24 Sep How Virtual Assistants Can Help Your Business

Running a business will always take work, but that doesn’t mean you have to tackle all of the work personally. Having help from an assistant can help make your workload a lot more manageable.

The problem is that a lot of businesses think there are only two options; hiring a full-time employee or going without. The latter does nothing to help your workload, but the former is a big commitment in salary and administration. For some businesses, this doesn’t look like an attractive choice. But there is a third option, and that is to get help from a virtual assistant. This option can be very useful for businesses that want extra help but are reluctant to take on an employee.

How Virtual Assistants Help your Business

Virtual assistants can handle any task you might expect an employed assistant to handle which does not require them to be present in your office. When you think about it, a surprisingly comprehensive list of duties can be slotted into this category, such as:

• Telephone Answering: Virtual assistants can provide a friendly, professional off-site call answering service. This means that less of your time is spent answering the phone for simple queries, and potential new customers are handled expertly without the need for your personal attention.

• Email: Emails can’t just be ignored, but they can take up a good portion of your day with a simple reading-and-answering process. There is no reason an assistant needs to be present on-site to answer emails.

• Diary and Travel: Having a well-planned diary helps you make sure that your time is used effectively and that your business operations run smoothly. The problem, of course, is that it takes time to organise your diary in the first place. A virtual assistant can handle this for you, including making travel arrangements where necessary, so your workflow benefits without taking up time.

Advantages of Virtual Assistants

For simple yet invaluable duties such as call answering, email management, and scheduling, a virtual assistant is more than adequate. However, rather than just being the equal of an employee, they offer a number of advantages for many businesses.

Virtual assistants are generally more cost-effective for many small- and medium-sized businesses than a full-time employee. You pay them only for the time they spend working on your business and are in a position to use the time spent working for each of their clients with maximum efficiency. As an external service provider rather than an employee, they also have the advantage of not being present on your payroll, cutting the effort and admin that goes into getting help with your workflow.

Virtual assistants also tend to be more committed to delivering the best possible service than employees. If they do not perform their work effectively, their clients can switch to another service provider more easily than they could replace an employee. They depend upon delivering good service in order to keep your business, so that is what they do……