Communication matters

For people who work virtually, nothing gives off a poor impression as much as an unanswered or late reply to an email or voice message. I really believe that people working virtually need to monitor to their email and voicemail during the day. To a client or an associate, it looks very rude and unprofessional to have messages or queries go unanswered. Most of my clients have never met me so it really imperative that I make them feel at ease through my communication with them. They need to feel that I am timely and reliable. If they don’t it could affect our work relationship significantly. Recently, I been having, for the most part, a very one-side conversation with another Virtual Assistant. Emails and voice messages would go unanswered for days at end and when the reply came it was very vague and did not address the issues put forward in the emails. How can one work virtually and operate like that? Another thing that really irritates me is when people just get into the meat of the email. No ‘hello’ or ‘good day’. Personally, I only make allowances for this when the relationship has been established and no offence is likely to occur. Other than that, there really is no excuse not greeting the other party. By and large, I’ve found that people are losing their professionalism when it comes to communication on a whole.