Virtual Assistant

A virtual assistant is one of the best of the recent innovations in the business world. While hiring a virtual assistant to handle all of your personal business needs might save you money, is it the same as having a real assistant? Most virtual assistants work out of telemarketing companies and are generally employed to handle outbound calls. It is always possible for a business to ask for one of the agents assigned to their company to be dedicated to handling the duties of a virtual assistant. Here we will examine the merits of the virtual assistant and see how they stack up against a real assistant.

Convenience
There is no question that a virtual assistant is highly convenient. Real assistants are very practical while their boss is in town. However, when their boss has to travel it can pose a problem. Unless their boss is willing to pay for an extra plane ticket to take their assistants with them on their business trips, they generally are forced to fend for themselves until they return to their own countries and then hand over their accumulated tasks to their assistants who must race to catch up with the workload. The virtual assistant can be hired to work from anywhere. Many telemarketing companies have satellite offices where businesspeople can stop off to use their services – including those of a virtual assistant. In other words, the boss will have an assistant ready and willing to do the work in every country in which the outbound calls centre has a satellite office.

Versatility
Unlike a real assistant who might only be hired to act as an executive’s personal assistant, the virtual assistant is hired as an agent at a call centre. Therefore, their job is to make outbound calls, field inbound calls, work on lead generation and occasionally act as a virtual assistant. Although they can always specialise in one or all of the mentioned tasks, they play a changing role and their versatility can help a business save money. Furthermore, you only pay for the services that you need. For instance, you can hire a virtual assistant only to take your messages or only to do your word processing. Regardless of the service you need, you will only ever pay for what the virtual assistant is asked to do – nothing more. You do not need to provide benefits, vacation or a steady wage to a virtual assistant.

Trust
The one area in which the real assistant has the upper hand over a virtual assistant is the area of trust. Bosses will automatically develop a level of trust and confidence in an assistant that they work with closely on a daily basis. In fact, many executives depend entirely on their assistants and trust them implicitly with even the most sensitive documents – the same cannot be said for virtual assistants. While they will gladly take your calls and forward your mail, given the very nature of their jobs, it would be unwise to trust them with sensitive materials.

In the end, if you can afford it, a real assistant is a very useful person to have around the office. However, for smaller businesses who cannot afford to have a fulltime assistant on hand, the virtual assistant is the next best thing.

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