How Time Zones Impact International Business

If your business is looking to expand internationally, you should know the impact that time zones play on your business model and how to accommodate clients in other countries. There’s no way to circumvent this challenge — even larger enterprises are impacted by the different needs of their customers and clients.
Let’s take a look at how time zones impact international business, as well as a number of key tips to keep in mind for doing business to ensure success.

Staying in Contact

Though we live in a digital-first environment, where most business can take place at the client’s location, there’s no substitute for a real live human at the other end of communication channels. Having problems solved in real time is the real key to retaining clients for the long-term, especially for projects and contracts over the course of several months. There’s nothing worse than waiting for feedback and having to wait until the next business to receive an answer. This compounds when a workweek commences, typically on a Friday, only to have the thread be picked up when the workweek begins again.
Several ways to stay ahead of this is:
  • Extend your office hours to accommodate those who may be several hours behind or ahead
  • Limit communication to hours when there’s overlap between time zones
  • Delegate communication to other staff members that have the same or closer time zone(s)
  • Hire staff to handle the off-hours (ex. 5pm – 9am)
The trick is to understand the demand for instant/ high-priority communication versus passive communication (i.e. email, general inquiries, non-urgent communication). For passive communication, autoresponders can point customers to information that they need. For high-priority communication, you should make your business as available as possible. Often, businesses turn to outsourcing regular customer inquiries with companies or branch offices that are in favorable time zones, where they can give as much attention as needed. However, for mission-critical tasks, it may take having staff work overtime or coming in as needed.

Establishing Time Zone Rules

Before officially beginning to do business with new customers and clients, it may be necessary to establish the best times to handle mission-critical tasks. This can include:
  • Deadlines (and on who’s schedule)
  • Permissible times for meetings
  • Payments, payroll, and transactions (especially in regards to business days)
  • Along with other time-sensitive communication.
The sooner “time zone rules” are established, the more likely that future problems can be anticipated or eliminated entirely. The goal is to be as clear as possible to ensure that expectations are met and that they cause minimal stress for both parties.
The easiest way to do this is to take your client’s point of view, both in their business and personal lives. After all, no one wants to jeopardize their work-life balance by having to make decisions while off the clock. The idea is to be “time considerate” and try to accommodate the optimal hours for handling business across time zones.

Set Realistic Boundaries

Related to the previous part, having different time zones — even just one hour away — necessitates setting realistic boundaries. Remember that someone’s lunch break can be another person’s midnight. There can be a point where customers want things handled on their terms exclusively, which can cause tension and dashed expectations. Bending over backward for clients should be a priority, but only when it doesn’t compromise your business in a significant fashion. While you may want to have an international reach to be competitive globally, you could soon find yourself working every available hour (something that plagues newbie business owners and startups). Instead, you need to set personal boundaries for when you’re available and when your business is officially closed.

Outsource to Accommodate Clients and Customers

As mentioned before, outsourcing may be the key to establishing a global presence no matter where your organization is headquartered. By hiring employees in time zones that are favorable to handling similar time zones, your business can be available 24/7 for tasks like managing inbound and outbound calls, processing orders, and other customer service-oriented tasks.
To better enable your outsourced employees to handle calls, using virtual numbers from a qualified service provider (for instance, Global Call Forwarding) allows calls to be rerouted to another call center when your primary business hours are finished. This is accomplished by way of the virtual phone number add-on “time of day routing,” which automatically routes calls to another destination seamlessly so calls aren’t left unanswered.

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