The client
Emma Read runs Emma Read VA & Associates, an award winning virtual assistant matchmaking service. She connects female founders with multi-talented virtual assistants equipped with the skills and expertise to meet specific needs.
The sticking point
Emma’s clients love the virtual assistant matches she provides for them. However, the whole process of onboarding her clients and VAs was taking up too much of her time, because she effectively has four separate onboarding processes to handle:
- Processing applications from VAs to join her team
- Processing requests from new clients for VA support
- Pairing clients with suitable VAs
- Starting each pair working together, and making sure the client-VA pairings are running smoothly.
That’s a lot of people involved, a lot of information required and a lot of conversations flying back and forth too. So, finding a simple way to manage all of this effectively was critical to her success.
Having worked with Emma myself before, I already knew she was highly organised. But it was taking so much time to process applications and match the applicants that when we first spoke about the problem, it was beginning to feel like it wasn’t worth the time anymore. Clearly something had to be done to make it sustainable for her.
A simplified matching process
To resolve this issue, Emma booked a Level Up Your Client Management Consultation with me and walked away with a whole new system.
During our call, I prodded and probed each of the four processes to find every detail that could be made more efficient.
A quick win during our call was noticing that Emma wasn’t asking for testimonials from the clients working with her VAs. She was used to doing this with her own direct clients, but it was a new step for her to ask for this from the clients working with her VA team. This gave her an immediate new source of raving reviews!
Two weeks later I delivered her Streamlined Client Management Plan, which included:
- A reduction in the number of steps in each process, cutting down the time spent going back and forth which each new client and VA.
- A Streamlined Client Workflow, clearly showing each step across all four of her processes. There are multiple moving parts involved when pairing people up, making it essential to have a clear picture, so stepping back, asking questions and creating a flowchart works wonders for staying on top of what needs to happen when and where.
- Directions on how to move her system from Google Sheets to Airtable for a streamlined pairing process. Airtable has advanced filtering options, so whether she needs information about VAs, clients, or a particular pairing, it’s there at her fingertips. She can also use Airtable’s automations to keep her up to date on the progress of each application and each match. She no longer needs to manually search for her next tasks, which saves her a lot of time and headspace. Plus she had told me she liked colourful systems so that made Airtable a good fit for her too!
One happy client
Emma’s Airtable system was a gamechanger for her business, and it makes me smile every time I see another wonderful review for her fantastic service!
‘By following your recommendations I’m not only saving time but I’m creating a more streamlined journey for my clients and my team. Most of the tweaks you suggested took me very little time to implement and have made a huge difference already.’
You can read all about Emma’s services and her wonderful team of associates here.
