The 7 Most Misunderstood Facts about Online Personal Assistant

A virtual personal assistant is a skilled and experienced person who serves business owners, entrepreneurs and small clients from a remote location. They take care of the administrative force, financial tasks and many more. A virtual assistant has a stable grasp upon the working of the internet and the new trends on it. They keep themselves updated with the latest upgrades, government norms and the needs of the market.

The demands for an online personal assistant has risen at the present time as many large companies are opting to hire a VA instead of appointing a secretary or more employees.

However, some people are still not aware of the details and facts about online personal assistants and have quite a lot of misconceptions about them. So here are the most commonly misunderstood facts about online virtual assistants.

  1. It is a belief that online personal assistants charge quite a hefty amount for the services that they provide as and when appointed. But it is a complete myth because they charge pretty less compared to the amount you pay to the employees and other workers of your company.

  2. Online personal assistants are mostly multi-tasking but as they perform their job from a remote location, they fail to understand the immediate needs of the company and thus it might happen that their suggestions and advice may not be fruitful for you at all times. This is again a misunderstood fact as these VAs are quite aware of the needs of the company, depending on the communication at the time of signing the contract.

  3. The virtual assistants may not agree with the terms and conditions of your company when you improve them in the long run and they might choose to not adapt to the changes and decisions taken by you. Again, something that VAs don’t normally do.

  4. Virtual personal assistants might lag behind in scheduling a meeting and taking care of the requirements of your clients as they would not get the information timely if your client faces a sudden issue and reschedule the meeting at the last moment. However, this is not true as these VAs can function efficiently with proper communication.

  5. Even when most of the virtual personal assistants are experienced and have a stronghold over their domain of work, if you end up leaving all the responsibilities upon them, you can face problems at every step. This is not true as VAs treat the clients as their own company and work efficiently and faithfully.

  6. Virtual assistants serve with full dedication and commitment but their work efficacy and productivity fail to meet the needs or their performance may lag behind the employees. It isn’t true at all as they are as efficient, or more than in-house employees.

  7. They aren’t always available upon communication as they are based on a remote location. However, VAs adjust to the work timing of the clients. Hence, they are mostly available for communication as and when needed.

However, an online personal assistant is capable of assisting in your business in many ways. If you can instruct and supervise them according to your needs, you might not face all the troubles with the misunderstood facts.

How to Get Hired as a Virtual Personal Assistant

A virtual assistant is an independent contractor who provides services to business owners and entrepreneurs from a remote location. Although the demand for a virtual personal assistant is growing rapidly these days, there is still a large number of people who don’t understand the duties and role of this job profile.

Starting from administrative tasks to managing the client’s work schedule, a virtual personal assistant has a lot to offer than you can even imagine. Depending upon your knowledge, skills and your area of interest, you can choose what facilities you want to offer to your consumers.

Find out your areas of interest and strengths and chalk out the tasks accordingly. An intense desire to learn, amazing communication skills and a bold and positive attitude are all you need to start working as a virtual personal assistant

Here is a gist of tips that you can follow to serve as a successful virtual assistant.

  • In order to work as a virtual assistant, firstly, you need to have a strong grasp of the working manner of the internet and the latest trends and customs of the services you want to provide to your clients. Thus, frame a business structure by keeping in mind the strengths and working experience you have.

  • The best part of this job profile is that it does not follow any specific rulebook and thus, there are no hard and fast regulations that you need to stick to. Decide which virtual personal assistant services you want to offer to your clients. Once you start working in this domain, you will be able to adapt and change your services accordingly on the basis of the requirements of your clients, the profitability and your personal area of strength.

  • Time management and organizing an expenditure structure is a major point to work upon before you start serving as a full-time virtual assistant. Keep a track of the monetary condition and the expenses and personal time you need for your regular lifestyle. There will always be an episode of bargaining with your clients regarding your payments and thus it is better to demand a higher rate than you require. In the long run, you won’t feel satisfied if you work for inadequate pay.

  • The next step is to design an attractive website for your business and to establish your presence. Maintaining a proper website and updating your social networking accounts is a major step to gain attention among your clients. 

  • Figure out your target market first and grow your network based on that. Find out the prospects and needs of your ideal clients and start offering the services accordingly. Serve in such a way so that you become the irreplaceable one in your duty.

By working as a virtual personal assistant, you are going to help others expand their business, thus being an extremely satisfying job profile. But you also need to take care of your needs and must set a boundary so that you do not end up suffering while trying to assist someone else to develop their business.

Virtual personal assistant – A Helping Hand For You

Being an entrepreneur is not like employment, it’s a 24X7 engagement where you have to have a 360-degree control over your activities. Needless to say, there’s very little respite given that you have to do core productive work as well as support functions of your business and then be a contributing member.

Enter the Virtual Personal Assistant who will complete a wide range of tasks as per your requirement. Having a virtual personal assistant is like having the luxury of having a Personal Assistant minus the exorbitant cost of having to hire one. 

Like every Virtual Assistant, even the Virtual Personal Assistant offers her services remotely from an offshore location. The difference is in the expertise of a Virtual Personal Assistant. While other Virtual Assistants offer services according to their area of expertise, the domain of the Virtual PA lies in accomplishing tasks more personal in nature and hence sometimes the Virtual PA is also called a helping hand of the entrepreneur.

Know What is a Virtual Assistant?

Let’s take a look at what the Virtual PA delivers.

  • Travel Management – Researching on travel options, locations, flights, hotels, etc. Going ahead with the actual bookings. Forming out well-planned itineraries. Obtaining necessary permits. Keeping you updated with your travel details and giving you timely updates all fall under the purview of managing your travel. 

  • Personal ResearchWe live in an online world, where a lot of online research generally takes place before we purchase something or even enroll ourselves or our children in schools or other institutions. A virtual personal assistant can handle all these online research for you and supply you with ready answers on all these topics.

  • Online Business Research Like our personal lives, our professional lives too have come to depend a lot on online research. Your Virtual Personal Assistant can provide in-depth insights into your Competition, can keep tabs on upcoming opportunities in your field of business and even research on the most competent and preferred Service provider relevant to your business. This kind of research is highly invaluable and can prove to be a vital edge in running your business.

  • Planning events and partiesEvent planning is a tiresome activity that may keep you or your employees away from productive office work. Virtual PAs can easily shoulder the responsibility of planning an official event like a conference or a seminar as well as a party for personal celebration. From researching the venue to available dates to decorations to all other things associated with planning a successful event you can be sure that the Virtual PA will come through.

Virtual PA’s responsibilities are not limited to the above tasks, but as pointed out they are adept at any task assigned to them. The Virtual PA’s from Abroad Assistants embodies the very spirit of efficient delivery. Each of our Virtual Personal Assistant has been selected through a rigorous selection process that vets them for confident virtual Personal Assistantality, flexibility and the willingness to go beyond the call of duty.

What does a Virtual Personal Assistant do to lower your workload?

Entrepreneurs and businesses that have a laser focus on their defined objectives generally want someone reliable who can handle non-core business functions. Once free from work which doesn’t contribute directly to the bottom line, entrepreneurs can then direct their energies towards their profitability and strengthening their brand. Virtual Personal Assistant have emerged as the best ways to do so.

So how do Virtual Personal Assistant prove to be useful? You could reason that hiring a Virtual Assistant for other specialized tasks could still add to your company’s profitability, but how could a Virtual Personal Assistant do that? Here’s a look at some reasons that will tell you the importance of Virtual Personal Assistant and how they can lower your workload.

  • Ease your travel – With a Virtual Personal Assistant by your side all the tedious parts of traveling like researching travel options, locations, flights, hotels, etc. are taken care of. So is doing the actual bookings and chalking out interesting itineraries. A virtual Personal Assistant can do this for both your personal and professional life so that you travel in style.

  • Researching on the WWW – We live in an online world, where a lot of online research generally takes place before we purchase something or avail of any services. A virtual personal assistant can handle all these online researches for you efficiently with her knowledge and supply you with intelligent answers.

  • Providing Business Intelligence – Today businesses turn to the internet like never before to gather important information. Rather than scouring the net yourself, you can let your Virtual Personal Assistant do it. And you will be surprised by the information you get on your Competition, upcoming opportunities in your field of business and even competent and preferred Service providers.

  • Organizing events – Businesses and our personal lives are dotted with events. Although they last for a couple of hours, there’s intense preparation that goes behind the scenes for days or sometimes weeks on end. A Virtual Personal Assistant is an elegant solution for event planning. From researching the venue to available dates to decorations to all other things associated with planning a successful event you can be sure that the Virtual PA will come through.

These are just some of the ways a Virtual Personal Assistant can prove useful to you. The beauty of a Virtual Personal Assistant is that they are highly trained to complete a variety of tasks and go beyond a specific specialization.

Virtual PA’s responsibilities are not limited to the above tasks, but as pointed out they are adept at any task assigned to them. The Virtual PA’s from Abroad Assistants embodies the very spirit of efficient delivery. Each of our Virtual Personal Assistant has been selected through a rigorous selection process that vets them for confidentiality, flexibility and the willingness to go beyond the call of duty.