Clients love communication and responsiveness - it's been proven time and time again. Unhappy clients are the clients who have to chase for work or chase for updates and it can be frustrating for everyone.
A recent research study showed that in a 4 month period 41% of clients left the service due to issues with the responsiveness of their assistant.
The average response time for the most successful assistants on Time etc is less than 10 hours (acknowledging tasks/replying to emails/replying to comments on tasks). These assistants maintain a consistent client base, bill a consistent amount of hours for their clients and have great working relationship with them based on mutual respect, trust. You can read more from some of the successful assistants here.
Please note that your average response time excludes weekends and the responsiveness stat is for your own reference and is not shared with clients :)
We've also collated some tips specifically about responsiveness from other VAs and they recommend doing the following -
- Acknowledging all comments on tasks from clients - even if it's just to say - thanks/got it/I'm working on it/it was great working on this.
- Replying to all emails from clients - even if its just to acknowledge receipt of the email.
- Archiving emails that aren't needed.
- Acknowledging tasks to ask any questions even if you can't start working on it till a little later that day.