Why a Virtual Assistant for Customer Service?

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You made the right choice by making it your goal to invest in great customer service for your business. A rule of thumb of customer service: the quicker your response time, the better. In the context of the Internet explosion, responsiveness is measured in an on-demand manner. Metrics are available to inform potential customers of how quick you respond to their inquiries or concerns.

These are some statistics to consider on the level of responsiveness customers today expect:

• 41% of customers expect to be emailed a reply within 6 hours
• 47% of customers expect a reply on a social media inquiry in an hour
• 72% of customers who report issues on Twitter expect a response within the hour

 

As you try to introduce your brand and build an online presence, imagine the kind of multi-tasking skills demanded of the founder. As you try to build a client list, handle clients, schedule your appointments, and perform administrative tasks on the side, you also need to be conscientious of the time you need to reply to customer queries! Meeting this expectation of great customer service is indeed intimidating, and it’s understandable how customer service can be sidelined, or worse, be ignored altogether.

There is added pressure if you run your business through e-Commerce platforms. Since all transactions are conducted online, customer service tasks will occupy most of your time if you don’t outsource these tasks to another person or service. This is why hiring a customer service virtual assistant is the wisest choice you could make. If at an average, you get at least 50 orders daily, you will spend an ample amount of time dealing with customer service related concerns. Prospective clients will inquire on products, delivery options, concerns about quality, and feedback on completed transactions. In all these cases, your response time will be extremely important.

In this scenario, your time use will be predictably less productive. The hours in the workday will be predominated by customer service and administrative work. You will no longer have the time to deal with tasks that can add value to the business because you are overburdened with responding to client inquiries. In the event this happens, you will miss out on a lot – in work and in life. If you find yourself in a bind like the scenario I described, hiring a virtual assistant is your red pill that can liberate you from the burden of a life without balance.

Being business-savvy doesn’t required single-minded devotion to all office tasks; it requires the ability to delegate and prioritize. Business owners who are eager to level up their companies know when it’s time to let go of tasks to be handled personally. Once your e-Commerce business takes off, you need to accept the reality of letting go of your control over certain aspects of the business. Delegating the very important customer service function will give you freedom, work-life and happiness you are raring to give your customers.

 

What entrepreneurs are saying about VA’s

As your business grows, hiring additional staff to ensure the smooth flow of your operations will be a major decision. Of course, hiring extra help means additional overhead costs and reduction of your profits. This consideration may discourage you from making the decision to go get help. However, hiring at a cost will ultimately benefit you in the long-term. Anyway, the help you need does not require full-time help. You can get the help you need without substantially hurting your profits if you hire a virtual assistant.

Exactly what immediate and long-term benefits can you expect when you hire a virtual assistant? Several entrepreneurs give their two cents’ worth regarding the benefits of hiring a VA.

 

#1-  Greater focus

So much more can be done if you gain focus. Sometimes, the noise of the impossibly busy life of the modern-day entrepreneur becomes nearly unbearable. At the end of the day, you’re back to where you started. Running and growing a successful business requires a team that can make things happen, not only the powers of one individual. Of course, that team will have to be composed of members who are specialists in their respective niche. You have to hire someone who is a specialist in a niche you’re not too confident in. The best thing about hiring a VA is that they act as independent contractors focusing on a niche. Not only will you have time under your control, with someone focusing on one niche, you get yourself to focus on a niche that you’re most competent on. What’s also great about hiring a VA is that since they are remote, you don’t need an office space, desk, or equipment. Not only will you have razor sharp focus on things that actually generate revenue for your business, you save on overhead costs, too.

 

#2- A Multitude of Benefits

Virtual assistants bring plenty of benefits to the table. Perhaps the most important benefit of a VA is that they release you from the world of the mundane and repetitive tasks that zap you of energy. Whether that is managing your Inbox, taking care of your schedules, handling your appointments, a VA redirects your attention to the tasks you were supposed to do in the first place as a business owner. With a VA by your side, you can eliminate a lot of the noise in your busy workday. A VA can also help you make the most informed decisions fast by doing research for you. If you hire a talented VA, you have an ally who can fill the gaps on tasks that you are unable to do and in so doing, make you thrive on those you’re good at.

 

#3 –Growing Your Business

Entrepreneurs who have hired VA’s vouch on the role that virtual assistants play on business growth. For owners still starting out, hiring a virtual assistant can get your business up and running before you’re financially and institutionally prepared to hire in-house personnel. Real estate brokers, for instance, have found that hiring a VA to handle tasks that are pulling them away from building their client list was crucial. Compared to paying a full-time employee to perform documentation, reports, posting listings, responding to clients, and looking for lucrative deals for vendors, hiring a virtual assistant to do all this is less experience and matches the capacity of a startup.

 

#4- Greater efficiency for less

The upside to getting a virtual assistant is increased productivity comes at less costly price compared to hiring full-time staff. Now that we live in a globalized world, efficiency is a premium. So much time can be saved when you hire for efficiency. Hiring someone competent who is able to take instruction but at the same time, work autonomously can be the key to turning your business around. This is why hiring a virtual assistant should not be a casual process. You need to be smart about hiring. Having virtual assistants perform tasks competently from remote locations all over the world paints a perfect picture of the workplace of the future. The remote work structure maximizes the use of technology and enhances the overall efficiency of the team. As a result, more tasks get gone at lesser cost, and with minimal employee drama.

 

#5- Greater RoI

For the most part, the intangible benefits of hiring a virtual assistant is more time and more productivity. All this eventually results to the very tangible advantage of a greater return on investment (RoI). By providing the business owner with free time and higher levels of productivity to grow the business, the financials of the business get a boost.