Tweet

Top 5 Ways To Get The Best Out Of Your Virtual Assistants

Guest post by: Gourab Nanda

Article Overview: Outsourcing your non-core business activities to virtual assistants brings along the additional responsibility to ensure that you get the maximum out of this model. Though one of the key benefits of outsourcing is to stay away from all those time consuming and non-productive activities; you still need to ensure that the objectives are met. No, it's certainly not hard to get the best out of your virtual assistants rather it's easy if you follow these simple yet effective tips.

Top 5 Ways To Get The Best Out Of Your Virtual Assistants

Outsourcing your non-core business activities to virtual assistants brings along the additional responsibility to ensure that you get the maximum out of this model. Though one of the key benefits of outsourcing is to stay away from all those time consuming and non-productive activities; you still need to ensure that the objectives are met. No, it's certainly not hard to get the best out of your virtual assistants rather it's easy if you follow these simple yet effective tips: 1.Let your vendor fully empathise with your business: A virtual assistant (VA) provider, even though runs his own business, automatically qualifies as an extension of your business. This mandates that you let your virtual assistants fully comprehend your business, its nature, its policies, shared vision, customer understanding and appreciation. This is the crucial part that most businesses miss out or fully ignore, and blindly believe in the capabilities of the VA to understand their business needs. Remember a VA should emanate the style and pattern of your business to ensure greater compatibility, which leads to profitable long term association and rapid growth.

2.Get direct customer feedbacks: If your outsourced activities include customer based interactions like phone/chat support and post-sale customer support or other similar activities involving your customers you got to have an extra eye on your virtual assistants. There are a few things you can do to check the quality of the service like:

• Taking direct customer feedbacks on the services offered.

• Maintaining a customer grievance cell under your purview to track VA's performance. This will bring the best out of your VA as they assume that you are under constant check to gauge their performance.

• Make mock customer interactions and check for the responses, compare it with the set standard procedures and measure the overall quality.

3.Get your requirements customized: Most virtual assistants offer a task-based or man-hour based solution which may be suitable to businesses like yours, however there are situations where you need a combination of services which best suit your requirements. In such cases it is recommended that you insist for customized solution rather than sticking to unfavourable readily offered solutions.

4.Set high quality standards and make your VA service provider follow them: One of the fundamental objectives of outsourcing is to get your business activities done with utmost efficiency and quality. Though your VA may ensure maximum quality it's your job to check on it and if needed set quality standards and work deadlines. Devise ways to check for those standards to be regularly met by the VA.

5.Idea generation leading to more profits: As your service provider constantly interacts with your customers and business processes they can, if focused, come up with ideas that can make a major impact on the way you are operating or even conceive new products or services for your business. So, if your VA is not conscious enough to this notion he may fail in understanding and creating new ideas and business opportunities for you. So keep telling your provider to be fully aware and have a larger view of things when dealing with your clients or activities.

Final word

Many small businesses that failed or made least out of outsourcing have more often ignored these practices and instead blamed virtual assistants for non-performance and in-effectiveness.

Related Articles
  The Need for a Virtual Assistant Association
  Could you work without a staff?
  What to Give the Exec Who Has Everything
  Virtual Staffing - Get Expert Help on a Tight Budget
  Every Small Business Owner Should Have At Least One
  5 Ways Through Which Virtual Services Can Help You Engage And Retain More Customers
  Challenges Of Outsourcing To Virtual Assistants And How They Can Be Surmounted
  The Benefits of Working with a Virtual Assistant over a Temp
  Who and What is a Virtual Assistant?
  Disadvantages of Outsourcing to Offshore Virtual Assistants
  Learn How Small Law Firms Are Effectively Using Virtual Assistants
  Is Technology Failing to Simplify Life? Tim Ferriss on Economist.com
  How to Start a Virtual Assistant Business
  Virtual Assistants - Getting Started
  The Top 5 Clerical Work From Home Jobs
  Could the future be virtual working?
  Internet Marketing Specialists are in High Demand
  Business Travelers: Why Are You Puttiing Up with all of the Pain?
  Profit Growth Strategy #7 for Virtual Assistants
  Relief for Small Business Owners

Article Tags: Small business outsourcing, Virtual assistant



Related Forum Posts
employees or 1099? - In my line of work, we are trying to keep our costs down and stay as "virtual" as possible. I was wondering if anyone had some insight as to whether I should hire employees or contractors? My apologies, here is a description of the situation so you might actually be able to answer my question. Little Man Consulting has a policy to NOT meet with clients unless they are truly against the completely virtual environment. As my company has quadropled in size this year alone, I am finding it harder and harder to keep up with the work and still grow the business. There are other Virtual Assistants out there. Should I farm out the work, or bring in employees?
Re: How can I promote my site? - [quote="Hulbert Lee":krqwp5om]You can promote your website through blog commenting, forum posting, article directories, software directories, and search engine optimization.[/quote:krqwp5om] In addition, I would also recommend running some contest if you have a blog. Keep it simple for a starter, offer good/fun prizes, and find a "community" of bloggers to spread this contest/news by of course asking them nicely and propose that it would benefit both of your sites. See how that works, and if you want to, you could also join some carnivals. We have tried this for the company that I work for (Pepper Virtual Assistants) and it's given us great exposure in the online business industry.
Re: Traditonal Demographics Do NOT Work with Generation V - That article is the first time I ever heard the term. I found this definition - [i:189o61sy]The term Generation V (for Virtual) is used to describe the online culture in which relationships, services and communication are carried primarily and preferably through electronic media. Generation Virtual is made up of people from multiple demographic age groups who make their social connections primarily online - through virtual worlds in online games, in social networks, as bloggers, or through posting and reading user-generated content.[/i:189o61sy] I like the targeting options the internet offers much better than the typical demographics. Age is particular is not nearly as effective in finding a target market unless you want to target kids. Too many of the typical demographics rely on stereotypes and just seems outdated for many types of promotion. That's one of the reasons this article title caught my eye. Shri
Re: Ideas For Business - Stas and lucy, Could you guys give us a recap of your entire business idea as it stands now. Seems like it morped a bit. Let us know: 1. Start date 2. Ways you will Market 3. What you will offer 4. How much will your charge for your offer
Outsource your work? - Hi BinaryGuy - do you really need someone 4 days a week to do accounting work? If you bring someone more experienced on you won't have to take them around with you and you can spend the time building your business. There are a number of people who you can outsource the work to - either a Virtual Assistant or a bookkeeper - have you thought about these options and not having someone actually come into the office?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

The Strong Leadership Formula

The Substance Abusing Employee

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.