Sustaining client service from virtual offices

As I do when I’m working out a new idea, I looked at it first from the perspective of an employee and whether the virtual company gives us a competitive advantage. Is it an added benefit most firms can’t yet offer?

What about as an employer? What about the client service issue, from a professional services firm perspective?

How might our clients feel about working with people who might not be full-time and might not live in North America? How might they feel about never meeting the team who does the work, relying instead on their account team lead?

Nontraditional work hours

Danny Brown commented on that post, saying we should take a page from startups and let people work when they want—meaning that if they can get their work done in two 15-hour days and take the rest of the week off, so be it.

I joked that I wish I could do that (maybe there is some truth to it), but when push comes to shove, we are a client service organization, so we need to be “on” when our clients are.

So we have a virtual organization, and we hold a contest that requires my team to get up from their desks—gasp!—during the middle of the day, but people still work normal business hours.