Powerful Thoughts On Paramount Methods To Retain Customers
The most important key to sustaining your Virtual Assistant business is through retaining your existing clients. This will lead to long term income and often times, many regular referrals; in fact, my biggest new client intake comes from existing clients recommending my services.
What we need to do, therefore, is to make sure that our existing customers are always looked after and that they maintain a good level of satisfaction throughout. I have some experience working in 4 and 5 star hotels, which allowed me to really bring a remarkable element of customer service into the relationships with my clients, which otherwise wouldn’t have existed if I wasn’t always trying to keep hotel guests happy and coming back to stay again and again.
I have put together “top three tips” that are really important if you are to keep those clients:
Tip #1 – Always Do What You Say You Are Going To Do.
Don’t ever think that there are any casual arrangements in business – there aren’t. If you say you are going to do something, whether it’s send an email, make a phone call, do a piece of work — no matter how small it may seem, always do it.
This is so important, as you won’t be able to get the trust of your customers otherwise and if you don’t do this, it will be very difficult to retain them for the long haul. If you truly establish this feeling of trust, unless something goes horribly wrong, or changes in your business, I believe you will have a client for life.
Tip Two — Keep To Deadlines.
Don’t ever commit to a deadline unless you know that you will be able to meet it. If you say that you’re going to send something on Tuesday evening and you actually send it the following morning, the deadline has been missed and you have broken one of the cardinal rules of business.
It can take quite a long time before you learn a lesson about committing to something. I was always very eager to please, and would take on lots of work with insane deadlines and I would often be sitting there until 5 or 6 in the morning in order to meet them – I always did, but it was tight and I was a zombie the next day. You must always set yourself deadlines that are reasonable and it’s certainly okay to believe that you can make a tight deadline, but if there is any doubt, you have to tell the client that you need extra time in order to complete this, even if this means that you might lose the work, because this is far better than taking it on and letting them down. Believe me the repercussions from breaching this trust can be significant, even if it might seem that it is not such a big deal at the time.
Tip #3 – Always Be Impartial.
I always try to remain impartial with clients. I avoid any preconceived opinions at all times, except, of course, unless I am specifically asked. Interaction must always be based on fact, although you should also draw on your personal experiences. Never form a response based on emotional thoughts or feelings. Even if a client is being rather rude and is upset, you have to take the high road and sympathise with this situation, being the adult in the matter, seizing control of the position and coming up with a resolution and a way out, without getting too animated. So, when it comes to dealing with these client issues, please keep in mind that whether you’re considering a virtual assistant program now, or you’re thinking about checking out virtual assistants in future, or even if you’ve already had some sort of virtual assistance experience, come over to www.virtualassistant-live.com and see for yourself what other like-minded people are saying about this extraordinary “home based business opportunity,” Virtual Assistance!
The best way to avoid such conflict is to always be very clear and concise from the offset with clients, about what they can expect from you and also what you expect from them. You need to avoid any unusual and nasty surprises at all times; for example, if you really don’t want to be in the office on Tuesdays, which is certainly acceptable as it’s your decision for your business, you have to make sure that the client is aware of this as well, just in case he or she wants you to do something every Tuesday without fail which you were not aware of as yet and should this be the case they may not be too happy about the decision to hire you, if you were unable to meet this particular stipulation.


