A Virtual Assistance colleague of mine was on an online networking forum and she posed a question to the group: What do you know about Virtual Assistants?

A response came from someone who had a remote worker from Team Double-Click (TDC). This person was extremely dissatisfied and because TDC promotes their remote workers as Virtual Assistants, he had a bad impression of Virtual Assistants.

Some of the problems this person had with the remote worker:

  • the remote worker was unable to effectively communicate with his clients
  • the remote worker didn’t do the work and then lied, saying that she had done the work
  • the remote worker was hired to take some of the burden from him and instead he was spending more time on the tasks and getting inferior results to him doing them himself
  • the remote worker needed a lot of oversight and was incompetent

Some of the problems this person has with Team Double-Click:

  • all of the remote workers are promoted as being able to do anything and everything under the sun from web design to answering the phone
  • people in his line of business have had to go through as many as four remote workers
  • makes promises that aren’t kept
  • analysis of needs is not thorough

Let’s look at these items from the professional Virtual Assistant’s point of view.

  • Many Vas offer free consultations so that the business owner and the VA can discuss needs and solutions. The business owner can discern the communication skills of the VA during the consultation.
  • A professional VA will likely communicate on a daily basis with their clients, or at least each time the VA completes work for the client.
  • This is unconscionable! Professional Virtual Assistants alleviate burdens so that their clients can focus on generating revenue and doing what it is they love. VAs are business owners themselves and understand the mindset of their clients.
  • Professional Virtual Assistants need no oversight, are highly competent and have at least five years of high-level administrative background in the corporate world. Most of the VAs I know have ten to thirty years of experience.
  • Virtual Assistants are highly skilled in many areas and many VAs are experts in certain areas. No one VA can do everything nor wants to do everything. It’s not profitable - don’t forget that VAs are business owners. A true Virtual Assistant will be honest about what services they offer.
  • A Virtual Assistant will conduct a consultation with a prospective client and both the VA and the prospective client will know whether they are a good fit for each other thus eliminating the need to seek a replacement.
  • If a professional VA doesn’t keep promises that are made, then that VA is out of business. It’s as simple as that.
  • Again, the consultation process can help determine the needs of a prospective client and any good VA will be thorough so as to be able to properly serve the client.

I feel badly for this person who had such a poor experience. I hope I have helped to better define the differences between a remote worker and a Virtual Assistant.

Have you had a bad experience with a remote worker?