Have you ever considered the best way to communicate with your Filipino team members? Or, maybe you need to help your VA communicate more effectively with your customers and clients. Alternatively, you may want them to be able to tone down their American accent, or speak with an Australian accent when speaking to your Australian customers.
The Best Way To Communicate With Your Filipino VA
Consider the following:
Daily practise
Because your Filipino team member isn’t situated physically in your office, it’s important to build trust and a relationship between you so you can maximise effective communication and work practises.
A great practise for the best way to communicate with your Filipino VA is to make a point of speaking to them at the start and end of every work day, just as you would a staff member that isn’t working remotely.
This may seem obvious, but a lot of businesses don’t set this up as a daily routine.
You can greet them in the morning and ask them briefly how their day is going and share the tasks for the day.
At the end of the day, you can see how they went, and if there were any problems, you can work them out together.
If you do this every day, you will begin to build rapport and enhance your communication with them. Over time, this gives you an insight into how they work best, and the best way to present the tasks you need doing.
Someone once said of team members (and customers)-‘they don’t care about your company, unless they know that you care about them.’
Mind set
Having the mind set that your VA is a team member just like the team members you already have, and that they are an extension of your current team is important. They need to be included in team meetings etc.
When they can see what the whole picture is, and feel part of the bigger goal, they’ll be more invested in your business and work more effectively. Having met the other team members, they’ll feel more comfortable approaching them if they have to, and they’ll see that it’s OK to ask questions and make comments.
This is important because Filipino employees can be very shy at first, and so don’t always communicate if something is wrong, or if they need more training to master a task. This helps you in the best way to communicate with your Filipino VA.
If Your Filipino Employee Has A Strong Accent
If you are having trouble communicating with your Filipino VA or employees because of their accent, you may need to invest in them learning to pronounce English more clearly. They will also understand what you are saying better, reducing embarrassment on their part. The more comfortable they feel as part of your team, the more effective they will be in their role on your team.
Invoke Trust In Your Business
If your VA is in a role that involves making calls and talking to clients, or you would like them to take this role on, they need to be able to invoke trust in your business from the outset.
They need to focus on the client and their needs, and not on whether they can be understood when they speak English. If they’re interacting with clients in Australia, you may need them to have more of a toned down American accent or an Australian accent.
The ability to sound more like a local gives your VA confidence and reduces the cultural resistance of your customers. Your customers will be more open to what you want them to understand about your business, or the action you want them to take.
Having your VA speak more clearly, is another tool you give them to support you in your business, just like you give them a good CRM system to work with.
The List
The best way to communicate with your VA and have them work their best, is to give them a clear list of step by step instructions. Break down your tasks into steps they can follow especially for repeatable tasks they can do each day, week and month.
Straining to understand what your Filipino team member is saying definitely gets in the way of understanding what they are saying. One of the best ways to communicate with your Filipino VA is to make sure they speak English clearly. For more information on our courses click here.
Best wishes,
Esther Bruhl
Speech Pathologist and Accent Reduction Expert
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