A Virtual Assistant is a self-employed professional who specialises in providing customers from a remote venue, typically a home office, with administrative services. Typical tasks that a Virtual Assistant can perform include scheduling appointments, making telephone calls, organising travel, and maintaining email accounts. In particular, Virtual Assistants are in demand by start-ups and online companies that need support but do not want to waste money on those costs of having an employee. Many small and medium-sized organisations, however, use virtual support especially for specific activities, such as management of social media.
A Virtual Assistant may potentially do something that could be accomplished by most support staff. There are restrictions, but technology is constantly providing ways to overcome those constraints. They might not be able to personally get you a coffee in the morning, for instance, but through a service such as Uber Eats, they place a coffee order and get it delivered to you.
The tasks of remote support are not restricted to clerical jobs. They can provide marketing, web design, bookkeeping, and several other services of assistance. Some Virtual Assistants specialise in a certain range of skills and execute activities relevant to those skills only whereas others specialise in an industry.
So, how do they work?
Even though Virtual Assistants are not a distinguishing characteristic, many of them work as consultants. They can run their own Virtual Assistant company based at home. After signing a deal with the company of that assistant, clients employ a Virtual Assistant.
Virtual Assistants can also simply work for a business as employees. With short-term contracts found by freelance platforms, other Virtual Assistants can jump from company to company.
What Tasks can a VA do for you?
What will the VA do? Well, there are infinite possible options. A VA may handle duties almost identical to a typical employee and decrease your mundane task management jobs. The examples below are just a handful of ways a VA might work for you:
- Take your calls and arrange your reservations
- Upgrade your websites content
- Update your accounts on social media
- Manage the customer response emails
- Data entry
- Manage your calendar
- Research on your behalf
- Keep your contacts organised
- Set up appointments for you
- Book travel
- Writing board reports, etc…
How would I know if my VA is working or not?
With a VA, you are not physically present to check on your employee. So, how do you know if your VA is working or playing a game of Tetris the entire time? The advantage a VA has over any other employee who fakes work is that you only end up paying for the number of hours the work is done. You can also pay for the amount of work done.
When hiring a VA, you better recruit a specialist who has a strong track record, who also gets stuff done on schedule and before deadlines. Although you can’t get concrete evidence that your VA is working, to get a grip on your VA, you can use resources that are discussed below.
Following are some of the tools that are essential to work efficiently with your VA:
- Zoom Or Skype: Video conferencing, IM, Calling.
- Acrobat Connect – Screen sharing and video conferencing.
- Trello, Basecamp, Asana, Activecollab – Project management tools.
- Google Web apps.
- Dropbox or Google Drive- File sharing.
- Any time logging tool
For more information or to discuss your particular requirements feel free to give us a call on 04 909009 or leave your details below and we will be in touch.
