Solo business operations
Customer Inquiry Handover for a Solo Business: Four Rules for Continuity
Four operating rules that keep customer inquiries moving when the usual owner is unavailable.
Use one intake channel and one record location
Requests scattered across personal messengers and inboxes cannot be handed over. Use a primary company mailbox as the official channel and record calls or chats there with the customer, request, promised date, and attachments.
Record the status and next action in plain language
A generic in-progress label is not enough. Write whose response is pending, when to check again, and what condition completes the request so another person can continue immediately.
Test the handover before an absence
Before leave, ask a backup person to reply to one recent inquiry using only the recorded history. Fill any missing fields in the template and state the return date and urgent contact path in the automatic reply.
Start with OfficialMail
Start operating with one official primary mailbox.
Use one primary mailbox as your company's official address and review every domain-connection value directly in the mailbox.