Ultimate Virtual Assistant Guide

I have been experimenting with using virtual assistants. I’ve worked with two, one in the US for about two weeks and one in India for two months. It has been an excellent learning experience and I wanted to share it with everyone in the form of this guide. My goal is to give readers a good idea of how a remote assistant can help them, along with an idea of the benefits and drawbacks. This guide should give you a pretty good idea of what you need to get started working with a virtual assistant and should help you avoid some of the errors I made in the process.

I am also going to look at the idea of having a local assistant and how that compares to working with their virtual counterpart. It is easy to get enamored with the concept of a remote executive assistant and overlook local options that may be much more appropriate.

If you want to read a story about interacting with US and Australian virtual assistants checkout: Offending the Entire VA Industry

My Experiment

I worked with a virtual assistant in the US for about two weeks. She ended up just disappearing and I lost some money on it. I had her do a few tasks, mainly as an experiment, to see how things worked out.

My second experiment was working with Brickworks India. They are a very reputable firm and I thought I would have better experience working with them rather than trying to find someone on my own. I was right. They were extremely professional. I hired one of their remote executive assistants for 40 hours per week for two months.

My assistant, Rajani, worked from about 3:30 am until 1:30 pm. I was always a bit confused on the exact time, because right after we started, daylight savings time kicked in and threw things off. In addition, India has a timezone that is offset by an additional 30 minutes to what we are used to in the US, so that added to my confusion.

Rajani was extremely competent. She had previously worked at Dell as one of their customer service reps. Her spoken English was perfect. I had Rajani do a lot of work related to Productivity501. For example, she compiled a list of related bloggers for our last big interview project. She also handled locating and resizing images for the new layout of the site.

I found that it usually took a bit longer to train her how to do something than I anticipated. However, once she learned it, she would remember it weeks later without needing to be shown again. For example, I had her setting up email campaigns for one of my clients. It is a fairly complicated process of pulling in an email template, creating a target group, and then scheduling the email. We did a screen sharing session and went through the process several times. The first time, I did it and just let her watch. The second time, she did it and I walked her through the process, the third time, she did it and I just watched–only intervening if she got really stuck or was about to do something that would cause a problem.

Several days after I showed her how to do this, I got an email from her, saying, “I see there is a new event scheduled like the one I previously sent out a campaign for. Would you like me to do the same for it?” I was very impressed with this because she wasn’t just working off of a task list. She was anticipating future actions based on previous ones–something that is very valuable to me.

At the end of two months I decided to not renew the retainer. While I was very happy with her work, I realized that hiring someone locally was more cost effective for me–especially given the part of the country I live in where $6 to $7 per hour is considered pretty good pay for many people. Also my parents are both local teachers–one at the local junior college and the other at a small private school. This means I have two great sources for locating up and coming talent who will soon be looking for jobs.

What a Virtual Assistant Can Do

Most tasks that need done on a computer can be done by a virtual assistant. It all depends on your current work flow. If you use a paper based system for managing addresses, they probably can’t help you with that unless you are willing to go digital. As long as it can be done remotely they can do anything from acting as a virtual secretary, virtual receptionist or virtual personal assistant.

Here are a list of things I had Rajani do that worked out well:

• Research other websites that met a certain set of criteria
  Specifically, I was looking for blogs about productivity topics whose authors might be interested in being interviewed. I provided a great deal of guidance, showing her where to look for sites, how to tell the quality of the site, etc. She produced a spreadsheet with all the sites and attributes I was looking for.
• Email people about interviews
  Rajani did a great job of sending out my interview questions and then compiling the results. She would let me know if someone had a question that I needed to respond to. At first, I had her send these out from her own account, but then I just gave her access to do it from mine. That way I’d see any responses that came in during the afternoon and could reply to any questions.
• Organizing contacts
  I wanted to keep the people who responded to the interview in my address book. Rajani used Plaxo to add people to the appropriate category. She broke everything down by which questions each person answered so I could notify people when their answers went live.
• Setting Appointments
  It was Sunday evening, and I needed to get an appointment to have my car serviced when I was in another city. I sent Rajani and email asking her to find a VW dealership and set up and appointment for me near where I would be staying. Monday morning, as I was on my trip, she emailed me the appointment time, address and contact number. This was in stark contrast of trying to use the Amex Concierge service.

Here are some of the things that didn’t work quite so well:

• Compose and send an email
  While Rajani’s written English was excellent for communicating with me, there are some major differences between Indian English and American English. If she wrote something, I usually spent time correcting it to make it more “Americanized” and usually this took as much time as it would have taken to write it myself. Instead I started just writing an email myself and sending it to her to send out to several people–or to customize and use.
• Editing and Proofreading
  Once again, the differences in English showed up. Editing and proofreading didn’t seem to be something that worked particularly well.
• Writing Summaries of Articles
  I had Rajani locate 10 articles on various topics and then put together a post along with links. She did a great job of locating the articles, but the summaries still suffered from the differences in the language. At first I started to try to change them, but found it was faster to just write them myself.
• Writing Biographical Summary
  I was looking for some biographical information about George Washington to use at Leadership501. It turns out that this type of project is difficult to do without the cultural context. If you want to see for yourself, try to write a short paper on the first president of India and then give it to someone who was born and raised there to read.

As you can see, most of the things that weren’t successful were related to language differences. It is easy to underestimate the differences when you can communicate with someone verbally with out any issues.

Virtual assistants can’t do physical tasks. Personally I found that a number of the things that would really save me time are physical. Depending on your needs, you may find that a lot of the benefit of having an executive assistant is to do physical stuff. Here are some of the things that would save me a lot of time but require physical presence.

• Running to the store to get something.
• Working with local companies where doing things in person will help get things done much quicker.
• Sending out information packets.
• Taking my car to the shop.
• Unpacking books and files.
• Organizing physical items.
• Tidying up the office.
• Picking up dry cleaning.
• House/Dog sitting.

How Much Do Virtual Assistants Cost?

The rates charged by virtual assistants is highly variable. I have had people offer to do stuff for me for as little as $1 per hour. If you look at ODesk, you’ll see many people looking for work at $2 to $5 per hour. With a global market, you can often get much more than you pay for.

With some of more reputable companies in India, you’ll be looking at paying $8 to $15 per hour.

Brickworks is setup on a retainer model. In general, for a remote executive assistant you will pay about $2,000 per month for someone full time and $1,200 for someone half time. While this may be more expensive than someone you could find on your own, they have a technical support staff to help them. The IT department keeps their computers virus free, limits internet access to sites related to their work, fixes any problems that arise, etc. If you are extremely technical it can be frustrating because you will want to change something on their computer to tweak this or that. If you aren’t extremely technical, it is wonderful because you don’t have to worry if your information is going to be stolen by some piece of malware that was inadvertently installed on their machine.

Make sure you understand how vacations work and factor that into your cost analysis. If you are paying for a monthly retainer, you will probably be paying for vacation time as well. This isn’t a big deal, but it can change the amount you end up paying per hour.

If you are looking for someone based in the US, you’ll still find a wide range of pricing.  It is possible to find people in the $7 per hour range–particularly if you look at people who live in parts of the country where the cost of living is very low. Most of the people who are working full time as virtual assistants say you should expect to pay $20 to $50 per hour for a good administrative assistant.

Virtual vs. Local

There are some advantages to hiring a virtual assistant–someone who works from somewhere else. Here are some of the main advantages:

• Simplified taxes. With a remote assistant, it is rather easy to show the IRS that they aren’t an employee.
• Lower prices. If you live in a very high cost area, you can hire someone from a low cost area. For example, if you live in LA, you may get a much better deal hiring someone from rural Nebraska than locally.
• Better talent. It might be possible to find better talent than what is available or what you could afford locally. An MBA in India could cost you significantly less for better skill than what you’d pay in NYC.
• Work hours. If you hire an assistant in a different timezone, they may be able to do a lot of work while you sleep. For example, if you send them a project at 7 in the evening, they may be able to have it completed by the time you get ready to work in the morning.
• Different attitude. In some cases, you may find you like the attitude of a virtual assistant much better than someone you could find locally. This can be related to cultural differences, but it also can be related to how much someone is being paid relative to their living expenses.
• Pay only for what you need. Sometimes you can structure arrangements to only use services when you need them. This can be much less expensive if you have a a very low number of tasks that can be outsourced.
• Flexible number of workers. Some companies will give you one primary virtual assistant and add as many helpers as necessary to get your job done in time. This doesn’t work for every type of task, but if you need to do a bunch of data entry or something similar it can help you get things done very rapidly.
• No physical space. A virtual assistant isn’t going to take up office space. You won’t have to purchase another desk or chair and most of the time you won’t need to buy another computer.

Here are some of the disadvantages of working with a virtual assistant:

• Communicating. It is more difficult to communicate effectively over email, chat and phone. There are nuances of human communication that just don’t transmit over those channels very well. You will have to place more effort on communicating.
• Physical tasks. You can’t have a non-local virtual assistant run a package down to FexEx for you. They can’t run to the store to do some last minute grocery shopping, return or get a library book, tidy up your office, clip articles from the Wall Street Journal or wait in line for you at City Hall. You might be able to have them stuff envelopes to mail or something like that if they are in the same country. Physical tasks may take more of your time than you realize.
• Language barriers. Just become someone speaks English, it doesn’t mean they can send emails on your behalf. Different parts of the world have different forms of English. If you need someone to handle correspondence or other writing tasks, you may spend more time proofing their writing than it would take to do it yourself.
• Cultural differences. If you hire someone from another country, they may not know what the cultural norms are in your country. Sometimes this can be a good thing–they will proceed with a project with an audacity that gets things done where someone local might back off. Sometimes, though, you have to explain things in much more detail than you would with someone familiar with your culture.
• Local spending. While not a huge consideration, if you can keep money local, you are doing something to benefit the economy that will eventually benefit you. Hiring a recent high school graduate will keep your money hard at work in your town, while sending it to India will not.
• Security. If you are giving someone access to personal information, there are security advantages to having someone local who you can sit down, interview and get some recommendations on. This isn’t to say the remote assistants aren’t just as trustworthy or even more trustworthy than a local person, but it is usually easier to tell with someone local. (Hiring a remote assistant through a company with a good reputation is one way to minimize the risk.)
• Equipment. This is related to the physical tasks. Having the ability to let someone use your computer, printer, etc. can be a very big benefit. It is possible to set most things up to work remotely, but having complete control over equipment and software has advantages.
• Taxes. Depending on how you arrange things, you may need to deal with withholding taxes and paying half of Social Security taxes. This isn’t a big deal, but it can be a little extra work if you aren’t set up for processing payroll already.

In my opinion, if you are looking for an all around personal assistant, you should try to find someone local and then move to a virtual assistant if you can’t afford or find someone with the right skills locally. If you are looking for an assistant to do a particular highly skilled job, then a virtual assistant may be the right way to go, if you can find someone with those specific skills. But if you are going to have to do a lot of training anyway, local may be a better option.

Don’t underestimate how much of your time is spent on physical tasks. Having someone who can put an item up for sale on eBay and then handle the shipping, throw away files that are older than 5 years old, or sign for an important package while you are away is very valuable.

On the other hand, if you need someone with a degree in statistics to work for a few hours each week, you may have a difficult time finding someone local. If that is what you are looking for, you are probably going to have better luck finding someone in India.

Locating a Virtual Assistant

There are a number of websites where you can find freelance virtual assistants. The advantage of working with them directly through a freelancing site is that you will often get a better price than dealing with a virtual assistant company. The disadvantage is that they might disappear, you won’t have a third party overseeing security, and they will probably be their own tech support. Also, some sites that let you contact freelancers take a cut of your payment. Sometimes they provide services that make this worthwhile. For example, oDesk lets you go in and look at your virtual assistant’s screen to make sure they are working on your projects and not reading jokes online or playing poker.

Here are some of the places where you can locate virtual assistants:

• Elance
• oDesk
• Craigslist
• Guru
• iFreelance

Here are some companies that offer virtual assistants:

• Brickworks India
• Get Friday
• My Employee
• Longer Days
• Tasks Every Day

(Your Man in India has often been mentioned as a place to look, but YMII is really geared toward US based Indian who need things done back home.  They might be good to work with if you need help planning a trip to India or something like that.)

Often the best way to find a good virtual assistant is the same way you would find a good employee. Ask your friends for recommendations. Even if you are looking for someone internationally, this can be a good option. With the global economy, it is likely that you know someone from India already. Sites like LinkedIn and Facebook can also be ways to ask around for contacts.

If you are looking to hire someone from India, send a message to anyone you know who is working from India and let them know what you are looking for. They may know a relative or friend who would be a perfect fit.

If you don’t know anyone from India, you could call up tech support for any major US company. The first person you get will probably be in India. Just ask them if they know of anyone wanting to work as a virtual assistant and see where it goes from there.

If you try to stay in the US, don’t overlook stay-at-home moms or people who are willing to work for a lower salary in exchange for flexibility of schedule or work location.

You should consider your assistant’s work environment. I tried using a virtual assistant in Texas, but it was very difficult to talk to her because she was constantly yelling at her kids while on the phone with me. I’m all for work/life balance, but I think she would have been much more effective in an actual office.

This is one of the things I like about Brickworks India. Their workers are coming into an actual office and working. For most people, this is a better setup because it takes them away from the distractions at home. On the other hand, this adds overhead expense and the company managing the assistants will mark up the cost significantly.

Selecting a Virtual Office Assistant

A good way to find a competent virtual assistant is to try several at the same time. This is particularly useful if you are trying to hire someone from a site like eLance or ODesk. Come up with a few basic tasks that will give you a good idea of their skill level. Ideally use tasks that require several skills. For example, asking someone to research and summarize articles on a particular topic will give you an idea of their research and writing skills.

If you can have 3 to 5 candidates work on the same project, it will give you an idea of how it will be to work with each of them. Take the top candidates and give them a second, more difficult, project and then settle on whomever you prefer to work with.

This means you’ll be spending some money for duplicate efforts, but the benefits of finding a good assistant far outweigh the additional cost

Key Assistant Skills

Here are some skills you want to look for in an assistant.

• Good Spoken English - An accent is fine, but you need to make sure you are going to have an easy time communicating. Don’t forget that there are cultural differences that can make it difficult to communicate–even if you are speaking words clearly.
• Good Written English – Since much of your work with a virtual assistant will be done over email, it is vital that you can communicate effectively in writing. Keep in mind that what is acceptable written English for communicating with you, may not be acceptable for writing to your coworkers or business partners.
• Proactive - This is the most important skill you can find in a good assistant. Someone who can extrapolate what you want them to do in the future based on what you have asked them to do in the past. An assistant who can work off a to-do list can be helpful, but one that can anticipate what you need without requiring you to even think about it is incredibly valuable.
• Quick Learner - If you need to explain how to do a new task, you don’t want to have to explain it 10 times. You need someone familiar enough with the technology or systems you use that they can quickly grasp what needs done.
• Organized - Your assistant needs to know how to take incoming information and organize it in a useful manner. This includes creating folders to organize the work you have assigned, keeping track of multiple versions of documents, and recording any important information that they may need again in the future.

Full Time or Part Time

Most people are looking for an assistant on an as needed basis. If you are hiring someone that is fairly expensive, this can be a good way to go. If you are hiring someone who isn’t very expensive and ad hoc arrangement may not be the best thing for you.

If your virtual assistant has no idea how much work you will need in a given week they will have no idea how much they will get paid. This will lead to higher prices and if your assistant is constantly looking for another job, they may find something that pays better than working for you.

Much of the benefit of having an assistant comes over time, as they become more familiar with what exactly you need and how you like to have things done. If you find someone good, you want to do your best to keep the relationship going for the long term.

Even if you can’t hire someone full time, consider guaranteeing them a certain amount of work each week. This gives them some stability in their income. However, keep in mind that if they are working for you 50% of the time, there is a certain amount of overhead that goes into switching back and forth between you and other clients.

If you are having them do work that requires some creativity, a full time arrangement may give you a benefit of having their mind work on things unconsciously during their off hours. If you are one of ten clients they work for each day, it is less likely that their mind will be mulling over solutions in the evenings than if you are their only client.

If you can find someone remotely who works for $3 per hour it will cost you about $120 per week to hire them. At first this may work out to be more expensive (in terms of the amount of work that gets done) than hiring someone else to work 25% of the time for $12 per hour. But if you are able to train the person working for $3 per hour, over time they may become just as valuable.

Training a Virtual Assistant

It is easy to underestimate how much time will go into training a virtual assistant–particularly if you are working with someone whose first language is different than your own. Here are a few tips to help create good training materials.

1. Use existing resources.
   If you can point your assistant to documents on the web or PDFs that will help them understand a task, it will save you time. For example, I needed to teach my assistant how to use Wordpress. Instead of going through each feature, I had her go through some online video training and then just covered the things specific to my needs.
2. Keep your training resources organized.
   If you end up changing assistants, make sure you don’t have to start from scratch on locating training resources. You want to be able to let them self train as much as possible. For example, if you keep a document with links to everything you have asked your current assistant to read as part of training, it will make your job much easier if you need to train someone else.
3. Create tutorials.
   Creating a list of how to do tricky things step by step will make it much easier if you have to train someone else. It is also helpful if you need your assistant to do something complicated that only happens infrequently.
4. Have your assistant create documentation.
   Once you get an assistant trained, have them create documentation of their processes and the steps to do various things. Not only will this give you great training materials for the future, but you will be able to make sure your assistant is doing things in the most optimal manner.
5. Video training.
   A screen cast can be worth a thousand words and once it is created your assistant can reference it again if they forget something. It can also be used to train others.

Many of these tips are helpful if you need to find a different assistant for some reason, but they are also useful if you are working with a team of assistants, because it will minimize the overhead required to pass tasks between different individuals.

Another useful idea is to have a “skills checklist”. This would include items like:

• Order items from Amazon.
• Send out monthly newsletter.
• Send out client bills.
• Follow up with past due clients.

Only check items off this this when your assistant is capable of performing the tasks without your intervention. The list becomes a great resource if you need to train someone else and becomes an easy way to gauge your assistant’s skills.

Don’t assume that your assistant will automatically find the most efficient way of doing something. Make sure you take the time to train them on best way to do things that can be time consuming. If they do a one off task in a way that isn’t particularly efficient, it isn’t any big deal. It still will save you time over needing to explain a different process to them. However, if there is something you plan to have them do hundreds or thousands of times, make sure you provide them with the training necessary to be efficient.

Managing a Virtual Assistant

Set Task Duration Expectations

One of the most tips for working with a virtual assistant is to set expectations for how long a task should take. Since they aren’t where you can simply look over their shoulder, you want to make sure they aren’t doing something the hard way without realizing it. One way to help minimize this risk is to tell them how long you think a task will take. For example, with Rajani, I showed her how to resize the images for this website and then told her that it usually took me about 10 minutes to select and resize each picture. This gave her some context so she knew that, if it was taking her 20 minutes, she could probably do it faster. It also told her that if it took her two hours, she probably didn’t understand something correctly.

Include Cultural Information

Don’t assume cultural norms are going to be the same for a virtual assistant from another country. Make sure you give them enough background information to work effectively. For example, they may not know that many businesses in the US are closed on Saturday and Sunday. They may not know that when you call someone’s cell phone, they have to pay (in some countries only the person calling pays). These are all very small pieces of information that can have a big impact on how your assistant approaches particular tasks.

Low Priority Tasks

If you hire someone full time or with a commitment of a certain number of hours, always make sure you have some type of low priority task for them to work on if they run out of things to do or get stuck on something when you aren’t available to help them. Here are some tasks that work well for this:

• Reading - If you find websites or PDFs that will help give them background information that will help them perform better, consider assigning these as low priority tasks to do when they can’t work on anything else.
• Training - Online videos or other training materials that will help them do their job better are another good candidate.
• Organizing - Things like running a process to check for duplicate contacts and merging them can be good things to have them do on a regular basis, but don’t have to be done at any particular point in time.
• Research - If you have an area of interest, asking them to research part of the topic for you can be a good low priority task.

Timesheet

Even if you are paying on a retainer model, you’ll want some type of timesheet. This is important in order to make sure that something isn’t taking a lot longer than you expect.

A regular timesheet lets you see what is going on so you don’t have large disconnects between how long you think something will take and how long they think it will take. These types of things are easy to catch with someone in person, but can sometimes be easy to overlook with someone working remotely.

What seems to work well for me is a weekly timesheet done in Excel and a daily email of items accomplished along with a plan for the next day. Here is an example of the daily email:

Today I completed the following tasks:

• Added photos to the unpublished articles.
• Set appointments for car and haircut.
• Summarized 10 articles on optimal sleep.
• Cleaned up all duplicate contacts.

Tomorrow I plan to:

• Contact client about billing issues.
• Send out monthly statements.
• Research the hotels in Mexico for vacations.
• Find the best place to buy 20 radiometers and order them.
• Contact Sprint to resolve billing issue.

This helps make sure that you are both on the same page with what is being completed and with what is planned for the next day. On the last day of the week, a spreadsheet showing the hours worked on each task for the week will help give you a good idea where time is being spent over all. I actually started out using Basecamp for project management and time tracking, but found this method worked better for me and didn’t cost anything.

Screencasts

One thing that I found extremely helpful in working with a virtual assistant is creating screen casts. If there was a complicated process I wanted Rajani to do, I’d create screen cast explaining the process step by step and showing her how to do it. Then I’d upload that to our shared file system and tell her to let me know if she had any questions. This worked out well because she could see exactly what I needed and it was there as a reference for tasks that only needed to be done occasionally.

The screen casts also help make sure that your assistant isn’t doing something in a much slower way that what you’d want. If they see you demonstrating a process that takes 5 minutes, they are going to know there is something wrong if it is taking them 20 minutes to complete.

Screen Sharing and Video Conferencing

Another very useful tool is some type of screen sharing capability. This lets you look over your assistant’s shoulder if they need help so you can steer them in the right direction. It can also be used to let them remotely do work on your physical computer which can be useful as well.

You could set up screen sharing so you can take a peek at what your assistant is working on whenever you feel like it, or set it up so you both have to join a meeting in order to share screens.

Video conferencing can be a great way to communicate–especially at first. Getting to see each other can help establish a better relationship and can help you be more aware of cultural issues.

I was speaking on how technology is being used in the workforce at a local junior college and I had Rajani join by video conference to speak for a few minutes about what her company does in India.

I found that we did not use video conferencing very often, but it helped us to get to know each other when we initially got started.

Timezones

I know a lot of people like the idea of having someone working during the night so everything is ready in the morning. I find that things work better if there is at least some overlap. With Brickworks India, my assistant started work very early in the morning my time. Our working days overlapped by about 50%. This worked out well because it gave us enough time for me to explain anything I needed done and gave her time to ask for clarification on anything that was confusing.

Tools

Here is a list of tools that can be very useful when working with a remote assistant:

• Skype - Supports video conferencing, instant messaging, incoming and outgoing calls to regular phones and file transfers. The only real downside of Skype is the fact that when you call out, your number shows up as 0123456789. This is generally fine for calling businesses, but can pose a problem when calling individuals who might not answer.
• Acrobat Connect - Does screen sharing and video conferencing. Also allows you to remote control someone else’s computer.
• SnapzPro X - OS X tool for doing screen casts and screen shots.
• Basecamp - A project management system. I found it was overkill for what I needed, but it might be useful if you have more than one person working for you.
• Plaxo - Plaxo will let you sync your address book with an online address book. This can be a great way to give your assistant access to your addresses without giving them direct access to control your PC.
• Google Web Apps - Gmail based mail is particularly suited for working with a virtual assistant because it allows you to see an entire conversation in the inbox. If your assistant answered a message for you, you won’t miss it and send a message out again. Also, the tagging allows your assistant to mark items that require your attention.
• LogMeIn - Allows screen sharing and remote control. This can be useful for demonstrating how to do a task or to allow your assistant to do work locally on your home computer. They also offer an easy-to-configure VPN service to allow direct access between computers without exposing them to the entire internet.

10 Articles About Virtual Assistants

Here are some great articles about how people are using virtual assistants and include some tips for getting things done “virtually”. If you are looking for more information, I’d suggest starting with these links.

• The Virtual Assistant: Regain Control and Love Your Job-Therese Drost
  This article explains the necessary skills that a person needs to become a virtual assistant. A few of these skills include good grammatical skills, good communication skills, ability to be responsible and the ability to take knowledge and large amounts of information and process them efficiently and effectively.
• Making Sense: A Virtual Assistant IS Practical-Florie Lyn Masarate
  In her article, Florie Masarate explains how practical and feasible the use of virtual assistants is in today’s world. She emphasizes that the work that many virtual assistants do is high quality, and that the rates for hiring a virtual assistant are becoming very reasonable.
• Outsourcing Your Life, and Creating New Businesses-Nora Dunn
  The author describes how outsourcing jobs to virtual assistants can greatly improve the way in which a business owner uses his or her time. She also discusses how these assistants free the valuable time of higher echelon employees to complete tasks that require more experience.
• I Just Fired My Virtual Assistant-Stephan Spencer
  In this article, Stephan Spencer explains how the cultural and linguistic differences between nationalities can hinder someone while working with a virtual assistant from another country. Because of the differences in language and the way it is perceived, many people hesitate to hire a virtual assistant because of the communications difficulties.
• How to Get Your Virtual Assistant to Schedule Your Doctor’s Appointments-Ramit Sethi
  This article is a helpful guide that explains what information your virtual assistant will need to set up a doctor’s appointment for you. This article also points out that it is better to give detailed instructions to your personal assistant rather than being asked to explain something numerous times.
• Drawbacks of Outsourcing to India or China-Stephan Spencer
  In this article, Stephan Spencer explains in more depth why hiring a virtual assistant from a foreign country can be a potential risk. He discusses the issues of loss of credibility, communications misunderstandings and also the customer service complaints that can result from hiring an under-qualified virtual assistant.
• Two Secrets to My Success-Work at Home Moms’ Talk Radio Blog
  The author centers this article around speaking about all of the good excellent help that the author’s virtual assistant has provided for her. The author points out how important that this virtual assistant is to her business.
• Outsourcing My Life, Part 2: The First Task Completed-Yourdon Report
  In this article, the author relates some of their own experience in working with a virtual assistant from another country. The author also gives a few examples of the rates charged by companies for help from virtual assistants.
• Confession: I Outsourced My Life-Ryan Norbauer
  In this article, Ryan Norbauer relates some of his own experiences that deal with virtual assistants and how they can improve a person’s life. The great advantage of freeing oneself from everyday, repetitive tasks becomes evident when a person has an assistant to help them.
• How Long Can I Expect My Virtual Assistant to Stay With Me?-The Real Estate Training Center
  The author pens this article to explain how our society and workforce are changing, and with those changes, virtual assistants are becoming much more common. The author also explains that there are many different factors that may help determine how long a virtual assistant will stay with a client.

In Summary

Working with a virtual assistant can save you a lot of time and let you get to a lot of those tasks that you’ve been meaning to do, but never quite have time for. Even if you don’t think you need someone right now, I would encourage you to try using a virtual assistant as an educational experience. It will help open up your eyes to how small the world has become.

You might also want to checkout my follow post: Offending the Entire VA Industry

If you have any suggestions of providers, tips and tricks, or things to avoid that would help other readers please add them in the comments.

Links On Remote Assistants

I asked my remote executive assistant to put together a list of a few posts that discuss working with a remote/virtual assistant. Below are the results:

• The Personal Outsourcing Olympics: Bangalore Butler or American Assistant? - Tim Ferriss
  Very appealing but informative article on the latest trend of entrepreneurs - Outsourcing. Having had a positive experience on all the jobs assigned to a virtual assistant, the author invites others to give their comments through this article. For a novice at outsourcing, he has chalked names of reputed companies in this field.
• How to get your virtual assistant to schedule your doctor’s appointments - Ramit Sethi
  Should you have problems interacting with your virtual assistant, this article by Ramit, would assist you. It’s a mail to his remote executive assistant to fix an appointment with the dentist. Also, the reader gets suggestions on whom to contact, experience of another entrepreneur, and options to get effective output of outsourcing.
• Myth… Busted! You CAN Have Great Help on the Cheap - Patricia Mayo
  Encouraging, one and all, to hire a virtual assistant. Very comprehensive about this technology and how effective and useful can the dealing with a remote executive be for someone with lot of innovative ideas. However, very slyly does mention about the drawback one might have to face.
• Working with a Virtual Assistant - David Phillips
  Should you feel uneasy with the whole concept of Outsourcing, this article would put an end to it. Although it’s a personal experience that is narrated, but the basics, benefits and shortcoming of working with a remote executive assistant is well projected.
• Tips for Working with a Virtual Assistant (and Why You Might Want One) - Leo Babauta
  The author narrates as to how he seized the opportunity that came by and satisfied his doubts on virtual assistance. The article also explains why, where, what and how aspects of remote executive assistance. Very informative for the reader who is seriously thinking about outsourcing tedious errands.

International Holidays

When working with someone from another country it is easy to forget that they will probably have a different holiday schedule than what you are used to.  If you hire a remote executive assistant, make sure you get a list of their holidays.  It helps with your planning and is a great way to better understand their culture.

Lifesourcing

Steve Rubel tries outsourcing some tasks as an experiment.

American Express Concierge 3

On Mondays we’ve been discussing working with a remote assistant.  We’ve taken a brief side trail for a few weeks looking at actually trying to use American Express’ concierge service.  This week I’m going to show an attempt to use the service to find housing in Mexico.  My wife and I lived in Durango Mexico for a few months and couldn’t seem to find any type of furnished housing.  I figured the concierge would be good at locating this type of thing–especially since dealing with lodging in other countries seems to be something American Express advertises they do well.

Here is the message I sent:

 I am looking at spending some time in Mexico next fall. Specifically I am looking at the town of Durango in the state of Durango. Could you see if there are any furnished apartments/homes available down there?  At this point I’m just looking to get an idea of what would be available and what the pricing would be.

Here is what I need:

- At least 2 bedrooms.
- Accepts a small dog (around 9 pounds)
- Highspeed internet connection
- No scorpions

Thanks!

Mark

I got a message back saying that I needed to contact their “Villas of Distinction” department.  I called them and when they realized I was looking for something longer than 3 months, they directed me back to the concierge service.  The representative offered to call the concierge service and get them back on the task for me only to call me back an hour latter saying that they wouldn’t talk to her an I would need to call them back.

I emailed them back again with the following:

I spoke with Michelle and was told that they only handle very short term type arrangements.  I’m looking for something for 3 months.  Michelle tried to call concierge to tell them to go ahead, but concierge wouldn’t help her help me unless I sent a response to my original request (see your response below).

I’m pretty confused why you couldn’t take Michelle’s call and look up my original request.  It very much seems like I’m getting bounced around which does away with the benefits of this type of service anyway.

I’m trying again.  Please see my original request below.  If the concierge who receives this just doesn’t feel like helping, please pass it on to someone who can be helpful.  Also please include the name of the person responding so if I get the run around again I can at least know who I was talking with–especially if they try to pass me off to a different department.

Thanks

Mark

For the careful readers out there, you might be able to detect that I was a bit frustrated with getting bounced around.  It seemed like the concierge service was getting paid to respond to requests–not necessarily do anything useful with them.

A few days later I received their reply:

I hope your day is going well. After contacting some companies in Durango, DGO I unfortunately was not able to find any companies or private properties for rent. I also consulted the Durango Tourism that informed me there weren’t any agencies in Durango who deals with property rentals. The Durango Tourism suggested perhaps placing an ad in one of the local papers or searching the paper classified. I believe the market for rentals in Durango, DGO is not in great demand.

Paper: The voice (La Boz De Durango)
Phone:  52-618 812 9911
Website: www.lavozdedurango.com

Paper: The Sun (El Sol)
Phone:  52-618 811 2100
Website: www.oem.com.mx

Paper: El Siglo
Phone: 52-618 813 7080
Website: www.elsiglodedurango.com.mx

I do apologize I was not able to locate a rental property for you. If there is anything else I can do to assist you, please do not hesitate to contact us.

While this is useful, it isn’t what I had hoped for.  In their defense, the concierge does seem to have legitimately tried to locate a place.  And if nothing is available it definitely isn’t her fault.

My experience with the concierge service is that (for the most part) they won’t be able to do anything faster for you than you can do it yourself.  Many times it will take longer because of the back and forth required.  A couple people have suggested that calling in will get you better service because they can ask you questions on the phone.

One thing interesting to note is that the concierge service isn’t even provided by American Express directly.  It is provided by a company called Circles Company Associates, Inc.  They provide concierge services that you can bundle with the products you offer your customers or as a perk for employees.  So if you are big company you can give all your employees concierge services by signing up with Circles.

Their service might be a little more useful if you are in a big city or traveling to large cities. They can probably do a better job of finding a great restaurant in Chicago than finding a place to stay in a non-vacation area of central Mexico.  The bottom of their emails usually encourages you to call them about sending flowers or gifts for birthdays or special occasions so that might be another area where they shine.

American Express Concierge 2

Last Monday we looked at using the American Express concierge service for scheduling a tuneup on my car. This week we will try something else. I have been looking for radiometers to send as a corporate gift to some of my clients. (A radiometer looks light a light bulb but instead of a filament it has metal vanes that spin in the sunlight.) Unfortunately most of the ones I’ve found for sale were packaged for kids science experiments. The radiometers are fine, but the packaging doesn’t look very “corporate”.

I figured this sounded like a job for super concierge, so I called them with a request. I explained what I was looking for and in particular asked them to find a radiometer with packaging that didn’t look like it was designed for kids.

Initially the responded with a very nice handmade radiometer, that was well outside of my stated budget. It seems they had misunderstood and were looking for a really classy radiometer instead of a normal radiometer in decent packaging. Emailed back explaining this.

Several days later they replied with:

Dear Mr. Shead,

I hope your day is going well. As you requested in your email to American Express Concierge, I have researched some additional options of a radiometer. I have detailed these online options below for your review. What a great promotional item for you to give to your business colleagues. As it sits on their desk, they can wonder at seeing thermodynamics in action with this wonderful Crookes invention, and they will be reminded of your business at the same time! I have included the shipping options for 10-20 items, and also detailed the previous suggestion we sent you.

Vendor: American Science & Surplus
Address: Online
Phone: 888-724-7587
Website: http://www.sciplus.com/singleItem.cfm/terms/7793
Item: Radiometer - Item #3817P1
Price: $10.95
Details: Another oldie but goodie. 5″ high evacuated clear glass stand 3″ in diameter at the top. A four bladed vane is balanced on a needle inside the sphere. Because opposite surfaces of the vanes are black and white, incident radiant energy is absorbed or reflected to a different degree. The result is a spinning vane. The brighter the light, the faster it spins. Simple, but compelling. Brief explanatory instruction sheet included.
Shipping: $5.95 for 1 item; $15.95 for 10 items; $18.95 for 20 items
Payment: American Express not accepted

Vendor: Science Stuff
Address: Online
Phone: 800-795-7315
Website: http://www.sciencestuff.com/prod/P-c/0525
Item: Radiometer - Item #0525
Price: $11.99
Details: 4 vanes, black/silver 3,000 rpm in sunlight
Shipping: $8.35 for 1 item; $10.18 for 10 items; $12.11 for 20 items
Payment: American Express accepted

Vendor: HobbyTron
Address: Online
Phone: 800-494-1778 or 801-434-7664
Website: http://www.hobbytron.com/Radiometer.html#4761
Item: Radiometer - #GEN-100
Price: $8.95 On Sale
Details: You have seen them on the science shows and marveled at them in museums, and now you can own one too. The Radiometer is a glass bulb with four suspended vanes inside. The vanes are blackened on one side, and they rotate when exposed to strong light. Just place the bulb in the sun, or next to a lamp, or any other healthy light source, and watch the vanes spin faster and faster according to the light’s intensity. No batteries are required - the light makes it go! Learn the mysteries of light, mechanical, and heat energy (but most of all have FUN) with the amazing Radiometer.
Shipping: $9.48 for 1 item; $9.57 for 10 items; $10.31for 20 items
Payment: American Express accepted

Vendor: Edmund Scientifics
Address: Online
Phone: 800-728-6999
Website: http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp?pn=3116000
Item: Hand Made Glass Radiometers - #3116000
Price: $49.95
Details: See the science and beauty of the power of the sun come together in this exquisite hand-blown, hand-crafted glass radiometer.
The highly sensitive vanes carefully balanced inside the radiometers take on energy when struck by the molecules heated by sunlight.
The vanes’ shiny sides reflect the heat, which is absorbed by the dark sides. Energy is released as the heated molecules kick away at great speeds, causing the vanes to revolve within the vacuum; clear, blue or amber glass; 8 x 3 “; gift wrapping available for $4.95 each
Shipping: $8.95 for 1 item; $39.95 for 10 items; $39.95 for 20 items;
Payment: American Express accepted

Please let me know if you need further information about these products, or if I can do anything else to assist you. Let us know if there is anything else we can assist you with, whether around the house, at work, or with travel information or weekend plans. We are here 24 hours, 7 days a week

Not bad. They didn’t look up the packaging and much of the information has obviously just been copied from the e-commerce websites, but they did included pricing and the shipping information. Also they show if each place can take American Express. The concierge can place the order at places that accept the AmEx card.

They did find a good deal, so I emailed back telling them to purchase one of the selections and asking that they locate a different box I can put it in.

Please order me 20 of these. Also I checked with the company and the packaging isn’t quite what I want–it is aimed at kids. Can you find some other type of packaging for the item itself?

Mark

They replied with:

Dear Mr. Shead,

Thank you for your email. I spoke with Hobby Tron and the packaging of these items is a simple yellow and black so I do not believe it will appear childish to the recipients. There is an issue with our making the purchase on your behalf however; Hobby Tron does not accept American Express directly though payments can be made though PayPal. American Express concierge is not permitted to may purchases utilizing PayPal due to security concerns. Hobby Tron will accept other credit cards directly but not American Express. I am sorry that we cannot place this order on your behalf.

Vendor: Hobby Tron
Address: NA
Phone: 800-494-1778 or 801-434-7664
Website: http://www.hobbytron.com/Radiometer.html#4761
Item: Radiometer - #GEN-100
Price: $8.95 each
Details: Packaging is simple black and yellow box.

Please let me know if would like us to find alternative sources for this product, or if I can do anything else to assist you. If you need assistance with any Valentine’s Day plans we would be happy to assist you.

Ok they say the packaging isn’t going to have a bunch of smiling kids on it, but I have to order it myself. I can do that. A week or so later, I got the order. I opened the large box and was greeted by the smiling faces of many children holding radiometers. This isn’t the concierge’s fault. They called and were told that the packaging was just a simple two color box. Now I’ll ask them to find a different box for me….

American Express Concierge

Welcome FlyerTalk and Boston Magazine readers.  The most interesting parts of this post are the comments at the bottom.

In my quest for finding a remote executive assistant, I decided to give American Express’ concierge service a try.  If you have a Platinum or higher card, AmEx offers a concierge service.  Basically you call or email them a request and they will get back to you–usually within three days.  If you need to buy something (from a place that takes American Express) they can make the purchase and put the charges on  your card.

AmEx gives some pretty interesting examples of concierge things they have done.  One that stuck out to me was sending someone on a motorcycle to the Dead Sea to collect some water for a card  holder’s child’s science experiment.

So here is one of my interactions with them:

I am going to be in Tulsa, OK this Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.   Could you find a local volkswagen dealer and schedule my car for a tuneup and oil change on Saturday morning?  The earlier the better.  I will drop the car off and get a ride with a friend.  I will be staying near XXXX S. Lewis in Tulsa so if there are multiple dealers start with the closest.

My car is a 2003 Passat Wagon.

Thank you.

Mark Shead
xxx-xxx-xxxx - mobile

I thought I had covered all the bases, but evidently not:

Dear Mr. Shead,

Thanks for using American Express Concierge! I understand from your email that you are looking to schedule a tune-up at a Volkswagen dealer in Tulsa. Below you will find the address for Brad Noe Volkswagen dealer and the web address where you can request an appointment. I did not release your personal information, as I did not have your permission.

Name: Brad Noe Volkswagen
Address: 4240 South Memorial Drive Tulsa, OK 74145
Phone: (918) 712-8989
Website: http://www.bradnoevw.com/ServiceApptForm

If you would like for me to schedule the appointment on your behalf, please don’t hesitate to contact Concierge. I’d be more than happy to do so with your permission. Concierge is also available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ready to secure dining reservations or Valentine flower orders at your convenience. I hope you have a great afternoon and I look forward to assisting you again soon.

Ok I’ll try again:

Yes I wanted you to schedule the appointment per my instructions in the original message.  I’m sorry I wasn’t more clear. You can give them the necessary information for setting the appointment.

Mark

And their reply:

Once again, thanks for using American Express Concierge. I was able contact Brad Noe Volkswagen in Tulsa. Unfortunately, they are unable to schedule a tune-up and oil change on Saturday. They are fully committed and the first available appointment would be Monday or Tuesday. I realize you will be out of town by this time, so I did look for other VW dealers in the area. These would be located quite a distance away in Lawton or Oklahoma City. I do apologize for the inconvenience and would be more than happy to research reputable mechanics in Tulsa at your request. Concierge is available by phone or email, if I can provide any additional conveniences. I hope you have a wonderful weekend in Tulsa.

This isn’t necessarily their fault, but it underscores the need to be very clear when explaining exactly what you want.  It is entirely possible that the service was booked up when I sent my first request.  I might have had better luck calling the service instead of emailing. AmEx kind of implies that the concierge will be able to do things that you can’t do on your own (like get you reservations at fully booked restaurants), but I’m guessing that isn’t the case–unless they have some type of prior arrangement with the business.

It also looks like they might be a bit more useful for Valentine’s gifts or similar purchases, since they keep offering to do that in their email messages. 

Watch for more Monday posts about working with a remote assistant.

Remote Executive Assistant - Some Lessons

Last Monday I wrote about my experience with using a remote executive assistant in the US. It didn’t work out so well, but the experiment provided a lot of insight into how to work with a remote assistant. Here are some takeaways from that experience.

1. Make sure you have a good project management system in place.

You need a way to track the work assigned and keep track of time spent. If you don’t know how much time is being spent on each project it is going to be very difficult to understand what is working well and what isn’t. Without a good time tracking system, you may not know something is wrong until you’ve spent a considerable amount of money.

It is possible to keep track of all your projects and time spent through email, but you need to be careful to make sure you aren’t just creating a bigger administrative hassle for yourself.

2. Allow adequate time for training.

Don’t expect someone to be able to do in a few weeks what it has taken you years to develop. Expect to spend a lot of time doing training at first. Carefully planning the order that you introduce new tasks can give your assistant the chance to build their knowledge in a logical order. For the first few months you will be acting as a professor attempting to teach someone else how to think like you. Take this period seriously and make sure you are providing adequate training.

Use tools like screen shots, screen casts, and shared desktops to help make things as clear as possible. Give your assistant plenty of one-on-one time to ask questions, but try to provide them with processes they can reference when you aren’t around. Also make sure that you keep your schedule clear at the beginning so you can answer any questions. If your assistant is working from another timezone, you may want to shift your work time to coincide with theirs for a few weeks.

3. There are barriers other than language and culture.

Someone from your country who speaks the same language may still not understand your field of work. You need to be realistic about how long it will take them to develop a good understanding of the context in which you work. You may need to assign them background reading materials to get them up to speed.

4. Deal with a reputable company.

While there are some advantages to working with someone directly, there is safety in using a reputable firm. If your assistant stops communicating with you, you have more options if they work for a larger company. In addition a larger company is going to usually have more safeguards in place to protect you because they are concerned about maintaining their reputation. A company can also help you if your assistant is sick or if you need to scale up to multiple workers when you have a big project.

5. Get an assistant before you need one.

There is a lot of effort that goes into getting an assistant up to speed. Don’t expect to be able to do it in just a few days. I now expect that getting an assistant up to speed will take at least 2 months.

In the coming weeks I’m going to be looking at other options for remote executive assistants. Watch for more Monday posts on this subject.

Remote Executive Assistant - First Try

I find that I have a lot more ideas of things I’d like to do than I have time to do them. I get all the important stuff done, but there are many smaller things that I’d like to accomplish that I simply don’t have enough time.

I looked at a lot of the companies that provide remote executive assistants, but decided I’d rather work with someone directly. I found a paralegal from Texas who was looking for work as a virtual assistant. My thinking was that someone who grew up in the US would be easier to communicate with than someone from a foreign country.   I also wanted to keep the work in the USA if I could instead of sending it out of the country. When I spoke with I called one of her references and they were very pleased with her work, so I decided to try it as an experiment.

She said she was wanting to work from home to be able to spend more time with her kids. I could here her kids very loud in the background and every once in awhile our conversation would be interrupted while she told them to stop climbing the walls. With the kids at home she wouldn’t be able to make phone calls, but most of what I needed done was going to be over email anyway. In retrospect the noisy kids should have been a warning sign.

The first thing I did was to setup a project management system. I used Basecamp because it was easy to setup and get running and the hosted feature meant I didn’t have to try to install something myself. Particularly I wanted to make sure I had a way for her to track her time on each task. When you are working with someone remotely it is easy to have very different ideas on how long something will take. If I give someone a task that I think will take 2 hours and it takes them 16 hours there is probably something wrong. The issue might be  an unclear definition of the task or it might have to do with not providing proper training ahead of time. Regardless of the cause, a good time tracking system lets you keep track of exactly how long things take to get done and can give you a good idea of what type of tasks will best use your assistant’s skills.

We agreed to start off with 20 hours per week for $250. And I gave her several tasks to complete. One was to find 20 authoritative articles on a particular subject and write up 100 to 200 word summaries. Another was to find websites in a particular niche and put together a spreadsheet showing 3 or 4 metrics, the URL and contact information. The metrics were to come from places like Alexa, Technorati, Feedburner, etc. I sent an email with screen shots showing how to get these numbers from each site.

At the end of the first week, she had only logged 18 hours and she hadn’t accomplished much. I saw a draft of the authoritative articles she was supposed to locate and summarize were ok, but looked like they were chosen based on their ordering in Google rather than actual content. When I asked about the two missing hours, the reply I got was “well, it was about 20 hours.”

I emphasized the need for accurate record keeping and explained that the time tracking was a very important part of what I needed to be able to tell if the arrangement was worth while or not.

As we launched into the second week, I discovered that she was having significant difficulties understanding  how to obtain the metrics for various websites.  Personally I thought my instructions were very detailed and very clear–especially with all the screen shots showing exactly what I needed. For whatever reason, it had confused her.  In retrospect, I may have been better off doing a screencast showing her exactly what I wanted done.

At the end of the second week, I asked her to send me everything she had been working on, even if it was only partially complete because I wanted to evaluate things before moving forward.  I never got all the material.  When I tried calling her, I discovered her phone had been disconnected.  Emails went unanswered as well.  I even tried calling the person who had been her reference, but he doesn’t seem to be answering his phone either.  After a few weeks I gave up.

I was anticipating that it would take a few weeks to get someone up to speed anyway and I’ve learned quite a few important lessons along the way.  Next Monday I’ll discuss some of the lessons I learned and how I’m going to do things different next time.