By taking off hours off of the response time of a customer complaint or inquiry, making it easier to find a store to purchase, can significantly improve a company’s bottom line. Most consumers expect fast responses from companies, but what does “responding quickly” actually mean? Does it mean responses would be within an hour? A day? The answer to this question varies and would likely depend on consumer expectations. Responding to an automotive quote might look a bit more involved that responding to a Tweet. In any case, the answer will change over time and each time getting shorter and shorter. It is not always easy shortening these time frames. In some notable industries, responses around any product information can involve legal or in most cases, product specialists. The good news here is, sometimes it is better to be fast than thorough. According to a survey from social media users, responding quickly to an issue was more important than that of having a strong answer. Of the respondents, 33% said that they would recommend a brand that offered a quick but ineffective response, which was nearly double the number, at 17%, who favoured a brand that provided a slower but effective solution. To the point that even providing no response at all was better than having a slow and effective one. In terms of immediacy relating to sales, a number of companies are working harder to make the purchase process as fast and easy as possible but what could be faster than just one click? Amazon has always been at the forefront of this charge with one-click ordering and has recently rolled out the Amazon Dash Button for repeat purchases of household items. Google as well have been pushing one-click purchasing, piloting the ability to click ‘buy’ straight from search engine results or other Google advertising. Even Facebook is in this game and pushing for the buy button on its advertisements. Each of these great companies is striving to remove the friction in the buying process, with Google and Facebook looking to keep the buying experience within their platforms so the user does not even need to click away. As with any service, the friction out of the sales process is no without its own challenges; For Google and Facebook, there is an issue of integrating inventory systems, around consumer trust of buying on these new platforms for the first time, and the fear of companies and retailers that this idea is an attempt to steal their customer base. The ability to deliver immediacy, extends beyond the traditional view of marketing and advertising and deeper into the companies functional teams that includes product, logistics, legal and HR, and requires a close collaboration with suppliers and partners. Faced with the dilemma of choosing to invest in immediacy, or advertising, the answer that leads to the greatest return could be immediacy and this can be the answer that is the hardest to deliver.