As a business owner, you know that your customers are your most precious resource. They are the ones who keep your business running, and they deserve the best possible service.
This is why one common casualty that you really can’t afford to mess with is your customer support.
It’s extremely important that you make your customers happy by maintaining timely and appropriate responses, and by ensuring that their needs are met.
However, the thing is, when you’re busy, it’s virtually impossible to take care of all the business processes yourself. This is where hiring a customer service virtual assistant can make an important impact.
Here’s how a virtual assistant can help you to lift your customer care and helpdesk game.
RELATED: Growing Scalable Businesses With A Virtual Assistant
How a Customer Service Virtual Assistant Can Become a Game-Changer for Your Customer Services
You can click on these links below to jump on a specific section:
- Why Is Customer Service Important to Business Success
- What Is a Customer Service Virtual Assistant?
- What Are the Most Common Concerns That Your Business Is Likely to Encounter When It Comes to Customer Service?
- How Can Customer Support Virtual Assistants Be an Asset to Your Business?
- A Virtual Assistant Can Act as a Customer Service Representative
- Customer Support Virtual Assistants Can Respond to Helpdesk Queries
- Virtual Assistants Can Set up Vital Communications
- Customer Service Virtual Assistants Can Monitor Online Chatter
- A Virtual Assistant May Also Function as Your Salesperson
- Customer Support Virtual Assistants Can Give You a Break
Why Is Customer Service Important to Business Success?
Excellent customer service is the lifeblood of any business for a number of reasons.
First, it can lead to business growth, as it can increase customer loyalty, repeat business, and referrals. Happy customers are more likely to return and continue doing business with your company.
Second, customer feedback can provide valuable insights into areas where your business can improve.
Finally, good customer service can help generate positive word-of-mouth reviews, which can attract potential customers.
In today's competitive marketplace, customer service can be your distinguishing factor that leads to success. Businesses that focus on providing outstanding customer support have a clear advantage over those that do not. By making customer service a top priority, your business can reap the many rewards that come with satisfied customers.
What Is a Customer Service Virtual Assistant?
A customer service virtual assistant is a type of virtual assistant who provides customer support through various channels such as:
- phone
- chat
- social media
Unlike a traditional customer service representative who is an in house employee and is based in brick-and-mortar locations, a customer service virtual assistant works remotely. They often have more flexible hours than their traditional counterparts.
While the duties of customer service virtual assistants vary depending on the company they work for, the customer service activities they can perform include:
- answering phone calls
- handling customer queries
- resolving customer complaints
- responding to emails
- managing chatbots
- assisting with product and service-related issues
- providing product recommendations
Customer service virtual assistants are typically used by businesses that have a large customer base or that offer customer support 24/7.
Many businesses use virtual assistance to improve customer service experience and reduce customer support costs.
Furthermore, a virtual assistant can help with mundane tasks, such as scheduling appointments, making travel arrangements, completing research, and many more.
This is why hiring virtual assistant services is one way to save money without sacrificing customer service quality. They can even be much more cost-effective than getting a full time employee.
What Are the Most Common Concerns That Your Business Is Likely to Encounter When It Comes to Customer Service?
One of the most common concerns businesses have is providing timely customer support. This is often due to the lack of staff or because customer service representatives are not available 24/7.
Another concern is the quality of customer service. This can be improved by ensuring that your customer service team is properly trained and has the necessary resources to do their job well.
Finally, businesses worry about the cost of customer service. This includes the cost of hiring staff, training them, and maintaining a suitable work environment.
How Can Customer Support Virtual Assistants Be an Asset to Your Business?
A Virtual Assistant Can Act as a Customer Service Representative
When you’ve got a goal to have excellent customer support, as a general rule, the quicker you’re able to respond or answer phone calls, the better.
In our digital, instant-everything world, expectations around customer service responsiveness have only increased with modern technology.
Here’s some food for thought:
- 41% of customers say they expect an email response within 6 hours (source)
- 72% who complain via Twitter expect a response within an hour (source).
All of this can seem quite daunting to the busy founder who is trying to be all things to all people! An hour?! Who can meet that expectation every time?
Jay Baer, president of Convince & Convert, describes customer service as the new marketing. It’s often happening in a very public forum these days, and people are watching to see how you respond:
"When customer service becomes public it becomes a spectator sport. If you are really good at public customer service, then your social care can become a new form of marketing."
Things can get out of hand fast if you’re not quick to respond, or, if you rely on some kind of “canned” response to get you by:
Cue a virtual assistant with customer service skills!
A virtual customer assistant can be your customer's first point of contact with your company. They can provide a number of benefits for customer service, including the ability to:
- quickly address customer service issues
- offer personalized service
- scale customer service operations to meet customer demand
Additionally, virtual assistants can help to improve customer satisfaction by providing a more efficient and convenient customer service experience.
As for any sort of escalating activities, such as what can happen with social media, a virtual assistant can at least bring it to your attention quickly so that you have the option of dealing with it.
Customer Support Virtual Assistants Can Respond to Helpdesk Queries
If your business has the need to respond to “help” questions, then you need a great system for doing so. A customer that needs help has some kind of immediate pain to do with your product or service. This is your time to prove that they made the right decision in choosing you!
If you put some great guidelines and resources in place, a virtual assistant can easily help by responding to helpdesk queries. In fact, your responsiveness to requests for help can really be a way to set your business apart from others.
How can you get this started?
Documenting policies and procedures is a good way to start, as your virtual assistant will probably need to refer to them. This helps them to be able to respond autonomously to any query that doesn’t require escalating.
Many businesses gather up FAQs and use them to help start a knowledge base on their website too. Your virtual assistant can help with compiling this. A knowledge base means that customers can be directed to the right information easily, and if your team grows, everyone is giving the same consistent answers.
It’s also a good idea to have some guidelines, both for helpdesk and for general customer service queries, so that the virtual assistant understands how much authority they have to respond and when something should be escalated.
RELATED: 5 Ways Your VA Can Help You To Upscale Your Social Media Strategy
Virtual Assistants Can Set up Vital Communications
Customer communications are an important part of customer support, but often a time-consuming thing for you to be dealing with. Whether that’s setting up autoresponders, newsletters or blog posts, these are all tasks a virtual assistant can take off your hands.
While there are no universal “guidelines” for how often your communication should be with your customers, the general consensus is that you need to contact them at least once per month, so that people remember who you are! It all depends on your industry and target audience. One suggestion is to look at influencers in your space and see what is working for them.
Most virtual assistants don’t do the actual writing of emails or blogs (they’re not content specialists), but they can significantly help by taking over the setup. They can also help to keep you accountable--are you aiming to meet a regular schedule? Your virtual assistant can follow up to make sure you (or your content person) have written the content.
Customer Service Virtual Assistants Can Monitor Online Chatter
Are you keeping an eye out for mentions of your business or name online? With today’s ease of hiding behind keyboards, are you making sure that what appears to represent your business, really is your business?
Sometimes, people discuss businesses (especially on social media), and it’s an opportunity for you to respond.
Virtual assistants can set up and use monitoring tools to be alerted to any mentions of you or your business. They can step in, or they can draw conversations to your attention where appropriate.
There have also been many cases of people creating fake accounts and responding to posts to troll the business. Your VA is a great resource for monitoring that sort of thing!
Additionally, a virtual assistant can help by spotting potential opportunities for your business. They are in close contact with what your customers are saying, so they can often find new ideas or spot trends.
A Virtual Assistant May Also Function as Your Salesperson
In the world of business, customer service and sales are two essential departments that are often seen as separate entities.
However, sales is not just about making a transaction; it is also about providing proactive customer service that addresses the needs of the customer. By taking the time to get to know your customers and anticipating their needs, you can build long-lasting relationships that result in repeat business.
Nowadays, many entrepreneurs are opting to use virtual assistants to help with a variety of tasks, from administrative work to customer service. But what some business owners may not realize is that a good virtual assistant will have excellent communication skills and be able to build rapport with new customers. Because of this, virtual assistants may also function as your salesperson.
For instance, a virtual assistant can help to develop and implement sales strategies. This may involve conducting market research, identifying target customers, and developing marketing materials.
Moreover, a virtual assistant can also assist with the actual process of making sales. This may involve setting up appointments and presentations, negotiating terms and conditions, and processing orders.
In addition, by proactively solving problems and offering solutions, virtual assistants can turn one-time customers into lifelong fans.
In today's competitive marketplace, businesses need to provide exemplary customer service at every touchpoint. Sales is one crucial part of the equation, and by understanding its role in providing proactive customer service, businesses can drive growth and success.
Customer Support Virtual Assistants Can Give You a Break
As your business grows, it's only natural to feel overworked. You're doing everything you can to keep up with the demands of your customers, and it seems like there's always more to do.
But what if there was a way to lighten your load without sacrificing quality?
That's where customer support virtual assistants come in. By outsourcing some of your customer service tasks, you can free up your time to focus on other areas of your business.
And because customer support virtual assistants are experts at handling customer inquiries, you can be sure that your customers will be in good hands.
So if you're feeling overworked by your business, consider hiring a customer support virtual assistance. It just might be the break you need.
Final Thoughts
There you have it. Could a virtual assistant be the missing link you need to really boost your customer support and make your customers happy?
As an entrepreneur, there can be a tendency to want to hang on, or not to want to trust anyone else with looking after customers, but truthfully, you don’t have to do it alone.
A customer service virtual assistant can bring vital consistency and response times to your business, giving you the opportunity to outshine others. By outsourcing customer service to The Virtual Hub, you can avoid the expense of the whole hiring process, onboarding process, and training in-house staff. We have a global pool of highly trained virtual assistants, and we can customize our customer service offerings to meet the specific needs of your business.
And if you're looking for more ways a virtual assistant can help you, our Ultimate Guide to Virtual Assistants will teach you all the ins and outs of having virtual assistant that you can use to your advantage in order to grow your business. Could your service be your competitive advantage?