Is there really a demand for Virtual Assistants?
Absolutely! The increase in demand for virtual assistants can be seen from statistics sounding the alarm for the need for more VA support. Since the pandemic, more people do their transactions online and now prefer to work from home; simply put, the workforce has evolved into a more flexible and productive world.
So, is there really a huge demand for Virtual Assistants in 2022? Definitely! If you don’t want your business to get left behind in this Digital Age? Having a VA is a mandatory.
As an entrepreneur, your time is your most valuable asset. You are the brain and the leader of your company. Your main task is to focus on managing your business operations, improving your business model, and creating business strategies that scale your business.
And as you continue to expand, your business burns more and more of your time. You’re now required to create invoices to get your employees paid faster, you reconcile your expenses, you plan out your next team outing, and the most time-consuming task of all, you are now required to manage emails.
According to FrontApp.com, the average person “spends 28 percent of their workweek on email, more than 11 hours a week, with the average person sending and receiving 124 work emails every day, or 620 emails every week, we’re spending an average of 1.1 minutes on each email.” As the business owner, your inbox volume could be 100% higher than the above numbers.
At this point, your time and effort are now divided between clerical and managerial activities. And since time is your most valuable asset, it will be wise to invest in hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA).
What is a VA? Defined as an independent contractor who provides administrative services to clients while operating outside of the client's office. A virtual assistant typically operates from a home office but can access the necessary planning documents, such as shared calendars, remotely.
People employed as virtual assistants (VA’s) often have several years of experience management as either an administrative assistant or office manager. Typical tasks include scheduling appointments, making phone calls, making travel arrangements, and managing email accounts. More advanced VA’s specialize in offering graphic design, blog writing, bookkeeping, social media, and marketing services. For an employer, one advantage of hiring a virtual assistant is the flexibility to contract for just the services they need.
Since working from home has become more accepted for both workers and employers, the demand for skilled virtual assistants is expected to grow.
A VA typically operates from home and heavily relies on the internet to remotely access necessary planning documents like shared files or calendar schedules. A VA is also usually equipped with the latest cloud tools like Software as a Service (SaaS) tools and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms. These types of tools can efficiently perform and carry out various administrative tasks online and in real-time.
Now, imagine how much time, effort, and money you could save if you could delegate all of your administrative and clerical tasks to a professional VA. And if you hire from a reputable cloud-staffing agency, they may also recommend VAs that could assist you in your travel arrangements, appointment scheduling, data entry, and other personal errands.
The Benefits of Hiring a VA
Below you’ll discover ways you could delegate your tasks so you may start to focus on optimizing and improving your processes for maximum business growth.
Time Management & Administrative Tasks
The most common reason why our clients hire a General VA is to save time, which can be achieved in two ways: Direct time saving and Indirect timesaving.
Direct time-saving – this is an hour-for-hour trade-off. For instance, instead of you spending five hours per month doing a task, a VA will be the one to perform that same exact task on your behalf every month which in turn, gives you five extra hours to perform other important tasks.
Indirect time-saving – this time-saving method is accomplished in a way that you are now taking higher-level types of tasks or the tasks that really matter to scale your business. As your VA starts to handle more administrative tasks, you’re now able to spend most of your time and effort in managing your business operations, improving your business model, and creating business strategies.
Staff or Team Management Tasks
There is no doubt that managing an office staff or team is very time-consuming and costly for your business. This is a common problem faced by every business, regardless of type, size, market, or industry. With the help of a VA, you can outsource some low to mid-level management tasks, so you have more time to focus on high-level ones.
Here are some management tasks you can delegate to a VA:
Following up on team deliverables
Conducting teamwork-in-progress (WIP) meetings
Creating and managing task templates
Organizing staff outings
Updating role descriptions
Organizing staff training and upskilling
Tracking team Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Quality-checking output and performance
Managing and updating process manuals
Seeking feedback on management performance
Client Relationship Management Tasks
Maintaining good customer relationships is possible through CRM tools. With these tools, it’s easier to build stronger client relationships, which makes conducting business with your customers smoother. Therefore, finding a trustworthy VA with the necessary skills and knowledge of CRM tools is critical if you want your CRM tasks to perform accordingly.
Social Media & Digital Marketing Tasks The digital age has made everyone and everything more connected than ever. With all of these technological innovations, from smartphones, computers, and other devices, clients and customers now have the world at their fingertips.
Due to this constant shift in how information is being accessed and transferred, digital marketing through social media is the best way to stay relevant and remain competitive in all of your marketing campaigns.
Outsourcing your digital marketing tasks to a VA will eventually pay off in both short and long-term marketing campaigns. A VA’s main tasks include the following:
Content marketing support
Social media support
Search marketing support
Email marketing support
Marketing funnels
Updating your site’s landing page
Updating website content
Monitoring Google ads or Facebook campaigns
Interactive video scriptwriting and creation
Competitor tracking and research
Sales Support Tasks Sales are not just about selling and earning money. It’s more about providing the best shopping experience, making every transaction enjoyable, smooth, and memorable for everyone. This, if done properly, will create trust and convert customers into regular customers or even brand ambassadors.
Having sales support or a sales representative can make all the difference. A well-trained sales support can handle email concerns, respond to live chat queries and answer phone calls on your behalf. You may even provide templates for your VA to use when posting on your social media accounts.
Human Capital Support Tasks As your business grows, so does your responsibility for your employees. Having a VA to assist in HR tasks ensures that you comply with all legal requirements like compensation and benefits.
With the use of the Human Resource Information System (HRIS) platforms like Bamboo HR, maintaining and updating employment records are now simpler than ever. A VA can perform all of these basic employment record tasks in just two to five hours per month. Other HR functions that a VA can perform include:
Placing job ads on online recruitment boards
Screening CV’s from applicants
Keeping abreast with employment law changes
Conducting initial interviews
Updating employment agreements
Preparing and organizing performance reviews
Making announcements on your behalf
Tracking and calculating hours
Personal Tasks With VAs versatility and flexibility at work, they make a perfect candidate to perform your personal tasks. Here at Superwoman Business Services, all of our VAs undergo the required screening before and during our recruitment process. We know how important trust is, so we only hire VAs who are trustworthy.
Here are some ways a dependable VA can manage some areas of your personal life:
Planning holiday trips
Managing personal social media channels
Researching and purchasing gifts
Paying bills
Managing investment properties
Managing Airbnb bookings
Researching online training and upskilling programs
Remotely monitoring your home
By outsourcing your daily back-office tasks, you’ll save money, avoid stress, and spend your time and energy on things you enjoy the most in this new decade and beyond.
Finally, many organizations are now looking at custom software development as a viable option to meet their business requirements. Custom software development has many advantages, including modifying and upgrading to fit your business needs, better security, and fewer bugs. DesignRush provides a guide that walks you through the average custom software development cost by type and size, the factors influencing the rates, calculating these costs, and where to get custom software development.