Being new to the industry, small business owners or startups need the best assistance in less cost, effort, and time. While relevant roles are managed by full-time employees, there are other abrupt-but-crucial tasks that need attainment.
With a limited budget, not every small business can afford a full-fledged team for minor tasks. That’s where a virtual assistant steps in as a rescuer. Virtual assistants are professionals who provide administrative assistance while regulating support services to the business.
They are skilled, remote experts who can schedule appointments, manage email, and fulfill supplementary tasks. Virtual assistant services for small business owners are valuable for business growth and development.
When to Get Virtual Assistant Services for Small Business Owners?
Reports say that 77% of remote employees are productive and more capable of fulfilling tasks than regular workers. As virtual assistants are remote employees, you may benefit from their productivity, flexibility, and expertise. They are also a valuable asset for combating common organizational challenges.
#1 Repetitive Tasks
A business encounters repeated calls that need to be attended instantly. While it’s important to ensure a good customer relationship, these are non-core tasks from an employer’s perspective. There are other tasks that need surveillance than management and administration.
Virtual assistants could handle such repeated tasks and manage the customers. Be it email management or report creation; they will look after all the minor and time-consuming tasks. It’s not just limited to attending calls; virtual assistants may also cover other functions that include
- Organizing meetings
- Sending reminders
- Collecting customer details
- Filtering candidates
- Handling email responses
- Reporting
#2 Tasks that Does Not Require Full-time Work
Not all tasks require a full-time employee. Some tasks have a role of a few hours or so!
Why hire a permanent employee for such tasks when you could take help from VAs? As they work on an hourly basis, you would not be wasting time or money.
Say, if you need someone to schedule meetings and appointments for a short project. Is it worth spending a fortune on a full-time assistant? Or an hourly-based virtual assistant would make a better choice?
Ofcourse, a Virtual assistant. If you deal with one-time projects quite often, you could reach them whenever you need them: no long-term commitments, bonuses, or employee rewards. Just pay for the hours they work for!
#3 When You Need an Outer Perspective
Handling a small business is all about consistent forethought, analysis, and conceptualization. Regardless of how many people you ask, there are limited individuals who will give you an honest perspective. In that case, a virtual assistant can act as an outlander. They can
- Help identify the areas of improvement
- Be all ears to your ideas
- Correct your mistakes
- Suggest a new plan/proposal
- Familiarise with known trends or opportunities
Business management may keep you in a world of delusion. You may not meet people who embrace you with reality. You may think that your way is the best way to do the tasks.
However, sometimes you could be walking the wrong path without much knowledge. Virtual assistants can help in such cases by giving their viewpoint on your actions.
#4 For Additional Skills and Experience
Virtual assistants are specialists with expert skills and experience. They are beyond scheduling appointments and attending your calls.
Some VAs are well-informed about multiple sectors, including inventory and marketing. Other than their conventional role, VAs may help you with their area of expertise.
Say, if you need a person to look after your digital space while handling the standard tasks of an assistant. You may hire a VA with digital marketing expertise. While managing your administrative duties, they may look after your website too.
Not just digital marketing, virtual assistants have qualified in numerous fields, including communication and business administration. You may benefit from their proficiency.
#5 High-Quality Work at Low Cost
Startups need top-quality work at an affordable cost as they are already low on budget. As 87.7% of virtual assistants are paid on a productive hour basis, hiring them would be a cost-effective choice. Choosing a VA instead of a full-time employee may help you save 78% on operating costs too.
With years of experience, VAs can do more work in less time. They are efficient in their role and can work about 32 to 40 hours a week. As most of them are college graduates, quality work is guaranteed.
What Tasks Do Virtual Assistant Services for Small Business Owners Offer?
Virtual assistants specialize in general and additional office tasks. Be it verbal communication or coordination; they are proficient in all aspects. You may require them for basic jobs or complex official needs.
#1 Administrative Work
Administrative work varies from workplace to workplace. However, the primary tasks involved in the administrative sector are related to the maintenance of office settings.
They may be classified on the basis of communication, scheduling, onboarding, organization, and computer/technology. Virtual assistants can fulfill administrative duties while managing related sectors. They can help you to
- Attend clients on phone calls and handle their concerns or complaints
- Communicate with upper management and other employees
- Plan company meetings, events, and conferences
- Onboarding and hiring of new employees (point 7)
- Maintaining calendars and dates for relevant tasks
- Manage official documentation
By 2027, freelancers like virtual assistants may hit 86.5 million in number. Such availability and perks call for shifting to VAs rather than a full-time employee for administrative tasks.
#2 Research
Virtual assistants can also manage online research-related tasks for small businesses. Most of them have the expertise to churn the internet and find relevant information. A virtual assistant can do the following:
- Travel Research: For the best travel-related deals, recommendations, itineraries, and information on cities/towns.
- Lead Generation: To search business avenues and online platforms for leads, target audience, and other opportunities.
- Database Research: To search data from the web and develop a database with regular updates.
- Web and Trend Research: To look for the trends as per domain and stay updated. They could also help you sort the reviews and quotes for decision-making.
#3 Customer Support
Virtual assistants can handle customer services and provide support to their issues. Missing up on customer calls could backfire.
You may end up with a bunch of bad reviews or complaints from your customers. However, the opposite is expected with good customer service.
VAs can step in and oversee such aspects by handling specific functions. This includes
- Managing client inquiries related to a service/product
- Creating invoices and processing payments
- Looking for customer suggestions, comments, reviews, and testimonials
- Maintaining CRM database
Hiring a virtual assistant instead of a full-fledged customer service team is, indeed, a cost-efficient option. It saves you from paying salaries to particular members, and all your work is done simultaneously. VAs do not charge much for their work, so you will be saving from them too.
#4 Time-consuming Tasks
Being an entrepreneur is not easy. It requires surveillance in every sector. Thus, if you indulge in time-consuming tasks midway, you may fall back on your schedule.
That’s why it’s best to let VAs look after such tasks. They can implement their versatility and flexibility to execute the following tasks.
Email Management:
Being a relevant source of communication, email management is important for a business. VAs can provide basic email support by organizing your inbox and managing all the incoming/outgoing mails. A virtual assistant can help to
- Set rules and alerts as per your requirements
- Filter, clean, and sort the emails in the inbox
- Manage contact list and send emails to clients
- Respond to emails from clients
- Unsubscribe from unnecessary subscriptions
Social Media Management:
Today’s business needs a solid social media presence. With 4.2 billion people using social media, you can earn customers, make a reputation, and show your reliability.
However, to build such a presence, you need to stay active on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter all the time. That’s not possible for any business owner!
VAs could step in and handle your accounts while you are busy running the business. They will be consistent with social media posts for better business exposure.
Content Creation
Some VA could help you curate content for blogs or websites. With their assistance, your website could rank higher in the search engines. They may also have expertise in managing the website SEO for more online exposure.
#6 For Handling Human Resources Tasks
Virtual assistants can also execute your human resources tasks. Thus, no efforts for hiring a complete HR team! Be it posting jobs or screening resumes; they could cover all the work. They could also help you with
- Performing background checks
- Conducting phone interviews
- Sending emails to new joiners
- Job ads management
- Employee payroll and attendance tracking, etc.
#7 Additional Work
There are no tasks that a virtual assistant cannot do. Assign them something, and they will ensure everything is done as planned. VA may also assist you with additional tasks like
- Data entry for customer orders
- Editing or proofreading documents
- Follow-up calls for sales purpose
- Editing images for social media and websites
- Updating the company websites
In short, they can be your personal assistant!
Get the Best Virtual Assistant Services For Your Small Business
Virtual assistants can be the helping hand for almost every task that you can’t do. Be it managing your website or personal office; they are skilled individuals who can cover it all.
Being an owner of small businesses or startups, it’s not possible to handle all at once. Thus, hiring a VA is the best option to manage both small-scale and large-scale tasks. They are specialists with the potential to manage both administrative and additional tasks.
Are you looking for a qualified virtual assistant to execute all your important tasks? Consult our professionals at Vgrow solution. We offer the best virtual assistant services for small business owners.
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Did you know virtual assistants could benefit your small business? They could prevent you from hiring a complete team and be a one-man-army for all business-relevant tasks. Find out more about the role of VA for small businesses here.
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Virtual Assistants can help a startup with its growth and development. With their assistance, you could cover all the important tasks in one place. Want to know more about virtual assistants for small businesses? Check out here.
