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10 Reasons Why Hiring Virtual Customer Support is The Smartest Idea
What is Virtual Customer Support?
A virtual customer support is simply a personal assistant who works remotely to do basic business tasks. He or she can be your virtual secretary taking care of all the repetitive admin work that normally forms part of your day-to-day activities. Virtual assistants or VAs help you leverage your time so you can focus more on profit-producing, high priority activities.
Top 10 Reasons Why Hiring A Virtual Customer Support Is Beneficial
- A Very Cost Effective Way to Add Help
Obviously, the number one reason is you can save money. When you outsource virtual assistant who is working from his or her own location, you don’t get to spend on overhead expenses in the process.
Think about the primary needs you don’t have to worry about when you don’t need a physical office–rent, utilities, office furniture, supplies, and other necessary things for your customer support team.
Talented #virtual professionals are already built tough to operate independently. Click To Tweet
- You Can Better Manage Your Time
Rather than being tied to your desk answering customer queries, you can have your calls taken for you. Using a virtual CSR can be very beneficial to your time and you can still stay in touch with what’s been happening throughout the day. You can also prioritize the issues based on what needs to be attended to first.
- Ability to Work Anytime When Needed
Because of the availability and affordable cost, the dedicated provider of virtual assistant services can be a huge improvement to your business. Customers can get help even when the owners and other office staff are off from work.
With virtual executive assistants, a business can easily cover the 24-hour time span during the day. This will allow customers to access full support any time they need.
- Improves the Quality of Your Customer Service
General admin assistants offer support with everything from basic tasks to project management. Today’s virtual support agents can provide you with a resource that is knowledgeable, experienced, and profitable.
The type of VA you hire should depend on what skill sets you need to achieve your business goals. If you have multiple customer support needs in your business such as taking orders and technical support, you should tailor your job request to find the person that is right for the job.
I found that using a #VA was so much more productive that it was well worth the additional investment. ~Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Click To Tweet
- Customer Inquiries Are Always Handled
Worrying about the office receptionist going on vacation? Calls not always answered during and after business hours? Worry no more.
Outsourcing your phone/email support ensures your customers receive the help they need when they need it. This will make them more satisfied with your service!
- Reduces Workload on Full Time Staff
Keep everyone happy by outsourcing your virtual customer service representative. Your full-time employees already have enough work to fill up their work plate and adding more can make them resent their jobs (see #8).
- Maintain a Professional Brand
A prompt service will always give clients and customers a good impression. Calls that are answered quickly and professionally give your business a great image that they love.
A virtual customer service assistant not only brings professionalism to your client base, but they also represent the name of your company and will either take a message or relay the call to you or anyone in your team.
FACT: There are a million things that need your focus and #CustomerSupport can easily fall low on the priority list. Click To Tweet
- Reduces Turnover Rates
A stressful environment is one of the factors that trigger employees to seek work elsewhere. That’s why every employer or business owner strives for creating a happy and relaxing workplace for his or her people.
For example, the daily grind of commute can put your staff in a bad state of mind before they even get to the office. Cutting the lost free time, cost of gas, and bus fares, from daily travel out of the equation can make your team work happier everyday.
Adding a virtual customer service agent who work from the comforts of his or her home can help you retain the support you need for your business operation.
- Flexible and Scalable Enough to Suit Your Business
The good thing about working with independent contractors is that you can easily scale the size of your support team to suit shifts in your company operation.
If the need arises, you can expand your staff for specific assignments or long-term projects. Better yet, you can choose to condense your customer support team into a streamlined operation by assigning multiple tasks to these talented VAs.
- Accelerates the Hiring Process
Many of the HR Managers have observed that the traditional hiring process can be a very time-consuming task compared to hiring an online assistant.
This is because they have to juggle several face-to-face interviews and long waiting periods between candidates. Sometimes, it can take up a couple of months to fill a position when hiring locally.
But hiring online customer service only takes about two to three days. You can review their CVs and setup an interview via phone or Skype – a much faster way to build your team, right?
If you are overwhelmed by the clutter in your life and work, you can start utilizing virtual customer assistants to help with your daily activities.
The Virtual Customer Support Assistants Handles the Following:
- Appointment Setting
- Calendar management
- Making calls on your behalf (inbound/outbound)
- Prospecting
- Customer support
- Voicemail management
- Email management
- Chat/phone/email support
- Data Entry
- Conduct Research for White Papers
- Search for Call for Speakers
- Database/CRM management
- Create Power Point Presentation
- Bookkeeping
- Personal online errands such as restaurant reservations, travel booking, online shopping
- Transcribe audio or voice
- Other miscellaneous tasks that you need to be handled
Virtual Assistant Talent is one of the leading providers of talented and efficient customer service virtual assistant services. CALL US at 1-866-596-9041 to learn more.
We would love to hear if these tips worked for you! If you have questions or any Business Outsourcing related success stories, please leave a comment below.
References:
upwork.com
customerthink.com
aircall.io
taskbullet.com
socialmediaweek.org
Last Updated: May 11, 2017
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19 Productivity and Growth Hacks for Small Business Owners
Top 19 Ideas for Business Growth Hacking
- Prioritize YOUR ITEMS on your to-do list
Clearly one of the most important hacks for small business owners is to go through a to-do list and determine the most important tasks that only YOU can do or that are imperative to your day-to-day operations.
These are the most urgent tasks that should go at the top. More long-term projects and plans can go on a separate list so that they don’t distract or overwhelm you from those more urgent items. Identify what those duties are and proceed to #2…
- Do the most important tasks, and DELEGATE the rest
Delegating work to your team members can give you more time to concentrate on your CORE FUNCTION. Find team members or professional virtual assistant services who can handle the mundane assignments that would otherwise take up much of your day like answering phone, replying to emails, calling prospects, etc.
- AUTOMATE your email communications
Automation of emails is heaven-sent and is always at the top of productivity hacks. Email marketing improves your communication with your customers and followers. For example, every time a visitor signs up to your newsletter, they receive an email that you prepared in advance.
By automating these pre-customized emails, you enhance your engagement with page visitors and build stronger relationships with them while saving loads of time on manual sending. One thing to remember is, do not use your personal email for marketing.
There are tons of email marketing tools online with ready-made email templates, like MailChimp, Constant Contact or Klaviyo. The process is totally straightforward; you customize a template, create triggers, and program the email to send at your preferred time.
- Get the LEAST desirable tasks out of the way before lunch
Another growth hacks for startups is to do what you don’t want to do. Everybody dreads something in his or her job and anything that you dislike is going to cause you more stress than other tasks.
So it’s best to get those things out of the way early. Commit to finish those pesky items before lunch so that you can take a break as a reward for completing them.
- Do ONE thing well
Instead of trying to do it all, it’s better to do one thing exceptionally well. Start with the most effective strategy when you’re constrained by time and resources. If you focus all your efforts to one piece that you are particularly strong at, it will make a difference for your business.
- Learn to say NO to offers that don’t fit with your objectives
When you take on extra projects that don’t fit with your business’s main goals, it can be a huge drain on your time and resources. It might be difficult to say “no” but it’s necessary to ensure that you and your team stay as productive as possible. Small business hacks include saying NO even to your partners or other collaborators and focusing only on the most essential activities.
- Set a timer for time-consuming tasks
First, outline exactly how much time you plan to spend on tasks that take too long to do at once. If you have those ones that need to be broken up throughout the day, set a timer when you start doing them so you don’t get caught up and forget to look at the other items on your list.
- Schedule your social media posts
Leveraging social media is another growth hacking marketing that a small business owner should take advantage with. Promoting social content online should couple with frequent and consistent posting.
Scheduling tools like Hootsuite and Buffer allows you to create your posts in advance and set up a publishing time. Facebook also has its own internal scheduling tool. This way, you maintain an active social presence by increasing engagement and reach. Truly, it’s a one-stop-shop for this type of work, maximizing your productivity.
- Complete quick and easy tasks right away
When you have small tasks like quick phone calls or emails that inevitable, do them right away. It can help your productivity to get those things and cross them out your to-do list early. Or again, hire virtual office assistant to do these basic, repetitive tasks so you can focus all of your energy on just one or two major projects throughout the rest of the day.
- Be like Facebook: Evolve
Getting and keeping customers is pure hard work and dedication. If people are coming in the front door and leaving through the back door, that’s bad marketing. Try to do something that Facebook, the social media giant, does. They have created a series of additional addictive features so the users keep on coming back.
- Manage your email inbox
Boomerang for Gmail schedules emails to automatically send based on criteria you set.
- Collaborate and manage projects
At Virtual Assistant Talent, we use Trello to manage our workflow. It’s a great tool for file sharing, project management, automation and centralized communication. Also check out Slack or Pivotal Tracker as alternatives.
- Stay off social media during the day
Rather than checking your personal accounts constantly, it can be beneficial if you stay off of social media throughout the workday if possible. And for any business related accounts, you should set aside time to schedule posts and respond to inquiries on social media.
- Focus first on acquiring customers. Then make the product addictive
Instead of putting all of your energy into traditional marketing avenues that a Fortune 500 company would invest in, like utilizing media and running ads, use that money and time to add value to your product.
In the early days of a growing business, the best thing a company can do is make its product more addictive and add make it viral into the experience.
- Make sure all meetings have clear agenda
Avoid getting trapped in unproductive meetings by cutting out those that don’t have clear agendas. Meetings can be absolutely necessary for keeping your team on track and your clients happy. But unfortunately, they can also be huge time wasters.
Not only should every meeting have a purpose, but it should also have a strict schedule that outlines which items to discuss when.
- Get clutter off your desk
This one is a no-brainer. Clear and organize your workstation so you can find an important document easily whenever you are on a project. It can even be difficult to get started on some projects if you’re distracted by messy surroundings. So set up a simple filing system and try to keep your desk as clear as possible.
- Give your team a clear direction from the start
As a small business owner, you can only get so much done on your own. But your team can help you accomplish much more, if you allow them.
Give them clear instructions for their specific duties and projects so that they can work more independently instead of constantly coming to you to ask questions or get approval. This way your productivity and theirs can go smoothly.
- Schedule breaks and exercises
You also need regular breaks throughout the day to keep your mind sharp. It’s helpful to schedule a few quick breaks everyday to get up and walk or stretch. You can do a series of 90 minutes of work and a 20-minute break. You can even set an alarm or timer so that you don’t forget.
- Unplug completely when a beating a deadline
Last but not the least, when you’re working on tasks that are approaching strict deadlines, it may be necessary for you to avoid potential distractions online. What you can do is log off on your social media accounts and other interests so you can potentially get more done if you work offline for short periods of time until you get those projects completed.
Interested in utilizing virtual assistants but not sure where to start? Check out our VA services and see how our highly qualified and trained virtual executive assistants can assist in your everyday tasks and objectives. CALL 1-866-596-9041.
We would love to hear if these growth hack ideas worked for you! If you have questions or any Small Business related success stories, please leave a comment below.
Reference:
https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/02/improving-productivity-small-business.html
https://www.wix.com/blog/2017/01/useful-hacks-for-small-business-managers/
https://www.salesforceiq.com/blog/ready-to-grow-your-business-in-2017-5-growth-hacking-tips
https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/productivity-tips-small-business-owners/
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