As remote work becomes increasingly popular, it is now easier for organizations to bring together professionals from across different cultures and time zones. Each remote worker can possess diverse skill sets and is tasked with fulfilling a specific job description. For businesses, the remote workforce model offers high flexibility and guarantees low overhead costs.
The role of a virtual assistant (VA) within a remote team is a unique one that entails assisting business managers. Some of the duties involved are task and project management, handling administrative tasks, and customer support.
In this guide, we take a deeper look at the role of a virtual assistant in a remote team.
Let’s get started.
1. Managing Tasks and Projects
When it comes to project management, virtual assistants can help you conceptualize your business’s ideas and make the required arrangements for project completion.
A virtual assistant will help your remote team stay organized by managing tasks and projects, setting deadlines, and tracking progress. This role begins with project planning until the eventual stages of the process.
When you hire a project management virtual assistant, they can perform the following activities:
- Managing the project team. The virtual assistant will oversee the project team by assigning tasks, checking progress, and motivating team members to achieve project deliverables.
- Controlling the project budget. Although these professionals work remotely, they can also help your business manage the project budget. The VA ensures that the project management team adheres to this budget.
- Organizing schedules. Another project management role for VAs involves creating and maintaining pre-determined plans and project timeframes.
- Preparing reports and documentation. This role entails bookkeeping and developing updated reports for clients. The process enables your business to keep track of essential project details.
- Risk assessment and resource allocation. Finally, the VA will anticipate potential pitfalls, find solutions, and assign the relevant assets for project completion.
2. Handling Administrative Tasks
Virtual assistants can also undertake several administrative tasks. Examples are scheduling meetings, managing expenses, and booking travel.
Other administrative roles that they can play include answering phone calls from clients, supporting office visitors, scanning, binding, and filing documents, and communicating with clients via mail and email.
3. Providing Customer Service and Support
In addition, virtual assistants will assist your business’s remote team offer timely and professional customer service and support, which then enhances overall client satisfaction.
In the modern business environment, excellent customer service is paramount for organizational success due to a number of reasons.
First, when customers are satisfied, their levels of loyalty improve, which brings about repeat business and eventual business growth.
Second, effective customer support leads to customer feedback that your organization can then use to tackle business challenges.
Third, a good VA will help your business generate positive reviews from clients, which helps expand the customer base in the long run.
4. Assisting With Communication and Collaboration
Virtual assistants can help remote teams stay connected and collaborate effectively by scheduling meetings, facilitating discussions, and sharing documents and other materials.
For example, through social media production, the VA can enhance online engagement with existing and potential customers by communicating with them or responding to their comments.
Communication and collaboration also occur through content management. Content management is effective since it increases brand awareness and keeps customers engaged. This process also makes it easier for your business to grow its content program.
5. Supporting Team Members
The last role of a VA is to provide support to individual team members by helping them manage their workloads and meet deadlines.
For example, through research, the remote virtual assistant can provide valuable insights, such as,
- Scrutinizing competitor products to study specific actions that other team members can undertake to gain a competitive advantage for the business.
- Analyzing consumer trends to keep team members updated.
Similarly, a virtual assistant can send periodic email reminders to team members regarding upcoming deadlines and important project tasks that they should handle.
Why Hiring a Remote Virtual Assistant is Important
As a business owner, hiring a virtual assistant for your remote team can give you the following benefits:
- Better use of your employees. A VA can perform mundane and repetitive tasks, leaving other remote team members to stick to their specialties.
- Reduced costs. Outsourcing work remotely costs less for most businesses. This enables you to refocus resources on other key business functions.
- Saved time. Virtual assistants are experienced professionals who do not require training, and who can remain focused on the assigned work. Hiring them creates a win-win for them and your business.
How to Hire a Virtual Assistant
Given the increasing number of virtual assistant professionals globally, your business needs to be well-versed in the best recruitment processes.
The best approach is to go for an online business that offers virtual assistant services for all types of organizations. Such websites are home to some of the leading work-from-home VAs who can make a difference for your business.
Hire a Virtual Assistant for Your Remote Team at Virtual Assistant Canada Today
In this guide, we have covered the role of VAs within remote teams. Some of these responsibilities revolve around task and project management, handling administrative tasks, and customer support. Others are assisting with communication and collaboration and supporting team members.
Overall, a virtual assistant can play a valuable role in a remote team by helping to streamline processes, improve communication and collaboration, and increase productivity.
You can hire a professional virtual assistant by speaking with one of our client success managers at Virtual Assistant Canada here or by calling us at (833) 777-3626. We have a group of experienced VAs who can help you focus on what’s important and streamline your success.
By working with us, here is what you will get:
- A guarantee that your business runs smoothly since these professionals will run menial tasks for you.
- Access to the best virtual assistants and freelancers around. We only go for the top 5% of applicants, meaning that you will be accessing the best services.
- Virtual assistants who are suited for long-term needs, such as monthly contracts.
- Virtual assistants who are suited for short-term projects, depending on your organizational needs.