Most business owners learn to accept that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish every task. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already found a solution and made your first hire: a virtual assistant.
VAs can help you manage time-challenging managerial and organisational tasks that clog up your schedule – but only if they have suited software tools. It’s crucial to find the right VA tool to protect your time and get the most out of your investment. With the right virtual assistant software, you can:
- Help accomplish work tasks more efficiently
- Automate repetitive work
- Track your VA’s work time and activity
- Organise communication
The right tool can even act as an assistant to a limited degree.
In this post, we recommend the most popular software tools to help you get the most out of your VA relationship.
The office suite
Obviously, the office suite quickly turned out to be a foundational tool to every business.
Using spreadsheets, docs, and presentations make up a great share of a VAs workday and having all these apps bundled together simplifies tasks and processes, resulting in improved productivity.
Normally, the office suite includes word processing, presentation spreadsheet, email calendar, contact apps, messaging, cloud storage and videoconferencing.
The G suite /Google Workspace is the cloud base suit that’s less popular but is straightforward and user-friendly. The Google suite includes Chrome browser, Slides, Sheets and Docs, which are more comparable to Microsoft’s Word, PowerPoint, and Excel independently.
Google Apps allow you to email, store files in the cloud, schedule meetings, create, co-edit and share documents and spreadsheets from any device. You can access it for free with a personal account, but you can also purchase additional features like a custom business email, 100GB+ of storage, and an intranet feature for you and your team if you create one.
For Your E-Marketing
Recent findings hint that automated emails may bring you 119% higher click-through rates than manually sent emails.
If you need to send a batch of emails routinely, then Mailchimp is the right fit. The software is free, but there’s also a paid version. With Mailchimp, you can get over 2000 subscribers and send up to 10,000 emails a month.
The free version comes with landing pages and forms, audience insights, and a few basic templates. It integrates with over 200 apps which means you can link it to your WordPress site for faster updates to your email list.
Another must-have VA marketing tool is the AWeber – it gets you All the Features in every paid plan. The variation in pricing may depend on your subscribers’ number and not the number of features you get. AWeber makes everything from beautiful landing page templates for various goals to custom segmentation of your email list.
For communication only
It’s important to be able to reach your Virtual Personal Assistant when you need them. Obviously, Gmailing remains a viable solution, but it’s not always the best one.
More often than email get lost in the shuffle, not to mention that an efficient VA probably won’t check their email due to productivity reasons
Sometimes you just need to reply quickly to a short message, and that’s it.
Programs like Slack can help. Slack is a team communication tool used by more than 750,000 companies.
The point is that it can replace email communication and eliminate all the time-wasting that comes with it. Slack features various channels, which are basically group conversations that revolve around a set topic.
Channels promote an organised way to communicate between your virtual assistant and the other people on your team. You include your VA in the conversations they need to follow without overloading their inbox with unrelated chatter.
Including your assistant in your business‘s channel gives your team a way to contact them directly. If you’re out and someone needs information, they can easily get in touch with your virtual assistant for help.
Another corporate chatter medium is Flock, team collaboration and a messenger platform. Flock is similar to Slack; however, it places greater importance on productivity features.
Several standout features, like voice notes, reminders, and to-do lists, can help you delegate to your virtual assistant more easily.
For your video conferencing
VAs are rarely available in person. That doesn’t mean you have to restrict your communication to email or chats, though. Video calls are a much easier method to handle more complex conversations.
Many virtual assistants require having weekly calls to catch up and prioritise together. Instead, you might want to consider a quicker and friendlier alternative.
Luckily, there are a lot of video conferencing tools out there. Discuss with your VA if they have a preference and consider how a particular software fits in your current situation.
One of the alternatives is Zoom, a conferencing software solution that has gained momentum during early COVID-19 pandemic times. Zoom is used worldwide to hold meetings, collaborate, and host virtual events.
The platform features a number of traits, such as video webinars, group chats, virtual conference rooms, and an enterprise phone system. Zoom supports HD audio and video, records, transcripts and more. It has advanced security and privacy features such as passcodes, waiting rooms, and user authentication that ensures you are able to discuss sensitive information during calls.
Scheduling
Different time zones make it difficult to set meetings with people in different locations.
Syncing conferences or meetings while working remotely is a top-of-mind priority so that no one time is wasted with missed or miss-scheduled meetings.
Tools like Calendy come with a stellar performance as compared to Google Calendar. It can use it for settled appointments that can even have tiered pricing. You can see the next available times and dates for a conference in your local time.
These tools make working with a virtual assistant more effective. You will also work more confidently knowing that you can finish everything well on time.
Story by William Busby
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