A virtual assistant provides several different services to businesses as well as entrepreneurs from a remote location. These tasks range from scheduling appointments to personal errands. In other words, one can pretty much instruct their virtual assistant to do anything.
The virtual assistants may not be present in person, but they are still a very important part of your enterprise says E-commerce Expert John Lawson. Even before COVID-19 forced people online, there was a documented increase in people working remotely. A GitLab survey found that 56% of people working remotely had done so in less than a year.
Why would you need a virtual assistant?
You get to put your employees to better use
Virtual assistants (VAs) can take on the most mundane tasks in a business which can be done remotely such as preparing routines and scheduling emails and leave the more important tasks for the workers on the actual grounds such as participating in spearheading strategies for growth. The result of such division of labour is that the full-time employees (in specific those that are more senior and also talented) can focus their attention on more important matters that need a physical presence.
Cost reduction and saving on time
A major reason businesses outsource work is that they get to save money. This is both in terms of salary and also cutting down on the training costs. VAs can reduce your business’s operating costs by as much as 78%. (Walker, 2020) Virtual assistants save businesses time as training will no longer be a thing to worry about.
Among surveyed countries, the lowest average VA salary was in the Philippines while the highest was in Australia.
What can Virtual Assistants do?
The real question is what can they not do?
There is so much that you can outsource to your virtual assistants.
These include:
Administrative work
You can get virtual assistants to be assistants. This would mean they take up all the duties that any administrative assistant would.
This would entail:
Scheduling of appointments and meetings
Booking any travel arrangements
Answering the calls
Organization of your calendar and to-do list
Content creation
Content creation and management lead to more traffic to your site, which is what all small businesses want. It is however not easy and is tedious. That is why it would be a good idea to outsource your content creation work such as your blog posts to a virtual assistant. Outsourcing this to one person only will ensure that every piece of content has a personal touch.
Finance management
Virtual assistants can help your small business manage the finances. They can make your purchases, maintain your budgets and also keep track of all your expenses so that all your finances are as transparent as can be. This will help you not to have last-minute rushes when it gets to tax season.
Social media management
Your VA can look out for what is viral, monitor all interactions as well as analyze the statistics to come up with what converts best.
Research
Getting a VA to focus on gathering data to help your small business grow would be a step toward actual significant growth.
Other services that can be done by VAs include customer services, managing your emails, and even carrying out your tasks.
Conclusion
Getting help from virtual assistants is gaining traction, and more people in the workplace have a positive view of remote work and working with other offshore work teams.
Having that designated go-to person to sort out all your needs might be what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have a small business or are looking into getting a VA, go ahead and do it!
Bibliography
Kate, G. p. (2019, May 8). Best of budgets. Retrieved from Virtual Assistant Statistics.: https://www.bestofbudgets.com/virtual-assistant-statistics/
Walker, C. M. (2020, February 5). 5 Virtual Assistant Statistics Business Owners Need to Know. Retrieved from Virtual Assistant Statistics: https://chrismwalker.medium.com/5-virtual-assistant-statistics-busine