your winery's response time to e-mail queries?  You should.  In fact, it's something you should monitor on a regular basis.

How long do you think it should take to get a response to an e-mail question about drinkability?  Please leave a comment!

(PS - if you haven't already done so, please take my one-question survey)

Comments

[rick]

In general? 1 business day. However:

1) If the vintage is older I can see most staf not knowing and it's possible the winemaker or persons who do know are unavailable.

2) This is a reason to have notes for ALL of your wines on your site. Give initial drinking ranges and if you taste it years later, update the note. Make the stuff easy to find.

[Morton Leslie]

There is no reason a simple request like this shouldn't have an immediate response. This would be a perfect application for many of the imbedded AI automated interpretation and routing solutions available. You just set up some rules and you automatically parse and respond to such a request with a thank-you and either a list of all the wines and recommendations or a case based response.

For older wines, since you will never say "it's over the hill, don't drink it" you just have a nice way of saying "it's definitely ready to drink and if stored properly it is still tasting great."

[Mike Duffy]

I'm posting this e-mail from Grgich Hills on which I was copied:

----
Barbara,

I just read about your test of our response to a consumer question on when to drink that wine. I’m sorry we didn’t response as quickly as we should, but we do have a whole page on the website about when to drink our wines (which is the only wine we or any winery is really qualified to speak about) on our wine section. We even call it When should I drink my wine?

http://www.grgich.com/wines/when2open.cfm

Best wishes,
Ken Morris
Communications and Marketing Manager
Grgich Hills Estate