Telephone Policies for Your Virtual Assistant Business

Once you’ve begun the process of setting up your VA business, you’ll need to setup your telephone policies.

Some things to consider are, will you answer the telephone whenever it rings? If so, do you have time in your schedule to allow for those interruptions?

In my business, I don’t pick up the phone if the call isn’t scheduled. The reason is, I can’t have those types of interruptions in my business as I don’t have the time to allot for it. I find that if I pick up every live call, it takes me longer to get back into the groove and then I have to punch in and punch out which throws off my concentration.

It’s okay to let your clients know that you only do scheduled phone calls. It’s just important to set your policies and be clear about them from the beginning. The one thing that I do ensure is that I have a backup method. If my clients have an emergency, I have given them my cell phone number to call. They know to ONLY call my cell if it’s a true emergency.

If you are going to only do scheduled calls, be sure to put that into your Welcome Package and let your clients know. What I used to do as well as provide one hour per day where I would pick up incoming calls. During this time, any of my clients could call and I would make sure I was available to answer their call. However, it was first come, first serve.

The last thing you want to note in your policy manual and when speaking with clients is how quickly you return voice mails. Will you choose 24 or 48 hours? You may also want to consider letting people know on your voice mail that they may receive a faster response if they send you an e-mail.

Did you find the information in this post helpful? If so, check out our Build Your Virtual Assistance Business course! The course contains information like this to help you build, grow and manage your virtual assistance business.