Virtual Assistant Services for Outsourcing? Explained below!
Outsourcing and virtual assistance go hand in hand. With a host of online virtual assistant services around, these web assistants are becoming a ubiquitous business asset. While the trend is now becoming an industry standard, it is hard coming across as a simple or secure task. Online assistants have the luxury to quit at will, leaving your precious projects behind in a limbo. What the entrepreneur needs to do is devise strategies to keep VA’s hooked to the job. Here are some simple tips to increase the productivity of web assistants who are dealing with outsourced tasks.
- Always have more than one assistant: In an ideal world, one online virtual assistant dedicated completely to your work is enough to get you through the day. But situations hardly work out that way. Delays are inevitable. Therefore the need to have a potent backup plan is the need of the hour. This will save face at critical situations and keep things running smoothly. Some VA’s cannot be trusted enough to stick around for long since most of them tend to vanish during emergencies. Thus having another assistant as a backup will minimize fallout and keep work running smoothly.
- Gradually add more responsibilities to work: In this line of work, trust is paramount. Even when you hire a low-cost employee you have to place enough trust on them to respect deadlines and put in quality work. The solution to this problem is rarely resorted to since most people are averse to outsourcing. To remedy this problem, you have to gradually add to the importance of timely submissions. Start with simple tasks and slowly guide them towards significant assignments, only after they start meeting your criteria of responsibility. If you can, assign the same task to a number of people to gauge efficiency. A week into this experiment, you will have discovered a team of efficient online assistants who are capable of handling any assignment whatsoever.
- Prioritize your work: The prospect of dumping a list of tasks on your VA is extremely tempting, but cannot guarantee quality results. This strategy is foolproof with experienced employees but might not be the approach in training potential new hires. The solution lies in segregating assignments by their degree of importance. This way when outsourced will produce lesser chances of errors. This way you’ll be able to prevent your web assistant from becoming a liability to the company.
- Be unnecessarily detailed when instructing: When working with virtual assistant services, you cannot hope to instruct them vaguely. You might end up with the least expected outcome. Like when you ask your assistant to rent a car – you have to be specific about the type and the preferred location of the rental. Otherwise, you will end up with a battery run compact car from a rental place further away than expected. While offline errors can still be rectified, the damage incurred in online errors can be huge. In such a case provide a detailed set of instructions to your web assistant and have them follow those instructions to the letter. That way you will be able to guarantee quality work.
I need a Virtual Assistant for work management as my assistant. Now!
Hiring virtual assistant services is not easy and requires some homework on your part. Now, these strategies might seem counterproductive but are sure to provide guaranteed results in the long run.