A small SEO company was experiencing significant growth. Great customer service to manage the growth while keeping the customers engage and buying more services were crucial.

Problem: The owner placed ads on indeed and other job posting forums but was not able to hire the required support based on the salary he could afford to pay. The CSM’s with great experience were in high demand and getting paid big salaries to join larger SEO firms. As the business grew, a good part of the profit was evaporating by hiring more and more qualified CSM’s. with high salaries and benefit costs. The current CSM’s were overworked, and the quality of work was significantly dropping client retention.

Plan of Action: We worked on a strategy where we placed a Virtual assistant to support to the CSM. The VA performed all the back-office time-consuming tasks that took up a lot of the CSM’s time which prevented them from building the client relationship after the sale. This was crucial as once the sales team turned the client over to the CSM, it was their job to keep them engaged.

Outcome: The CSM was now able to answer all the customer calls and perform the most valuable part of their job which was customer relations. Since all the back-office time-consuming jobs were moved to the VA, the CSM could manage two times the number of customers. The VA support was so successful, the company hired five more VAs to support all their CSM’s. The concern of hiring addition CSM’s was eliminated as each could manage double the clients they had. This strategy allowed the owner to look at the quality of work the CSM’s were doing. Those CSM’s that were employed but not great performers we removed. The remaining CSM’s took over the work from the terminated workers which saved over $200,000. The company can now double in size without having to hire another CSM.Final thoughts: If you are faced with having to hang on to workers that are not great because you cannot find an affordable replacement, consider adding an experienced VA to support your most effective CSM’s. Not only will you save a lot of money, but you will also have your CSM’s do what they are hired to do. Grow your client revenue, spend time talking with the clients and building relationships with your clients. Paying $50 per hour for a CSM to do a $12 per hour task significantly reduces your profit.