Loading ...When you go to the store, do you blow in like a hurricane and start barking out orders to every person who crosses your path? Why not? You’re the customer aren’t you? They are in business to serve your needs, aren’t they? You are the very reason for their existence. What does it matter that there are other customers there before you? Shouldn’t they be doing everything you want, exactly how you want it, when you want it? The customer is ALWAYS right! Right?
What would happen if your business worked that way? What kind of resources would you need in order to deliver service like that? I imagine you’d need an awful lot of staff, for one thing, in order to cater to those kind of expectations. Which, of course, would cost a pretty penny. And then you’d need people to manage that staff, which increases your overhead and administration even more.
You’d also have to stay open 24 hours a day. If a client has a whim at 2 in the morning, you’ve got to be prepared at a second’s notice to take care of them!
Next, you’ve got to have another group of people to oversee things so nothing falls through the cracks. You’ll probably also need someone in HR to deal with the staff turn-over and burn-out issues (it’s not an easy job catering to client needs and whims round the clock day after day). You’ll also want someone who can be documenting all the attendant workflows and training materials because they’ll be changing hour by hour as you bend over backward to meet each and every customer’s unique demands and terms.
To coordinate and brainstorm and stay in sync with all these people and departments, you’ll have to have meetings, lots and lots of meetings. And emails. And memos.
And then you’ll want a dedicated customer service team to smooth over ruffled feathers and unhappy customers when you fall down and can’t deliver. Because that’s exactly what will eventually happen when the customer is always right and you can’t say no to anyone or anything.
If you’re a solopreneur, you can’t run your business like that. You simply don’t have the means and resources. What I want you to know is that you are not a conveyor belt or drive-thru window and you don’t have to take everything that is dished out in order to be of service and value. You’re not a servant, you are a partner.
Virtual Assistants are natural born helpers. But sometimes they think that helping means not having any requirements or expectations of their own for clients. I really, really want you to hear me on this: If your practice isn’t capable of delivering on the expectations you allow clients to form consistently and reliably 99.9% of the time, you’ve got to establish different expectations.
One of the ways you do that is by creating systems and setting policies in your business. For example, you can’t work 24 hours a day and I’m sure you don’t want clients calling any ol’ time they please at all hours of the night. So what you do is formalize some office hours that you advertise to clients and develop a communications policy.
That doesn’t mean you can’t work when you want, regardless of the day or hour. It just helps you keep your sanity and manage your business effectively so you are able to provide fabulous, wonderful, capable support to your clients.
Here’s the truth of the matter: You can’t be on your best game and truly help and support clients if you are constantly pulled in conflicting directions trying to please everybody at the same time and your life is a free-for-all with everyone else making up their own rules, doing things their own way, in YOUR business. The best way to help your clients is to help yourself first by creating the optimal conditions that allow you to deliver that wonderful support you want to give.
Policies and procedures and systems are what allow you to HELP clients, all of them, equally and consistently and reliably. Most people are reasonable. They can certainly relate to why you must have some structure and protocols in your business. They understand that even more when you show them how that foundation ultimately helps you help them better.
One Comment
Danielle,
I completely agree. At the end of the day, their is a VA for every client, and you may not be the right one, but just as their is a VA for every client their are clients for every VA.
VA’s ‘accepting’ any client and any clients work because they want the work is what normally causes chaos in a VA’s life (let’s be honest most VA’s are very organized individuals).
I coach and mentor dozens of VA’s, and I tell them – be honest – if personalities clash or work ethics clash – speak up, you are a professional and have the right to be treated as one!