As like any other seven year old child, the promise of visiting "Pizza Hut" if he behaved himself whilst at the shop; trying on numerous jumpers, trousers, jogging tops, rugby shirts etc, was enough for him to be on his "best behaviour" and I'm pleased that our shopping trip was a success as a result.

However, our trip to the restaurant afterwards did not go as well. Somewhere between the school outfitters and the restaurant we had both become invisible.

After 5 minutes of standing in the doorway of the restaurant - waiting to be seated and then a further ten or fifteen minutes waiting for the waitress to greet us and take our order, we begun to feel completely transparent!

Surely, the restaurant staff weren't so busy that they couldn't even acknowledge our presence. (After all the restaurant was not up to capacity, in fact barely half full)

So we must be suffering from 'invisibility', right? At least in that particular business establishment.

The only smart thing for us to do under those circumstances was to leave that restaurant and go to another where we were 'visible'. And this is what we did.

The same applies to the internet - especially email on the internet.

If a potential or current customer sends you email, and you don't bother to reply within an appropriate period of time, it sends the customer the message that your business is either inept or just doesn't care.

In either case, it is not the message you want to send. That's why promptly replying to business email is important - because it lets customers know that you do care.

There's another advantage as well. Generally potential customers will send email queries to several different businesses, and will make their decision based on the vendor responses.

If your company replies promptly, and the other vendors don't reply at all . . . you win by default.

Moral: Don't make potential customers feel invisible. Promptly reply to their questions and queries, letting them know that you want their business, and take customer support seriously.