Davinci Virtual

Virtual Assistants are an incredible help, especially when they know what is expected of them. And really, this is the same for all virtual employees. It is important to create guidelines and expectations that are applicable to the role that each plays in your business.

Create a job description for each of the virtual positions you will be filling, even one for yourself if you are a home-based business owner. Laying out the information in this format will help structure work by creating scope and boundaries.

Next, use this job description to generate a list of concrete expectations. In other words, the job description might say: “Communicate regularly through email, phone and in person meetings.”

And your expectation might be:”Will attend weekly meetings, send summary email once a month and will call daily.”

It is important to sharply examine all of your expectations and get it out on paper. Review these compared to the job description and ensure that they fit well together. Also compare expectations to time allotted. If you have contracted someone for 10 hours of work each week, but expect them to do 20 hours worth of work, you are bound to be disappointed.

Often communication suffers in virtual working relationships. Strive to make sure you are communicating regularly. Be flexible with methods, there are many new tools out there that can make it easier. Be willing to explore instant messaging, conference calls,  emails, voice over Internet protocols (like Skype) and others. By taking the initiative, you can head off future problems and build a strong relationship with your virtual employees.

Odds are, if you’re a small, growing business, consultancy, or firm, you may be exactly who would benefit from having a virtual receptionist on staff. If your company call volume doesn’t justify the hiring of an on-site assistant but it’s clear that a professional phone presence is key to the continued growth of the company, then your company woulc most likely be very happy in choosing a virtual receptionist.
We’re not just talking about answering phones, by the way. Answering company phone lines is a vital part of doing business, but when the calls aren’t coming in, the virtual receptionist can do a number of other business tasks for your company. A virtual receptionist is capable of handling customer service inquiries or taking orders, making sales calls, screen and/or announce your calls, just to name a few.
In addition, with a virtual receptionist, you can see your incoming call history online and in real-time, as well as easy online management of emails and faxes. Best of all, virtual receptionist service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Weather, illnesses, or personal issues won’t keep a virtual receptionist from answering your calls.
Virtual Receptionist Tip: Huge calling capacity lets every caller or fax get through – no busy signals!

In the past few decades, the number of businesspeople working on-the-go has been increasing steadily. Cell phones, email, and faxes all have become part of the mobile repertoire. We’d like to add another useful tool to that list: virtual assistant.
Virtual assistants can hold down a home office for you, even when you don’t have a physical office space to speak of. When you hand out cards with contact information on them, rather than the number on the cards going directly to your cell phone (and you have to figure out in a split second before answering: is this business or is this personal?), it’ll go through your virtual assistant, who can very often handle the call for you.
Virtual assistants can also take care of business-specific tasks. For instance, if you are a real estate agent and have a househunting client who changes his mind every other day about what he’s looking for, your virtual assistant could pull possible house listings and comps for you, while you’re in-between showings.
Virtual Assistant Tip: Many virtual assistants can be hired on an as-needed basis, so that if your business has a “busy season,” you could easily keep a VA busy for that timeframe and then transition back to running a solo show when the busy season is over. But we have a feeling that once you try and get used to having a VA to help you, you’ll decide to rethink the DIY approach.