When Ravi Varma, on behalf of one of his clients, called a tenant to remind him to pay the monthly rent, he was warned not to call again or risk having an FIR filed against him. Shiyamala Selvaraju, on the other hand, was slightly well-placed but nevertheless found herself at wits? end when she was requested to pray for her client and his family for 10 minutes every morning.
Welcome to the world of virtual assistants, where you can hire the services of a professional and place requests for your chores?however silly or whatever the consequences?and ensure that they get done to meet your satisfaction levels. As opposed to the conventional ?personal assistant?, a virtual assistant works remotely?sometimes even in a different city?and almost never comes face to face with the client. The modes of communication include email, telephone, fax, and even Skype.
Increasingly, the modern workplace, with its varied demands, leaves us wishing for a 48-hour day to finish all our work on time. There are even times we wish for our very own secretary, who could manage our itineraries, attend calls, check and respond to emails and help us complete a PowerPoint presentation while we take that much-needed break.
Virtual assistants like Varma and Selvaraju do just that and more. A virtual assistant manages your email accounts, appointment diary, flight/train bookings, etc, just like the good old secretary. But apart from that, what she/he also does is provide services like helping with addresses and directions when you are lost on the road, managing your work calendar, sending reminders and wake-up calls, helping with your Internet research, making online purchases for you, managing the delivery of groceries to your house, making restaurant reservations, giving technical support, helping in travel management, providing weather reports and updates, doing data cleansing and management and whatever other mundane tasks you can think of.
?The idea behind virtual assistance is to get things done on a client?s behalf,? says Vijay Chandra Paul T, manager at Chennai-based Habiliss, a provider of virtual assistance services owned by Amnet Systems. ?Some corporates entirely outsource their back-end tasks so that they do not have to deal with logistical or tax-related issues.? Habiliss, which started operations in 2009, has a team of 125 virtual assistants.
Sunder P, managing director, TTK Services, which owns GetFriday, a virtual assistance service, believes everyone can do with some extra help in their lives, whether on the personal side or with business. ?There are many things that remain pending for months, or sometimes years, because you don?t have the time to do them. Then there are the essential things that need to be done… Some of them may not be your core competency, or just not be worth your time, but need to be done anyway. That?s where a virtual assistant takes charge,? says Sunder. TTK Services is part of the $450-million TTK Group that was founded in 1928. The company?s GetFriday division has provided virtual assistance to about 1,200 clients from over 30 countries.
?Take the instance of a design firm,? says Sunder. ?The owner?s core competency lies in providing creative ideas and design skills to clients. But there is book-keeping, invoicing, follow-ups with clients, etc, that need to be done too. If these can be outsourced, giving the owner space and time to just focus on his core area, it can be a win-win situation.?
Moreover, with the help of technology, a virtual assistant can now handle every possible task from a faraway location. Even physical tasks can be accomplished to a large extent through remote coordination.
Mumbai-based technology entrepreneur Gopala Krishnan first hired a virtual assistant in 2009. ?I think we waste a lot of time on follow-ups. This was something I immediately delegated to the virtual assistant. The other thing is maintaining my phone. When I am in meetings and can?t attend calls, I put the setting to immediately forward all calls to the virtual assistant?s number,? says Krishnan, adding, ?Hiring a virtual assistant removes interruptions from your life. You don?t have to worry about anybody getting offended because you didn?t receive their call.?
For 32-year-old Sven Brandelik, associate vice-president at Ernst & Young in Mumbai, the inspiration to hire a virtual assistant came from a book. ?I was reading the book The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris and I liked the part where he points out that we should focus on activities which help us move ahead. My idea was to organise my life in a more efficient manner, where I can focus on what I like doing and outsource what I don?t,? says Brandelik. The German national, who has been residing in India since March 2011, has been working with a virtual assistant since June 2011.
On an average, a virtual assistant can take anything between a couple of hours and a few weeks or even months to solve a query depending on the complexity of the task. However, like with any personal assistant, there are hits and misses here too. When you are talking about several hundreds of tasks every month, there will be a few that won?t get done, says Krishnan. ?I have had difficult times in the past with virtual assistants. There were a lot of mistakes in the first few months. But these things happen,? he says.
Krishnan stresses upon the need for specific, precise instructions to ensure that a task gets done the way it should be. ?You have to be very careful about how you are delegating tasks to a virtual assistant. Your instructions have to be very precise and ambiguity must be very low. If you don?t give clear instructions, it?s very difficult to get things done. You have to create a proper system and a reporting structure with your virtual assistant,? he says.
Hiring a virtual assistant is pretty simple. All a potential client has to do is look online for a firm providing virtual assistance services and sign up by providing personal details like one would do for getting an email account. Some firms such as Bangalore-based Taskbarge provide clients a seven-day trial offer as well. The charges are subscription-based. Clients are charged on a per-hour, per-month or per-task basis and prices can vary anywhere between $5 (around R300) per hour and $15 (around R900) per hour depending on the nature and complexity of the job, the plan opted for by the client and the firm chosen. On a per-task basis, prices start from as low as $1.66 (around R100).
However, despite the advantages and the fact that Indian virtual assistance firms are among the most competitive in the global market, the service has found few takers in the country.
The concept hasn?t been very popular in India and is just showing signs of picking up, says Chaitanya Krishna, managing director of Taskbarge, which has been providing virtual assistance services since 2011. ?Most Indian entrepreneurs feel these services are very expensive.?
Sunder P of GetFriday says the price points have to be different for the service to click in India. ?There is an opportunity for such services in India, but the price points have to be very different. Plus, in India, more emphasis is on physical task delivery, which is a serious pain in today?s busy world.?
But even though there are a few takers for the service in the country, there is no dearth of people taking up virtual assistance as a career option.
Prakash Yarlagadda, 25, is an MBA graduate from Visakhapatnam who works as a virtual assistant at Taskbarge. On a typical workday, Yarlagadda handles around 10 clients. ?I usually handle clients who need business assistance. Mostly, I work on scheduling appointments, calendar management, travel arrangements, generating reports, Internet research, social media, etc,? says Yarlagadda, adding, ?Some days, I even work for 15 hours to meet deadlines.?
Selvaraju, who works with GetFriday, says clear communication is key to the relationship between a client and his/her virtual assistant. ?Since we don?t have direct eye contact with our clients, there are chances that we could misunderstand their requirements. So I always make sure to communicate clearly and ask questions to get the right direction.?
However, sometimes, asking questions is not possible. ?Recently, one of my clients requested me to find economical hotels in London for the next two days while he was boarding a flight to London from JFK Airport in New York,? says Yarlagadda. ?All I had were barely a few hours to complete the task and I couldn?t even contact the client for any clarification as he was on the flight. Fortunately, I managed to find some hotels and sent the list to the client before he landed in London.?
As they say, all in a day?s work.