Here are 10 reasons why you should think about using a virtual assistant
1) You don’t have the resources to employ a full-time staff member
You might be a growing business that needs to conserve its resources for marketing and expansion. Getting a physical staff member could be expensive when you take into account the salary, the on-costs, setting up their work-station and giving them access to software and the internet.
With a virtual assistant, they already have their office set up plus they have the software and internet access that they need to get the job done. Also, they are considerably cheaper than having an in-house employee so you will be able to channel your money into marketing or strategic pursuits.
Also, with your VA you only need to use them when you need them. If you don’t have any work for them it’s not like they are sitting around browsing the internet, they would be working for someone else and not costing you a cent. It does make great commercial sense to outsource your admin to a VA.
2) You need a broader range of skills than you can get from one staff member
Let’s face it, not everyone can be a jack of all trades when it comes to admin work. The likelihood is that you will find someone who has specific skills in one or two areas but then has deficiencies in some others. For a small business owner, this can be quite frustrating as you quite regularly have a broad range of tasks that need completing.
When you employ a virtual assistant you can pick someone who has the skills that you need at the time. If you need multiple skills then there is no reason why you can’t employ two or three assistants to get the work done. When you employ VAs you are not limited to a set number of staff.
Also, why not make use of VAs to bolster the skills of your existing staff? If you have an in-house admin person who is good at a variety of tasks but poor at surveying incoming callers then why not bring in a virtual person to handle any customer surveys that you may need doing.
3) You need someone who can work flexible work hours
These days we live in a 24/7 world. Unfortunately, the majority of staff members work on a 9-5 basis 5 days per week. This creates something of a mismatch between your customer’s expectations and the availability of your internal staff. What you need is a staff member who can work flexible hours at a reasonable cost.
Here at Virtual Reception, we love flexibility. Our VAs can work when you need them and for however long you need them. Because we operate similar businesses in the USA and the UK we can even offer you competent professional staff in those countries at the same rate that we can offer you Australian workers.
The benefit of making use of UK and USA staff is that due to the time zones, they will be available when our local Australian staff are sleeping. If you need flexibility and potentially 24/7 coverage then we have the resources to make it happen and keep your business moving 24/7. It does make good sense.
4) The work-load is not consistent
There are very few businesses out there that have a linear flow of work. The majority of businesses find that their work-flow could at best be described as peaks and troughs. To cope with these peaks and troughs you need a flexible workforce that is going to be available when you need them and not on the payroll when you don’t need them.
Here at Virtual Reception, we live for flexibility. We employ professionally trained staff who will be available when you need them. We also have plenty of staff available to help get you through those peaks. If you find yourself in a position where you need 10 people working full time on a specific project then we have the resources to help you out.
Peaks and troughs are no longer a problem when you partner with Virtual Reception. Our helpful and resourceful assistants will help get you out of your workload problem and will be gone and working on another job once you have got the job done. It does work perfectly for all of those small embryonic businesses.
5) You don’t have any space to accommodate an employee
This is an interesting one. Back in the old days, when you started a business you would head out and find some physical office space. You would then fit out that office space with desks, chairs, photocopiers, a lunch room and all the other accessories that go with having physical staff. Even for a smallish business, you could end up with 100 – 150 square metres.
On top of all of the physical components of setting up an office, you would also have the non-physical ones like setting up a telephone system, setting up an internal server, getting yourself a security system, a cleaner, setting yourself up with an internet connection, office plants and a whole load more.
When you bring in virtual employees you don’t need to outlay all of that cash and spend all of that time setting up all of those physical things. With a virtual staff member, you can simply switch them on and off when you need them. If you do need a physical office space you can keep it small and low cost. You can then direct your money towards projects that make money as opposed to creating overhead.
6) You have confidential work that you don’t want staff involved in
Quite often businesses will be faced with work that is potentially too confidential for your existing staff members. It may be that you are considering buying another business or selling your business or a component of your business to someone else and you need someone on board who can help you with the range of admin tasks that quite often go with a purchase or sale.
In other circumstances, it may be that you want to complete a survey of customers to find out how they rate your level of service and to find out what they think of your existing staff. If you used your internal staff to carry this out then it is unlikely that you will get a completely unbiased view. In this situation, it would make perfect sense to bring in an external professional who can gather the information and give you an unbiased view.
7) You have a specific project that needs to be completed quickly
How many times do you end up with a once-off project that needs to be completed in a hurry but you don’t have the resources available internally to do it? One option that you might be able to take is to pay your existing staff over time however you then end up with tired staff and the project ends up costing a lot more money than you initially intended.
By outsourcing the project to an external resource like Virtual Reception you can quantify the actual cost and get the resources together that you need to get your project completed quickly and effectively. It also means that your existing admin staff are not put under excessive pressure.
8) Your in-house staff are overloaded.
Quite often these days businesses run their staff pretty hard. Gone are the days of staff heading out for long lunches and taking it easy for the afternoon. These days it is more likely that staff will be skipping lunch and staying back a couple of hours to get their work done. Then they go home and spend a couple of hours answering their emails!
Wouldn’t it be easier on your existing staff to simply outsource those once-off projects to a professional admin person? With Virtual Reception you can outsource as much or as little as you want to us. If you have a time-consuming job that you need to get on to and you don’t think that you will have an internal resource to complete it then you can outsource that task to us and we can take care of it for you.
9) You don’t have the time to recruit someone
Sometimes you can be so busy and tied up with the things that you are doing that you don’t have time to bring someone else in. The recruitment process can be time-consuming, firstly you have to write an advert, work out where you want to run that advert and then get it up online (or potentially offline). Once you start getting responses you need to work out a system for rating the resumes and then you need to select candidates for interview. If you have several candidates then you may need to interview several people and some people you may want to interview twice or even three times.
Even once you select your perfect candidate you need to wait for them to leave their current job, get trained at what you do and kick things off. Unfortunately, you still run the risk at this stage that they may not work out. Wouldn’t it be easier and potentially cheaper to just bring in virtual resources when you need them? With Virtual Reception you can bring in as many VAs as you need to get the job done when you need it done.
10) Your business is seasonal
When you have a seasonal business you quite regularly find that you are having quite significant peaks and troughs. When you have the peaks you quite regularly find that you don’t have enough people and when you hit a trough you have people sitting around doing nothing. Wouldn’t it be easier to just have a temporary resource that you can bring in when you need it?
With Virtual Reception you can bring in VAs for as long as you need them. We only bill on a per-minute basis so as soon as they finish you stop incurring costs. It does make great business sense.
Think a VA makes good sense for your business? Why not give us a call today on 1300 893 820 and we will be happy to discuss how we can help.
