How many times have you heard about, or had a conversation with a business owner who has made a comment like this:
“The last VA we had went missing in action; we didn’t hear from him / her for weeks”
It makes my heart sink when I hear a story like this, and I have to admit that I’ve heard this many times over the years from business owners. They have been burned because they have put their trust in a VA who basically did a disappearing act, simply failed to deliver what they said they would.
And, I have also experienced this first hand when subcontracting out overflow work.
It’s disappointing, unprofessional, rude and incredibly frustrating to say the least.
If you look at the bigger picture and are able to be very objective, the ramifications of your bad service affect our industry as a whole. You’re a walking, talking advertisement for what a VA stands for whether or not you like it.
To put it quite simply, as our VA industry becomes more widely recognised on the local business landscape, we all need to be totally cognisant of the fact that what we do or don’t do in our day to day business – good and bad – contributes to the reputation of the VA Industry as a whole.
Now, I want you to read and re-read this until you truly ‘get it’:
Working remotely, virtually, or teleworking (whatever description you give it), you need to understand that your clients and colleagues don’t have the luxury of being able to simply look across the room and see if you’re in your office; they can’t just poke their head around the door and ask where you are up to with that project you’re working on for them; they can’t see your body language and they often have no idea what’s going on with you – or their work.
Your clients are putting their trust in you, and if you go MIA or fail to deliver on a project for whatever reason and don’t tell your client upfront what is going on, then you are letting the side down in a big, big way.
My motto has always been “Communication is Key”. You’ll hear me bang on about it day in, day out. And this is a classic example of where you need to keep your client in the loop.
Bottom line here is that your clients absolutely can’t guess what’s going in your life, they don’t know, they don’t understand unless YOU tell them what is going on.