7:00 AM: Check for voice mail messages, and transcribe all messages into a special "Voice Mail" notebook regardless of whether you need to send them to someone else, or not.

DO THIS EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT YET FINISHED RESPONDING TO YOUR MORNING EMAIL.

Someone may leave a voice mail support request so you can't leave this too long.

Do not use the "Voice Mail Messages" notebook for other purposes. Use it only for this task. (More on this below!)

Any people that ask to be called back at a later time, or date are marked with the specific callback time.

NOTE: Not many customers ask you to call back "at YOUR convenience". Be prepared to call back when they ask you too, but don't go overboard with this.

If you call someone more than three times, at the time they requested, without reaching them, leave a message and tell them perhaps it may be easier for them to email their questions or problems to you, or have them call you, on your direct line, so they don't get forced to leave another voice mail. Don't ever ask anyone to leave more than one voice mail, in an attempt to reach you unless it absolutely cannot be helped.

NOTE: It's a good idea to use many notebooks, for varying purposes, such as:

Let's go over those notebooks, and their purposes:

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Voice Mail:

When transcribing voice mail, start with the message number, the time the message was left, the person's name, the content of their inquiry, their callback number, and finally, their "best time to call".

If you can't clearly hear a message, listen to it again, even if you are a virtual assistant that is calling long distance.

If you aren't able to resolve a phone number, save the message, and try the number as you heard it. If you get a wrong number, you can always listen to the message again, in an effort to guess the number or have someone else dial in to the voice mail, and see if they can dechiper it for you. If not, there is one last thing you can do.

Take the person's name, and using your email program "FIND" function, check to see if there are any past email messages received from this person. If so, check to see if their signature file contains their correct phone number. If not, check your customers order, and if they've placed their order in the past, their number WILL be there. I have successfully found many numbers using this method!

Tip: You should definitely make it required that they provide their telephone number when ordering from you. You will sometimes need that info at a later date.

If you are a virtual assistant, you will probably need to send a copy of the voice mail messages to someone else at the company, so they are familiar with how many calls they are receiving, who is calling, and why they're calling.

Type the voice mail messages from the notebook, into an email, and send a copy to whoever needs it.

The "voice mail" email message should look like this, showing the time, name, phone, email, and comments.

Here are the new voice mail messages:

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Message #1

Time: 10:38 AM
Name: John Doe
Phone: 555-555-5555
Email: johndoe@wherever.com

Comments: He has a few questions about "The Amazing Formula", and "Gimme My Money Now!". He isn't sure of the difference between them.

I am calling him right now to respond to his question.

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Underneath the comments, you should include a note indicating what you will be doing about the call, such as "I am calling him right now" or "This is a personal call for you. I am not responding to it.", if the call does not concern you personally.

Make a new entry in the same email, such as "Message One", "Message Two", etc, for each new message, then send them, with a subject line of:

SUBJECT: Voice Mail - Date - Month - Mail Check #1

Tip: Check the voice mail three times a day (or more if you receive a lot of calls) so that way, anyone needing a callback won't have to wait too long to hear from you.

IF you are the one doing the customer callbacks, you should use a separate notepad than the one for "Voice Mail", so you can then prepare the list of customer callbacks for that specific day, as covered below.

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Customer Callbacks:

Anytime you are required to return a customer call, you should make an entry in your "Customer Callbacks" notebook. Start each new day, by adding the date at the top of the page. Before you add any new entries to this new day, you will need to go back to your last page, and transfer over any calls that are not yet fully dealt with.

You may think it's a lot easier to leave them on the last entry page, but it's not. Within 3 days, you'll have a hard time remembering to return to the old pages, and make those calls. Simply transfer them over, and add a short note beside them that says "Original call, insert date, insert month". At this time you've surely tried to contact them, and in most cases, you would have had to leave a message. So, write next to the listing, something like this: "left message Fri. Dec. 8th, 4:00 PM". Also include what their original call was about, because you'll never remember the next day! (You may think you will, but you'll have a ton of other new information in your head by then.)

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Important Information:

This notebook contains things such as passwords that you won't want to keep on your computer, phone numbers for your merchant companies, fax numbers for chargeback information, contact information for programmers, accountants, or just about anything you either don't want to store on your system, or anything important enough that should be recorded in two places.

If your computer crashes, you will NEED to have that info handy. Unless you remember ALL your login usernames, and passwords, write them down in this notebook. You'll be glad you did. For instance, if you need to create a new username for someone, you NEED the admin password. The customer shouldn't have to wait until you email someone for that password, just to create theirs.

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Hours Worked:

If you are a virtual assistant, or need to keep track of your hours for any reason, you will want to store them in an "Hours Worked" notebook.

Tip: Anytime something is very important, store itoffline in a notebook, in addition to having a copy on your computer, AND a copy of everything burned onto a CDROM! You won't regret spending the extra time backing everything up.

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Things To Do:

These are NOT projects. These are little things that need attention throughout the day, such as "Change the copyright notice on a page" or "Order more bookcovers", etc. If you are on the phone when these things are requested, you can jot them down while talking.

AFTER that, you should make an ICQ note as well, because that same notebook may be put aside within minutes, and you may not remember that one little thing hasn't been taken care of.

With the ICQ note, it remains on the desktop, until it's been taken care of. Very effective! You can also use it to add new notes, anytime you like.

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Current Projects:

Use a LARGE notebook for this!

This should be a whole notebook in itself. This is where new project ideas and instructions are written. Since you'll probably always be coming up with new ideas for a product, or ways to improve your current service, you will need a project notebook to store your information.

Whether you come up with a new idea, you will want to write it down right away, so you don't forget, and after spending so many hours online, you might prefer to write these things into a notebook, while you are away from the computer.

When the project is done, you can use a highlighter, and mark it as "DONE" in the notebook.

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Refunds and Chargebacks:

THESE ARE VERY IMPORTANT.

IF you are a virtual assistant, or work away from the office, you may not receive a copy of the actual chargeback letter sent from your merchant bank, therefore, it's good to use a specific notebook to record the necessary information given to you by the person who received the chargeback letter. I suggest that you do NOT store this information on your computer, as each chargeback does contain the customer's credit card number, and expiry date, and you don't want that information left on your system.

The info you will usually always need to process the chargebacks are:

The original purchase confirmation must be researched, and upon finding it, you then need to search for the customers name. Once you receive a chargeback (and if you are processing credit card orders on your site, you WILL get these now and then) you need to act immediately.

A good thing to do first, is to contact the customer by telephone, and ask them why they issued the chargeback. A large majority of the time it will be for non possession of credit card, however, the odd few will simply have forgotten your company name, or don't recognize it, on their statement. If that happens, what you need to do is ask them to fax you a signed document, stating that they did in fact place the order, and simply forgot.

Once you have received this faxed document from them, you then take it, and along with a copy of the original chargeback, or in the very least, the reference number, you fax it to the merchant bank, as proof the chargeback request is not valid.

You should then be able to mark the chargeback as having been dealt with, however, always contact the merchant company first, to make sure it's a closed file.

If the reason for the chargeback was "Non Possession of Card" that means a fraudulent charge was put onto the person's credit card, in which case, a refund must be issued immediately, and proof of the refund, original purchase, merchant number, reference number, and any other necessary information is then faxed to your merchant bank.

This is done in the hopes the chargeback will be reversed, and if you act on it, within the alloted period of time they give you, it should be credited to your account, and not count against you.