What are Business Hours and Business Days? When can I reach M Designs and expect to hear back from someone?

Business Days and Hours

Typically, in the United States “Business Days” are considered Monday through Friday, with “Business Hours” being 9AM-5PM on those days. This is typical for various transactions, shipping expectations, calculating timelines for payments, deadlines for communications or work turn-around, or call hours for certain establishments regardless of operational hours, or individual workers scheduled working hours.

Working Days and Hours

At M Designs we operate as a network of employees who reserve the right to work on all 7 days of the week, at any hour of the day in order to complete our work by it’s deadlines in as small as 15 minute increments. This does not mean these employees are “on-call” 24/7.

Communication Expectations:

Officially, our time requirements for receiving and assigning new work is that we promise our employees at least 3 business days’ notice on new tasks being assigned to them, and promise our clients that we will reply to new requests or messages within 3 business days. Once work has been agreed upon, we offer different turnaround expectations for different size assignments. This is different from revisions on currently assigned work, which once we are working on has faster expected turnaround time between communications, typically on the same day and often within a few hours or minutes if it is an expected conversation pertaining to the current job at hand. This communication may or may not fall on business days depending on the agreement.

Un-officially, and as a courtesy, we often reply to texts, emails, phone calls and other communications much sooner than 3 business days, and even will sometimes reply on the weekend when we are available and able in order to respond sooner to client needs. We also typically get faster and faster at completing certain tasks if they are regularly assigned by the same client which often results in much faster turnaround.

Please always expect us to respond within our official timeframes described, and consider it by grace alone when we are able to operate more quickly. We also have some best practices you can use which will help us to work with you as quickly as possible. It is always our aim to be consistent and have our work done within an expected, regular amount of time which is why we promise to get back to you within at least 3 business days, and often reply sooner if possible.

Scheduled Phone Calls & Virtual Appointment Times:

Phone calls are taken on the spot when possible and schedule allows but are not guaranteed without an appointment. Return calls will be made, or another method of communication (text/email) back to you within 3 business days. Phone calls are always free when unscheduled and less than 15 minutes in length, and can be expected to be charged at $100/hour when over 15 minutes in length, scheduled or not. For a scheduled Phone Call or Virtual Appointment you can use our scheduling calendar on our website listed on every page at the top as “Make an Appointment“. You can also Text or Call 774-209-0894 or send us an email requesting an appointment. Please see our rules regarding cancellations or missed appointments.

Example Scenarios:

1. We have an appointment scheduled with you on Sunday at 2PM – You can expect to hear from us at the exact time of the appointment, or recieve a cancellation 24 hours or more in advance if anything has changed. This is not a standard US Business Day, but since the appointment was agreed upon in advance we have agreed to be available for the communications related to it, and are expecting to hear from you and to be in touch.
2. We agreed in advance to work on a project which is to be delivered on Saturday Evening. On Saturday morning, you email us with a comment about the draft you received because you found a spelling error and you know we are awaiting your final approval. This is not a standard US Business Day, but we will respond to you or fix the error before publishing that evening because we were expecting this type of communication from you in order to get approval or denial of the current work at hand before we are to publish it.
3. On Friday night at midnight you notice there is a glaring problem with your website, and you email us, call us and text us to let us know. We are not planning on this communication and the employee receiving this communication is not required to check their email on the weekend, but happens to see the text on Saturday morning and wants to help, so they text you back and fix the issue right away. We are not required to reply any sooner than Wednesday, but as a courtesy we can choose to reply sooner and most likely will. If possible, especially in an emergency, we will attempt to fix the problem ASAP. Please consider it by grace alone that we saw and were able to act on your issue immediately, or almost immediately. Please consider that we may not see the message until Monday morning and that this should be the expectation.
4.  On Saturday at 2PM you forward us an email. It is a bill that you are questioning and want our help with from a 3rd party service which is not due for another week. Expect that even if we see this email, we may not reply to you sooner than Wednesday, but will most likely reply by Monday if possible. This is an example of a non-urgent request being handled in our typical and expected timeframe for consistent communication.
5. On Thursday Afternoon, you have a great new idea! You email us excitedly about wanting to create a direct mailer design. You can expect that we will be happy to help you with this, and will reply by Tuesday at the very latest. This gives us 3 full business days to read and reply thoughtfully to your new request.