Communicating Your Time Away From Work With Clients

The holidays are right around the corner and that means different routines for us, the kids (if you’ve got them), and our clients.

In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'll talk about the best way to let clients know about an upcoming schedule change.

TRANSCRIPT 

 Hi everybody. I'm Belinda Wasser also known as RocketGirl. Today, we're going to talk about communicating time away from work with your clients. 

You're a virtual assistant, it can be hard to imagine how you're ever gonna figure out how to take a vacation, but it's highly recommended that you figure it out and that's why I'm here today to help you with that.

It's hard because our clients depend on us so much and we don't want to leave them in a situation where they're not going to be able to get their work done. And there might even be some fear that if we leave, they'll discover they don't need us. But let me tell you nothing can be further from the truth. So with a little planning and preparation, you can make your vacation time a wonderful time for you. And also the time when your client knows that you're still there for them.

So let's just look at this now, there are two sides to this equation. One is you want to give your clients enough time to prepare and for you to prepare for you to be away. But on the other hand, you don't want to give them so much time that they get confused about when you're going to be away. My clients are very protective of me so if I were to tell them all that I was going to be going on vacation, they might slow the flow of work down because they don't want me to be overwhelmed going to the vacation.

And sometimes this has happened, which is why it came up with the approach.  I'm gonna tell you today that they get confused about when I'm actually going to be gone. So if I give them 3 weeks' notice. They might not. I might not hear from them. You know for a really long time because say, "Oh, I didn't send this cuz I thought you were on vacation and I didn't, you know, I didn't want it to be waiting for you." 

And so I've just had this experience sometimes where the workflows way down around the vacation and I don't want that to happen. So because when my work slows down, right, then my billable hours slow down, and then the revenue changes that's the main reason.

So let's talk about how to handle this if you're just reducing your hours. So let's say you know, your child is graduating from high school or parents are coming to town and you're gonna just like slow down a little bit, but you're still gonna be available and you're still gonna be able to check your emails.

I don't say a word because I think that just again the same thing happens, the work slows down and I don't necessarily want that just because I'm reducing my hours a little bit. If only going to be gone 1 day generally, I know who's going to need me. There are some clients who rely on me every single day so those clients for sure I would let them know that I'm going to be out.

Now, sometimes I'm out but I'm still available. Let's say, last year I was traveling on business and I had my laptop and my high-speed hotspot, so I was able to keep in touch with them. However, I told them that I'd be working from the car or the airport or wherever because I didn't want them to expect the same turnaround that they typically get when I'm at my desk all day long.

Now, if I'm going to be leaving for, you know, a few days or a week, it really depends on what kind of work you're providing for your clients.  There are some clients where I am in their business, you know, 10,12 hours a week. They need a lot of notice because we're really gonna have to think through the strategy on how that's gonna get covered if there's no one else around that can help you or help them. So, on the other hand, if I were to be going away, you know in 2 weeks 4 days, I would probably 2 weeks before, I would send an email out to everyone I know. So you really have to think about your clients, The kind of work that you do for them and you know how often do they need you.

Some of my clients need me every couple of months. Some of them need me, you know a couple of hours a month. So you know it just really depends. So here's how I recommend letting your clients know when you're going to email them.

Hello wonderful clients. I'm sorry about the bulk email, but I wanted to let you know that I'll be out of the office, and then here it's important to set the expectation either away from my computer entirely or I'll be checking email twice a day or you know whatever it's going to be which you can do whatever you want. But just be clear with them and then I would say 3 days you know, I'm just trying to not have them, make them do any figuring out or math and then I say Wednesday through Friday.

So 3 days and then I give them the date. Please plan accordingly. You know if there's an emergency call my cellphone. Now no one has ever called my cellphone ever, however, it is. If they do really need you, I'll tell you for my clients who are lovely people they would think twice before calling me on vacation if that's not the case with you, definitely don't give them your cellphone number.

The other thing that I thought about, that would be nice to add to this letter, something like I look forward to working with you, to fit you know to make sure you're all taken care of before I go away depending on how much work you do for them. That serves.

It's not that you have to soften it, but you just let them know that you're thinking about them as well. Okay. So, that's how you take a vacation ladies and gentlemen. Oh the last thing, Autoresponder really critical. So you send out, you send out the email you let everyone know. You check in with people, get them all squared away. Then you set up an autoresponder. So this is an email that goes out every time someone emails you. You can do this in Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail, and whatever you know whatever mail a client you use and it just simply says I'm not on vacation. These are the days. And then again set the expectations you will hear from me on I'll be you know I'll be away from my computer. I'll be near my computer, so just make sure that everybody's clear and take a few days off, you know we all need to do that. Okay.

So before I go, I just want to invite you all to my free online classroom. Right now we're streaming in the Facebook classroom and a couple of other places in Facebook but also on Periscope and on our YouTube channel. And you can click Subscribe to be notified every time I go live. So if you don't know about our Facebook group head on over to Facebook and type in 'The Virtual Assistant Connection' in the search bar at the top and then click the join button. You will find a community of over 9500 virtual assistants and people thinking about becoming one, lots of community, friendship, help, and a ton of information like this for virtual assistants in the group. So I hope you'll join me over there.

In the meantime, I'm Belinda Wasser signing off until next time. Buh bye.