I believe that business should be fun. That if you’re going to run your own business you should be doing something you enjoy and working with people you enjoy. For me it’s probably the major benefit of working for myself.
After all, there are plenty of negatives to weigh you down if you’re not doing something you love. All the jobs you don’t enjoy doing, that one thing that gives you a sinking feeling whenever you think about it, the days when nothing goes right and the days when you just wish someone else could deal with the latest problem.
In contrast you’ve got the flexibility to work when you want, you get to do what you want with the people who you want to work with. You get to challenge yourself almost daily and you manage to do things you’d never have dreamed of doing a few years or even months ago. You’re constantly learning new skills and finding new ways of doing things with new software and hardware that allows you to provide better and faster services with minimal effort. Then on top of all that there are the non-work related things like being able to have lunch, or a coffee with a friend whenever you want, not having a commute, being able to wear whatever you want each day and never having to worry about having your lunch stolen from the fridge.
But all the freedom in the world doesn’t mean much if you’re working with people you don’t like, which is why I’ve found that working with your perfect customer is so important. When you’re working with people whose style and expectation matches your own, good customer service just happens, you don’t really have to push for it. Here are three areas that most demonstrate my customer service philosophy that having a similar style is important:
Communication Style
For example: I’m not a great fan of the phone. If I’m in the middle of something for a client, I won’t stop their work to answer the phone, I’ll let it go to voicemail and if I get a message, I’ll call back when it’s convenient. On the other hand, if you send me an email, I’ll probably see it as soon as I finish the job I’m working on, and if it’s something that just requires a quick response I’ll answer immediately. If not, I’ll add it to my task list straight away.
At the end of the day, you’re far more likely to get a quick response from me if you email than if you phone, and that suits my clients. But there are plenty of people who prefer to do business over the phone and they are better off working with someone who is easier to catch on the phone than I am.
Communication Frequency
Then there’s communication frequency, I’m not an over communicator. If I can’t get a job done immediately, I’ll send you a quick email acknowledging that I’ve received it and giving you an idea of when it will be done. But I don’t tend to fire off regular progress reports unless you specifically ask for them. It’s not something I mind doing, but it just isn’t something I do as a matter of course. So if you’re someone who likes regular reports, you would need to ask for them, and give me an idea of how often you’d like to receive them.
Trust and Comfortability
Which brings me to the third and probably most important factor, feeling comfortable enough to ask for what you want or need and having the trust that your Virtual Assistant will do the right thing. If you don’t have these, you won’t be able to relax and le the Virtual Assistant deal with the things you’ve hired them to deal with. You also will probably struggle with giving them too much access to your business and in doing so limit their ability to help you. So it may be that you’d both be better off if you looked elsewhere. Or, it might be that you just need to push past the discomfort and ask for what you really want and see how your Virtual Assistant reacts. They may be more than happy to accommodate your needs, but just unaware of what you’d wanted.
My point is, that the better the fit between a business owner and their client, the easier customer service is because what you do and how you do it is already what they’re looking for. So at the very least you’re providing the service they’re looking for, if you put in a bit of extra effort (which we should always be doing as much as possible) then you’re going to delight them. Which is much easier and more profitable than having to put in effort to barely meet expectations.
