Great customer service lets your customers and clients know that you value them and you want them to be happy enough with your company and services to refer you to their circle of friends, family and customers. In short, great customer service is about reaching out and forming a relationship. How do you go about forming such a relationship? By remembering the one true secret of good customer service and acting accordingly; “You will be judged by what you do, not what you say.”

These are examples of some truly great customer service experiences that I had lately and wanted to share with you.

Grasshopper

Hi, this message is for Denise Griffitts,

This is Jonathan Kay, I am the Ambassador of Buzz here at Grasshopper.  I actually just left you a voicemail but wanted to follow up with an email as well.  I wanted to reach out to you as I really enjoyed your article “Does Your Small or Online Business Have a Toll Free Number”.  First off, it was important to me that I connected and thanked you.  Really appreciate you giving us the vote of confidence.  I feel like people really don’t take enough time to just say “thank you”, so that is what I wanted to do.

I was excited when I saw your article as I was not familiar with The Virtual Assistant Industry prior to it!  What else do you guys work on?  Anything at all I could be a resource for, or something I could help with?

Thanks again.

Jonathan

(I did call Jonathan back to thank him and we had a great free-ranging chat on business, customer service, blogging and the Virtual Assistance Industry. Thank you Jonathan!)

Dominoes Pizza

A week or so my husband and I were both down with a miserable (and lingering) case of the flu but knew we were going to survive it when hunger pangs in the form of a rabid desire for pizza hit us both.  Being an enthusiastic and ardent home cook, I don’t normally like to order pizza but our survival that day clearly depended on somebody besides me cooking food for us.

It was a cold and rainy day and we didn’t want to infect the poor delivery person with what ailed us, so left this envelope on the door with a tip. The lady ran back to her car in the rain, grabbed a pen and some masking tape and put this back on our door and then gave a quick ring on the doorbell to let us know that our order had arrived. I was impressed!

Now that is customer service and we definitely let the manager of her store know how much we appreciated that very kind gesture.

Tweet Pages

During my bout with the flu I ordered a custom Twitter background from Tweet Pages as I had seen their work, been impressed and wanted to give them a try. Once the order was complete, I apparently let it slide completely out of my consciousness. After about a week, and around the time of the Dominoes delivery, it occured that I had never received the background. After checking my junk folder I sent a note to Tweet Pages. This is what I got back along with a very nice phone call from Matt Clark. Excellent customer service!

I would really like to hear of superb customer service that you have received. Please share!

Table of contents for Weekly Recommended Resource

1. Weekly Recommended Resource
2. Build Your Own Affiliate Program

Weekly Recommended Resource

If you, or a client needs to build a quick affiliate program but don’t want to pay 1ShoppingCart $99 each month to have a few products available to affiliates, or don’t have sufficient sales to become part of traditional Affiliate Networks such as Commission Junction (CJ.com) Linkshare, Azoogle, etc., consider PayDot.com.

PayDot.com is free to join.

PayDotCom Vendor/Affiliate Accounts are free. You are allowed one free Vendor account to sell your product. If you, the Vendor, want to offer an unlimited number of products for sale you have the option of paying for a lifetime membership which will cost you the munificent sum of $29.

Sales are paid directly to your merchant account or Paypal account.

You can sell physical and digital products.

You can collect monthly subscriptions.

You get paid instantly. You are not required to way 30 days as with most affiliate networks.

There is no pre-approval, meaning that you don’t have to prove that you have a pre-specificed amount of sales each month to qualify.

You have access to your stats tracking.

You can provide promotional tools to your affiliates.

You will very likely need a Paypal account as most Vendors choose their as their payment method.

Your customers can pay you via your PayPal account. They can use their available PayPal funds or they can use their Checking Account, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Eurocard, Bravo, Visa Debit, MasterCard Debit, or Novus that is on file with their PayPal account. So if you don’t already have a PayPal account, be sure to sign up now.

Once you have your affiliate program set up, please revisit this page and let us know where we can find your products!

Table of contents for Your Partner In Success Radio Show 2010

1. Your Partner In Success Welcomes David Lee
2. Your Partner In Success Welcomes Vickie Mullins
3. Your Partner In Success Radio Show Welcomes Michael Bloxton
4. Your Partner In Success Radio Show Welcomes Back Deborah Dubree
5. Your Partner In Success Welcomes Rebecca Quinn
6. Your Partner In Success Welcomes Back Judy Peebles

Judy, The Journaling Jenius™ is a Business Skills Trainer, International Speaker and coach.  She has a passion for journal writing.  Judy says, “Expert journaling tools, when combined with strong business skills, will help you create the business or career you desire. For instance, journaling can be used for creative brainstorming, planning, stress relief, and conflict management.”

She is a dynamic and playful presenter. Her workshops, Journals and Journaling Jems™ cards teach tools & techniques that empower you to find your passion, life direction and personal path to success.

Judy Peebles partners with you, the business owner to:

• Identify strategies for focusing on and growing your business
• Establish branding and product development plans
• Implement processes and procedures
• Remove unconscious blocks that may stand in your way
• Get the results you want in your business and life.

We are going to talk to Judy about one of her favorite subjects – Branding!

What is your Brand?

How do you differentiate yourself?

Judy professes to taking a different approach when she teaches her Branding “U” workshops. 

Where do you start? 

What is a niche?  Why have a niche? 

What having a niche DOESN’T mean?  And what are most business owners afraid of. 

If you’re in network marketing do you still need a brand?  A niche? 

Why do you need to write an infomercial for your business? 

Your Partner In Success Radio Show

When: Friday, March 5, 2010

Time: 9 am PST, 10 am MST, 11 am CST, 12 pm EST

Where: Your home office telephone or computer.

Website: Your Partner In Success Radio Show

Call-in Number: 347-843-4988

Please be sure to login to the chat room to ask questions during the interview. And if we can get a brave caller on the line, Judy can do a live coaching demo to help someone define their brand / niche.

We look forward to “seeing” you!

We all use them either physically or in my case, on my various desktops. Truly, I would be lost without them!

Why you should download this FREE program.

To train with Denise Griffitts to become a highly technically savvy, highly paid, highly sought-after Virtual Assistant please visit Virtual Assistance University.

Table of contents for Weekly Recommended Resource

1. Weekly Recommended Resource
2. Build Your Own Affiliate Program

I get so many requests for tips and advice on the resources that my Virtual Assistance and Web Development companies use that it seems a great idea to publish a weekly resource.

These are online resources that will help you develop, gain knowledge, find new information and absorb new ideas.

Enjoy!

This Weeks Recommended Resource

WordPress Tip of the Day is a free video podcast from the “Internet Genius” Ben Cope that delivers high-quality video training for WordPress in 5 minutes or less every day in a format that is easy to follow, easy to understand, and always free!

Table of contents for Your Partner In Success Radio Show 2010

1. Your Partner In Success Welcomes David Lee
2. Your Partner In Success Welcomes Vickie Mullins
3. Your Partner In Success Radio Show Welcomes Michael Bloxton
4. Your Partner In Success Radio Show Welcomes Back Deborah Dubree
5. Your Partner In Success Welcomes Rebecca Quinn
6. Your Partner In Success Welcomes Back Judy Peebles

Your Partner In Success Radio Show

Rebecca Quinn is an online business manager, virtual assistant and business advisor who works with small business owners, solo-entrepreneurs, service professionals. We will be speaking about organization, specifically systems and processes. Once you set up systems for everything in your business you free yourself up to be creative and build the part of the business that you are in love with and passionate about.

Basic Systems: Why set up systems in your business? Where to start and what systems you really must have in place.

Emergency Preparedness: Why is this so important? Most business don’t survive disasters and information losses. Rebecca will give you tips on how to create a quick and easy mini-disaster plan for your business.

Systems for Getting Business, Marketing & Social Networking. Everyone needs more business; everyone has unprecedented access to get their information out in the world due to internet and social networks. We will discuss how to use systems to simplify your social networking.

There are a couple of reasons. One, is that I am perilously close to the 5000 friend limit that Facebook imposes on personal profiles.  What we do now is to send a note to the requestor, explain the situation and ask them to connect with me on one of the fan pages. There are currently two: Denise Griffitts – Virtual Assistance Industry Expert and Your Partner In Success Radio Show.

More importantly, my assistant will take a look at your profile page if it is viewable. If it is absolutely buried in Blingee post cards, Farmville, Mafia Wars or other spammy applications and we can’t determine what it is that you do and why we should connect we don’t even bother with the Fan Page invitation.

I do understand that a fair number of people are using their Facebook profile to entertain themselves with some of the games and applications that Facebook offers, but I am not one of them.  So thank you for the friend request, but please don’t take it personally when we decline.

Some time ago we created a PDF that our web development and virtual assistance clients have access to at Your Office On The Web on the client document password protected page.

As there is nothing client sensitive in this document I wanted to share it here with you along with a few more resources that are not currently listed in it. As you can imagine, it is a “living” document and updates regularly. Here is it’s most recent incarnation.

Click here to download Recommended Resources. Some of these resources are coded with my affiliate links, some are not.

 Other resources that we use and recommend.

Video Resources

Easy Video Player

• Instantly and automatically send your video viewers to any website, shopping cart or affiliate promotion after your video stops playing.
• Embed “buy now” buttons directly into videos.
• Embed opt-in forms inside your video and capture email addresses for list building purposes
• Create and protect “member only” videos thereby ensuring that only paid customers can gain access to your exclusive content.
• Publish your videos on any website in seconds.

You will also need to signup with AmazonS3 to host your videos for pennies. Very affordable!

WordPress Themes and Plugins

Elegant Themes

Each WordPress theme comes expertly coded in valid XHTML and CSS, and all are made compatible with the latest version of WordPress.  DeniseGriffitts.com uses the Who’s Who Theme.

WP WishList

WishList Member is a powerful membership script that can turn any WordPress blog into a full blown membership site. Your Office On The Web is expert at installing and configuring this very powerful plugin.

WordPress Dream Theme

An excellent theme that is not only easy to learn and use, but you also get have the option between self-service and full-service. The full service option gets you free phone support, free setup, free installation, and 1 hour of customization. Plus, you can use the theme on multiple sites.

WordPress Tip of the Day

WordPress Tip of the Day is a video podcast that delivers high-quality video training for WordPress in 5 minutes or less every day in a format that is easy to follow, easy to understand, and always free!

Other

Overnight Prints

I use Overnight Prints for all my print collateral and most of my clients do as well. The paper stock is excellent and the free online designer allows you to create your own custom business cards and other print collateral with their Interactive Designer. Or you can choose from 1000’s of designs by using the Classic Design feature. Trust me when I tell you the quality is superb!

PayPal

You can absolutely use your Paypal account either directly from your website by using “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” buttons or you can use Paypal as your only payment provider in 1shoppingcart. It is not mandatory these days that you have a merchant account if you don’t need or want one. My web development site has a Paypal payment page that you can see here. This is an easy solution that allows you to take payments for services without having to log into your account to send invoices or payment requests.

Napping on the job is usually grounds to be fired, but Your Virtual Assistant / Your Office On The Web, as a forward-thinking and progressive company encourages employees to nap to improve safety and increase productivity.

Approved nap time is part of the company’s broader fatigue counter-measure program developed by both the companies (Your Virtual Assistant and Your Office On The Web) and its union workforce comprised of Denise Griffitts and all contractors and salaried employees.

National Workplace Napping day is always observed the first Monday after Daylight Savings Time begins.  Because of the loss of one hour’s sleep due to the return of Daylight Savings Time,  Your Virtual Assistant’s employees will be more sleep deprived than usual. We therefore declare March 15th, 2010 a paid holiday.

Signed in to law this day: January 20, 2010

by Denise Griffitts

Having a toll free number on your website while offering credibility, also offers the opportunity to not publish to the world your home or cell phone number. In this day of work-from-home entrepreneurs, this is an important consideration.

My office uses Grasshopper which used to be called GotVMail.  Grasshopper is very easy to set up. Just pick a toll free number for your business, or transfer your current number. Then record your main greeting. You will also have the opportunity to have it professionally recorded if that is your preference. Add departments and employees, choose what phone number you want your calls to terminate to and you are done.  I actually don’t have my toll free number ring to my office as it can be terribly disruptive. What we have done is to create mailboxes and departments and have the voice messages emailed to the proper department as an .MP3. 

There is also a “Read Your Voicemail” function available for an additional $10 a month. If you are on the run a good bit, the voicemail transcription will be emailed to you as readable text.  You’ll be able to stay connected when you can’t listen to the .MP3 file of your voicemail.  You can also listen to your messages on your Blackberry or iPhone. Just click the “Play It On Mobile” link in the notification email and you’ll be listening to your voice mails without dialing or logging in to your account. For those of us on the run, this is a great tool.

Another really great feature is that you have unlimited extensions for your small business. Each extension has its own call forwarding, voicemail and message delivery settings. Even if you’re the only employee, by utilizing unlimited extensions you are giving your small business the big business sound that it needs.

Truthfully, there are too many features for me to list here. What I can tell you is that we use it, and love it.  It is also very affordable to have a toll free number these days. Plans start at $9.95 a month and there is a $25 activation fee. My monthly bill seems to hover around $25 a month which given all that the system offers is remarkably affordable.

Be warned though, if you make a habit of answering the calls that come through on your toll free number you will run your bill right up through the roof. I strongly recommend that you treat this strictly as a voice mail system and return the calls at your first opportunity.

To train with Denise Griffitts to become a highly technically savvy, highly paid, highly sought-after Virtual Assistant please visit Virtual Assistance University.

**You have permission to reprint in your publication or to your website/blog any articles by Denise Griffitts found on this Website as long as Denise Griffitt’s name and contact information is included. Denise Griffitts, Virtual Assistance Industry Expert, http://denisegriffitts.com, info @ virtualassistantindustry.com, 888-719-6711.