Seriously considering Virtual Assistants to replace in house staff

[Paul David]

Has anybody had success in using VA's on a regular basis?

I've been looking at ways of putting distance between myself the low value work that I have to do in my business.

I think I should be able to hire a full time VA to do our customer services (eBay, Amazon, email messages) for a third of the cost I'm currently paying for my in house employee. I would then use the extra capital in hiring a part time warehouse packer as it's an area we are struggling with at the moment.

I may even going to look into using a third party fulfilment centre to take over our warehouse logistics at some point in the future. I know a company called Crucial Vacuum who've successfully done this.

I remember @Vigilante saying in one of his posts that he wants to try and remove all in house employees from his business if possible and I must admit I do not want to be tied down with a large warehouse and dealing with staff problems if I can run the same business from anywhere in the world without them.

We already document our processes and procedures which will be a good base for training VAs.

Has anyone else done this successfully?

 

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[G-Man]

Tried and it was a total dumpster fire. I know it can be done, though.

I'm gonna watch and learn on this one.

 

[Paul David]

Tried and it was a total dumpster fire. I know it can be done, though.

I'm gonna watch and learn on this one.

What type of work did you outsource?


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[G-Man]

What type of work did you outsource?

I would get mass lists of salvaged electronic parts with no discernible order. The biggest problem was that the same part number might be described 8 different ways, plus mis-spellings. Long story short, it meant a human being had to go through it, then make a judgement call as to what this thing was, and add the part number to a new column, thousands of times. This shit was going to China by the container load, so the person only even had to be right about 80% of the time. Perfect for a cheap VA, right?

My mistakes

• Had a secretary instead of myself give directions to the VA, and turns out the secretary was not super smart, and would get hostile with them
• Didn't do my research on VAs with good ratings
• Didn't make sure that the person I was talking to was my actual VA. Turns out he was sourcing it out to a team of VAs, so it was a different person actually doing the work every time, and added telephone game distortion of Me > secretary > VA coordinator > person actually doing the work.

They were poorly managed, but I also managed the process poorly. More than enough blame to go around.

EDIT: Also, if you're looking for somebody to sling boxes part time, use a temp service. The markup is more than worth the reduced hassle. That's lots of headaches worth of experience talking.

 

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[Paul David]

I would get mass lists of salvaged electronic parts with no discernible order. The biggest problem was that the same part number might be described 8 different ways, plus mis-spellings. Long story short, it meant a human being had to go through it, then make a judgement call as to what this thing was, and add the part number to a new column, thousands of times. This shit was going to China by the container load, so the person only even had to be right about 80% of the time. Perfect for a cheap VA, right?

My mistakes

• Had a secretary instead of myself give directions to the VA, and turns out the secretary was not super smart, and would get hostile with them
• Didn't do my research on VAs with good ratings
• Didn't make sure that the person I was talking to was my actual VA. Turns out he was sourcing it out to a team of VAs, so it was a different person actually doing the work every time, and added telephone game distortion of Me > secretary > VA coordinator > person actually doing the work.

They were poorly managed, but I also managed the process poorly. More than enough blame to go around.

Yes I'm currently reading a book called Virtual Freedom by Chris Ducker and his advice is to use a dedicated person rather than agency for that reason alone. The book also goes into depth about ensuring your instructions and outcomes you are expecting are as clearly defined as possible.


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[lowtek]

I hire a VA to outsource my lead gen on LinkedIn.

He comes up with ideas for businesses using AdWords, finds out who is advertising under related keywords, and finds the person on Linkedin. Sends me a spreadsheet every day with 50 leads, plus or minus a few.

Some mistakes here or there, but he listens to feedback and follows instructions.