Want to be Helpful?

Virtual Assistants are natural helpers. It’s at the core of who we are and it’s why our clients love us. 

Recently, I had an experience with a customer support agent that wasn’t ideal. The result was frustration, disappointment, and, in the end, anger. 

And although I could sense that the customer support person was trying to be helpful, I wasn’t feeling helped. They kept repeating the same response – the response that I didn’t understand. 

There are many ways to avoid disconnects and provide truly helpful service when working with clients.

Here are three tips for better client communication:

1. Read your emails and other text messages out loud. Ask yourself if you’re using jargon. Look for information that you can leave out and that might be confusing. Think about words that you can add to your communication to be clearer. Notice that words like “it” and “that” can be vague. Instead, be specific.
   
   “The signed contract is attached” vs. “It is attached.”
    
2. Be available. If your client wants to speak with you, make it easy. Not everyone loves text or email, some prefer the good old-fashioned phone. If your client calls and you can answer, answer. If you can’t answer right then, be sure your voicemail message lets them know they’ve reached the right person and that you’ll call them back. And then call them back!
    
3. Make a video. Sometimes you just need to show someone what you’re talking about, and video is a great way to do this. Last week, my client Frank asked me to update his LinkedIn profile's “About” section. The problem was that he gave me a lot more text than the field could hold.
   
   I knew that he wasn’t familiar with LinkedIn and me explaining that there was too much text for the application would be confusing. So I turned on Loom, my screen capture video software, and showed him the error message and how we could make it work. He was thrilled.

There are so many ways that humans process information and no two people are the same. Be thoughtful about how you communicate with your clients and do what you can to meet them where they are. They will love you forever.

If you’re not already a member of our Facebook Group, The Virtual Assistant Connection, and would like to join, here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thevaconnection/