Keeping our word leads nicely to the next personal habit: punctuality. Yup; just plain being on time. It falls squarely in the first two dissatisfaction-eliminating facets of customer service: accuracy and availability.
Punctuality isn’t just about being on time for a meeting, although that’s critical. It’s also about timely delivery, whether by mail or in person. It’s about timely response, by phone, email, or smoke signal. We’ll come back to that in a bit.
As VAs we need to give realistic estimates of timeframes, then do all we can not just to meet them, but exceed them. That’s how word-of-mouth is created, not by simply doing what’s expected.
**This is an excerpt from The Commonsense Virtual Assistant – Becoming an Entrepreneur, Not an Employee by Joel D and Sue Canfield. Get a copy from Amazon here.