An online shop is a very convenient way to sell your products today. Especially when volumes are small at first and there are not (yet) many clients, it is the ideal option. But once the shop is built, the word is out and buyers keep coming, the orders have to be fulfilled, and managing clients brings a whole range of tasks with it.
What does it take to keep an online shop running?
Checking orders
What do you need to do?
- Check the payments arriving in the bank
- Mark the order as paid (but not yet as fulfilled)
- For digital products, provide access to the product
- Resend the digital product or renew access when needed (lost passwords, links etc.)
- Review the special requests that may come with orders, and communicate with clients
Packing materials
- Order padded envelopes (probably in several sizes, unless all your goods are one size) or other packaging
- Get suitable paper for the parcel labels
- Store a stock of packaging alongside the goods
- It is generally wise to order materials in larger quantities, because the unit price is lower (and your costs smaller)
Packing the goods and sending them off
- Pack every order according to its contents
- Create the parcel labels, if there is no automatic system, then print and stick them on
- Mark the orders as fulfilled in your shop system
- Take the parcels to a parcel machine (such as Itella or Omniva here in Estonia) or hand them to a courier
A client wants to return the goods
- Communicate with the client and explain how to make the return
- Communicate with the postal provider so they activate the return
- Possibly deal with obstacles and go back and forth several times (the client cannot work out the return, the parcel machine code fails etc.)
You sent the parcel but it never reached the buyer
- Check in the self-service where the parcel is
- If the self-service gives no answer, contact the postal provider
- Meanwhile keep the client informed, so they know their problem is being handled
- Possibly communicate several times (clarifying to the provider when and which parcel was sent, keeping the client constantly updated)
Sound familiar? You do it every day, again and again and again, and these may not even be all the tasks. Depending on your company’s specifics, systems and options, there may be more…
How much of your time does the online shop demand?
Have you measured how much time you spend each day to: communicate with clients, mark orders as paid, send out repeated or lost invoices, solve client problems, check where shipments are, handle returns, send out new orders and mark them fulfilled?
Did you know you do not have to do all of it yourself?
That’s right! With virtual assistants you can use outside help for managing your online shop orders, even though the assistants do not sit in your office.
What can be delegated?
You can hand the assistant every task from managing the emails to sending out the goods.
How does it work?
You can give the assistant access, or a separate inbox, where all the clients’ joys and troubles about their orders arrive: a lost invoice, a happy note about a delivered parcel, or questions about shipping. These are mostly standard, recurring questions that you personally do not have to answer every time.
NB! One option is to add an FAQ section to your website, which will probably reduce the volume of emails, though it will certainly not eliminate them completely.
Next, the virtual assistant needs access to your online shop to check order statuses. If you want the VA to also keep an eye on payments, they need access to the bank as well (don’t worry: depending on the bank you can set permissions so the assistant only sees incoming payments, with any payment-making disabled).
You also need to agree on the details of ordering and paying for packaging materials, and then create an instruction for how everything is done. There are quite a few options. If you have your own regular suppliers, you can give the virtual assistant access and let them do only the work related to shipping (orders, receiving the materials, storing them). You can remain the payer of the supplier’s invoices while the delivery address changes to the virtual assistant’s office-warehouse.
If you have not yet created a standard describing the necessary steps step by step, you can save time there too and let the virtual assistant write the instruction. Once the system is in place, all that remains is to delegate the daily routines and dedicate yourself to what matters more (growing sales, marketing, developing the company) or take some well-earned time for yourself (every entrepreneur needs rest to be more successful and productive).
Why prefer a virtual assistant over hiring an employee?
You don’t have to. It all depends on the quantities and the workload. If your shop holds a lot of goods and so many orders that checking payments, packing and fulfilment takes at least half a day every day, and you have a place to store the goods, then maybe buying in the service is not for you. Add up your costs and revenues in the different scenarios and find the best solution for you!
But if your daily volumes are not stable (more orders around Christmas or some other period) or not very large, a VA can be the ideal solution. Especially if you have no warehouse space of your own. When there are no orders or very few, there is no cost, or it is minimal. When a busier period arrives, you have a helper at hand and do not have to interrupt your own work for all the client issues to get solved, orders fulfilled, and the shop to run passively (without your involvement) like clockwork.
So, what will it be?
Will you keep doing everything yourself, or take a moment to build a system that lifts your company to the next level?
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