Administration & Customer Service
Customer Service
Chapter 1
Providing stellar customer service is an excellent way to help customers to distinguish between your business and your competitors. With all of the online tools available and a changed employment landscape - think COVID lockdowns changing the way people work, commute, shop and spend their leisure time - there have never been more small businesses opening and competing for business.
Taking steps to ensure that you meet and exceed your customers’ expectations with genuine and attentive service is an excellent way to not only help you stand out from the bunch and secure your first sale, but also it’s a good way to build brand loyalty and create repeat customers.
Having a business and marketing strategy that focuses on your customers and their needs helps you produce products and content that speaks directly to your target market. But how do you ensure that you are keeping your customers and their needs at the forefront of your thoughts and planning processes throughout the entire customer journey? I suggest that by spending a minute thinking not only about your target market, but also the kind of genuine and sincere service that you want to provide, you are setting yourself up for the win.
On a more practical level, think about email automations for thank you messages after sign ups and sales. Think about your onboarding process and whether your customer knows what to expect at each stage of their journey with you. Are your shipping and refund policies clear and easy to find on your website? How do you reward loyal customers? In what ways can you personalise your customer service so that each customer feels like an individual?
Another aspect of good customer service is being able to take feedback with grace and an open mind. When you are running your own business, it’s definitely easy to wear your heart on your sleeve and feel like any criticism is a personal slight. However, no-one is perfect and your customers will have feedback for you. Keeping an open mind and showing a willingness to learn and improve can go a long way to building trust and loyalty in your customers.
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Chapter 2: Your Customer Service Charter
Writing Your Charter
You’re a small business with one or a few employees. Why do you need to take the time to prepare a customer service charter?
Writing a Customer Service Charter for your business is an excellent way to fully flesh out your intentions and put practical steps in place for implementation. It helps you to consider all the areas of your business where your customers come into contact with it and ensures that you have appropriate measures in place. It would also help to get your team up to speed and on board, if you have employees.
There are numerous examples that you can look at online by googling ‘customer service charter’, but I have created a Template for you to download that can speed up the process by supplying a simple layout and section headings. Click here to purchase the template.
Administration
The aim of the game here is to outsource the small stuff so that you the business owner can focus on the big picture.
Chapter 3: Services that are super easy to outsource!
Travel & Accommodation Booking
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Business Correspondence & Mail Outs
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Onboarding Clients
So the hard work is done. You have built your funnel, coaxed your leads along until they make the decision to use your service or buy from you and now it’s time to lock down their details.
Having a few document templates set up and ready to go is a great way to streamline the onboarding process. If you are a service business and need lots of details from the customer, having your templates ready to go can help to reinforce the message that you are a professional worthy of the customer’s time and money.
Tell your VA what you need and get it done!
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Compliance
Each industry has its own set of standards and sometimes an Act that it must comply with, whether it be Food Safety or other technical standards. Do you have internal systems in place to ensure everyone that works in your business knows the standards by which they must work? Is all of the important information in an easy-to-access place for both yourself and your employees?
The ACCC has some excellent information available on its website for Compliance and provides a number of templates for businesses to use. If you would like assistance with the busy-work in setting up your compliance, a VA can help.
Onboarding Staff
Just as with customers or clients, when you have new staff members joining your team it helps to have your document templates ready to go. Not only that, a Virtual Assistant can help you copy edit and format your training manuals and reports.
Invoice Chasing
Do you send out your invoices and then immediately move on to your next job, hoping and praying that previous invoices have been paid?
Then, when it comes time to reconcile your books, you hit a huge wall of admin. and get overwhelmed?
If you spend a little time/money each month making sure all invoices are paid promptly, then when it comes to doing your BAS or to make projections in your budget, you’ll know exactly what you’re dealing with. Get a VA on board.
If you’re thinking of using a service with automations, such as Xero, Reckon or Freshbooks, how will you know which one is the most suitable for your particular circumstances? Have your VA do the background research for you so that you can make an informed choice.
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File Organisation
Are your files a complete mess? Are you never able to find what you need when you need it? Is your inbox getting bigger and bigger everyday? There’s no shame in it!
If your business is growing and you are thinking of bringing on an extra team member, or you want your current team to work more efficiently, then an organisational system will need to be established.
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Data Entry, CRM Maintenance
Whether it be adding details from the business cards you’ve collected to your CRM, or recording any expense receipts in your accounting program, a Virtual Assistant can tick off all of your small data entry duties so you have the time for more important tasks!
Resources
For a full list of online tools for small businesses, click here.
In Closing
Setting up automations and efficient systems within your business is all about clawing back time for the business owner.
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Similarly, clear communication and understanding around your customer service ethic is vital to holding on to those invaluable leads or customers that you have worked so hard to bring into your business in the first place.
If any part of this aspect of running a small business is getting on top of you, please consider outsourcing some of the workload to an administration professional who will become a valued member of your team. Virtual Assistants do not take up your physical office space, they pay for their own equipment, tax and super, and with the tech we now have, communication is super easy!
Book a discovery call with me today, to find out how you can claw back more of your time and sanity whilst growing your business.