Ensuring your customer’s needs are met to a high standard will help drive your business forward with repeat sales of your services.
Hiring a virtual assistant to manage your customer service requirements is becoming increasingly popular as businesses seek to streamline their overall costs.
Virtual assistants with top-level skills in customer services prove invaluable as they save you time and money, which can be wisely spent on other critical areas of your company.
This article examines some fundamental aspects when hiring a customer service virtual assistant.
Tasks To Assign To A Customer Service Virtual Assistant
Here are some of the most important tasks to outsource.
Phone Call Answering
A virtual assistant will always have to make and answer phone calls. As a customer support virtual assistant, a professional telephone manner is essential.
Dealing with customer queries via phone support is crucial when offering good customer service to ensure high customer satisfaction.
Sometimes a small business owner can put customer complaints to one side, but with a dedicated customer support virtual assistant, you know the matter will be dealt with promptly.
Customers like to have their enquiries dealt with professionally and promptly. Therefore, virtual assistant services providers prove vital to all sized businesses.
Out Of Hours Support
Customer service virtual assistants are often based in a different time zone to your company; this can be an advantage because you can offer out-of-hours support to your customers.
For example, potential customers may send an inquiry about your service or product out of office hours. Instead of waiting up to 12 hours, your virtual assistant can reply instantly.
Addressing customer complaints promptly always goes a long way to solving the issue to everyone’s satisfaction.
In addition, your VA could be getting on with customer service tasks in preparation for the next working day so that you can focus on specialised areas of your business.
Answering Social Media Inquiries
Social media management plays a vital part in all modern businesses, so you must ensure that all inquiries are answered as quickly as possible.
Customer support virtual assistants must be highly skilled in social media. As an increasing number of inquiries come via social media accounts such as Facebook, TikTok and Twitter, and your business website, you must know how to respond correctly.
An excellent customer service virtual assistant will possess all the skills needed to engage with your customers in a friendly but professional way via social media; using such an approach will lead to confidence in your company and bring repeat customers.
Responding To Emails
Responding to customer emails is a vital part of the role of a customer service VA.
When hiring a virtual or executive assistant to manage your customer service needs, email management must take priority.
In any business, customer service issues happen, and it is vital not to miss any important emails.
For example, a customer may have an issue with your service that needs a quick response; if you fail to respond promptly, the problem could escalate.
Sometimes setting automatic responses for every email your business receives can annoy the customer; therefore, having a dedicated customer service virtual assistant to answer emails directly related to the problem is a far more effective way of keeping the customer happy.
What Skills Do You Need To Look For?
Here are some skills you need to consider before placing a job advertisement.
Professionalism
Virtual assistant duties like handling various administrative tasks, from managing customer inquiries to scheduling appointments, require high professionalism.
A good virtual assistant will always display professionalism, which helps build trust in your brand and ensure customer loyalty.
Small business owners rely heavily on providing excellent customer care, so having an ideal virtual assistant to manage your customer support needs is vital.
For example, if you provide a helpdesk service to answer customer questions, the last thing you need is someone who fails to act professionally by not dealing with customer needs or completing tasks on time.
Great Communication And Writing Skills
Excellent communication should be at the heart of any business. If you can communicate effectively, it usually leads to happy customers.
The administrative assistant you hire must have impeccable communication and writing skills, especially when dealing with international clients.
Ensuring excellent communication and writing skills are performed across all social media platforms is essential. Failure to do so will result in even lifelong customers leaving your business.
For example, if a blog is poorly written, it won’t help attract new customers, and business growth will suffer.
Conversely, content excellently written by your customer service VA will help attract a new audience, hopefully translating to new paying customers.
Fast Response Times
A remote worker who performs receptionist services must do so promptly and accurately. When your VA can complete tasks on time, especially when dealing with customer issues, it shows that your company takes customer support seriously.
Virtual assistance work can be repetitive, and administrative tasks can be time-consuming, so finding methods to respond to your customer needs quickly and accurately is necessary.
For example, if you offer live chat support, you must ensure your VA is given a set target time for each case they are dealing with. Spending loads of time on each case will slow up the whole process, leading to dissatisfied customers.
Attention To Detail
The virtual assistant you hire must have excellent skills in all areas, and attention to detail is a must. For example, your virtual assistant may possess outstanding creative abilities, but their attention to detail could be better; this will prove costly.
Handling administrative tasks, especially data entry, requires excellent attention to detail, as you can’t afford to make mistakes with customer data.
Virtual assistant skills can be wide-ranging, but all virtual assistants must have close attention to detail regardless of how manitous the task may be.
Hiring excellent virtual assistants means you have an extra pair of eyes to review that important email you may have rushed.
Keeping mistakes to a minimum is what all businesses should aim to achieve.
Let Us Help You Find The Right VA
Outsourcing customer service for your business will prove highly beneficial if done correctly.
As well as saving you time, you want to save money on operational costs. Therefore, don’t dive head first into hiring the first VA who shows an interest.
The hiring process can be time-consuming, especially if you haven’t hired before.Call our team today to find out how we can save you time, stress and money.
We can identify, interview, hire, and manage the perfect person with all the right virtual assistant skills your company requires.
