The Ultimate Guide To Finding A Virtual Assistant

Not long ago, becoming a virtual assistant (VA) was a new phenomenon in the gig economy. With time, it has grown in demand as individuals want to free their time and make more money.

This has attracted many people wanting to be VAs, but with the complexities involved, finding one suitable for your organization can take time and effort.

In this article, you’ll learn how to find a successful VA so that you can dedicate more time to your business to make more money. So, let’s dive in.

What’s a virtual assistant?

A virtual assistant (VA) offers administrative support for your business or technical support for your personal life remotely. They can be personal assistants or administrative assistants.

This job group is attractive to individuals who like to work remotely. They can work from anywhere in their virtual offices and choose when to work depending on the demand of their jobs.

Finding a VA will cut costs by approximately 90% compared to hiring a full-time employee. Besides, a VA will free up your time since you’ll allocate more functions to them, especially mundane tasks.

Why do you need a virtual assistant?

If you’re wondering whether you need to find a VA for your business or personal life, here are some situations to consider;

a)     Are you feeling overwhelmed?

If you’re experiencing rapid growth in your business, you’ll agree that keeping tabs on everything is difficult. This often leads to burnout, thus compromising the quality of work you deliver. If you aren’t careful, it can come at the expense of your health.

To avoid such feelings, you should find a VA to relieve some of your work pressure.

b)     Too much work- zero results?

You can get busy replying to your emails, yelp reviews, or running Facebook ads, but there are better ways to spend your day than this. Why don’t you focus on the most productive side of your hustle and delegate these roles to a VA?

c)      Are you constantly pushing things over?

There’s nothing worse than postponing your daily tasks to the following day. You’ll have a bucket full of tasks you need help completing. This can lead to a lot of unsatisfied customers and grumbling employees.

Therefore, consider finding a VA to help you complete your daily tasks and improve efficiency. This will result in a positive customer experience and employee satisfaction.

What are the roles of a virtual assistant?

The primary purpose of finding a VA is to make your life or business run smoothly. As such, a good VA should handle the following tasks;

1.      Customer service

Your VA should have excellent customer service skills to achieve a reasonable customer retention rate. This is because part of their job description includes telephone answering or offering switchboard services to relevant employees.

You may also require them to process orders or manage customer accounts.

2.      Administrative support

A VA should help you with appointment booking, managing your mailbox, and organizing your calendar. These are the bare- minimum tasks you must consider when finding a VA.

3.      Blogging

You might require that your VA creates content to promote your products or services. Hiring someone with previous writing experience is advantageous to achieve these tasks.

4.      Travel booking

When planning a trip, you can get overwhelmed with the many options available to visit or stay. Therefore, contact your VA and let them know of your travel destination, and they’ll help you with the following;

• Travel booking- from air tickets to taxis and finally hotels.
• Comparing hotel prices to get the best value for your pound
• Ensuring that your trip goes on as planned by handling your business needs while away

5.      Social media marketing

You may require that your VA helps you out with your social pages by creating and running campaigns, and ads, answering reviews or responding to customer questions.

However, you should know that the tasks of your VA can be more comprehensive than the ones above. If they’re good at looking up things online, you can delegate them more functions as you see fit.

Additionally, VAs with years of experience might have a broad set of tasks they can achieve. They include transcription, project management, and light data entry.

What’s the cost of hiring a virtual assistant?

If you’re considering hiring a VA, you should know that they are affordable to work with on a long-term, short-term, or hourly basis. However, their pay rate varies depending on;

• Your relationship with them
• The type of work to be delivered
• The quality you need
• The tasks you delegate them

But the average annual earnings of an executive VA in the UK is €33,478.

What are the skills of a VA?

Generally, there’s no requirement for an educational background for a VA. Their qualification depends on your job description, level of experience, or personal preferences.

That said, the backbone skills of a successful VA include the following;

• Organizational skills– A good VA must have good organizational skills as most of the work they’ll be doing includes event organization and diary management.
• Communication skills– They must communicate effectively with you since all the work is done online in virtual offices. You can also delegate functions like telephone answering so they can communicate well while on phone calls.
• Interpersonal skills– The perfect VA should sync with your personality. This allows for a more effortless flow of work and minimizes the chances of misunderstandings.
• Bookkeeping– It’s advantageous if your VA is good with numbers, as you may allocate jobs that need invoice creation and payment processing.

Also, they must have a reliable internet connection since most of their work will involve doing research online.

Any other skill they have, like e-commerce skills and software knowledge (Word Press and Micro Suite), might also be handy.

Find your VA now!

Finding a virtual assistant is something other than rocket science! You can find your virtual assistant now to save you money and time. Clyde Offices is your go-to VA if you want to delegate work to an experienced team and simplify your life.

Wrapping up

I hope you’ve gathered enough insight to help you find your virtual assistant. This would be helpful not only to your business’s success but also for the goodness of your well-being. So take your time and gauge your virtual assistant. Finding a VA has never been easy with this guide! Looking for a VA with the traits above? Clyde Offices has you covered. Call us today for the best VA services in Glasgow and the UK.