The right virtual assistant services can save you a lot of time and headaches.

Whether it’s taking annoying administration off your hands so you can focus on things that matter to your business, or helping you manage your call answering.

And they can help you stay on top of your day and organise your meetings and diary.

They can also help you create a virtual switchboard that can take calls and direct them to the correct member of your team.

But not every virtual assistant offers every service available, so choosing the right partner is going to be an important decision for you.

If you’re thinking of investing in virtual assistant services, then you need to understand the different offerings available and how you can match the right provider with what you need.

If you’re looking for something a bit more in-depth about using a virtual receptionist, click here to read our complete guide to hiring a virtual receptionist for your business.

What services can a virtual assistant provide?

More professional call management

Many businesses start off with virtual assistant services just to cover their call answering so they don’t send clients or new business calls to voicemail when they’re too busy to answer.

Not answering the phone when it rings can be costly for a business.

If you get a reputation as someone who’s difficult to contact, it might put customers off and cost you sales in the future.

Similarly, if you send a paying customer to voicemail, or force them to deal with automated call answering, it won’t do anything to help your relationship with them.

Hiring a virtual assistant to manage your business’ incoming calls can remove the stress of missed calls, freeing you up to focus on completing work you’re being paid for or to spend meeting people and building contacts.

Switchboards and full call management

If you’re a sole trader, a virtual assistant is a great resource for dealing with phone calls when you’re busy.

Even if you have employees and an office (or have multiple employees working remotely) a virtual assistant can benefit you by being the front of house for your call handling, ensuring calls and information gets to the right people.

If you’ve ever worked in an office, you’ll know that employees often see incoming calls as a distraction – especially when they’re busy.

If they have to take a message, it’s common for each individual employee to take different information in different ways.

This can make it hard for the person receiving the message to understand what the call was about, or what they’re expected to do next.

A virtual assistant service can be used to create a virtual switchboard for your company. 

They can deal with simple enquiries, or act as a barrier against irritating sales calls, while taking accurate messages and making sure they get to the right people.

Help manage your diary

When you’re out of the office it can be difficult to keep track of your diary.

If someone calls asking for a meeting and you’re busy, it can be easy to agree a date and end up double booking yourself.

A virtual assistant can remove this headache by helping you with diary management and booking meetings.

You can sync your diary to a shared system so you can both see your availability.

If someone calls and your virtual assistant is dealing with it, they can see when you’re available and book the meeting for you at a convenient time.

The updates will happen in real-time so you don’t have to worry about delays resulting in you double booking yourself anyway.

Live web chat

More and more customers are approaching businesses through their website today, especially in B2B where buyers are researching products and services and want to find fast answers.

Even in B2C, customers are expecting to easily find their way around a website and expect to be helped with finding a particular product.

Live chats are great for these kinds of enquiries.

You can’t be available all the time to manage a live web chat, but a virtual assistant can be on hand to deal with conversations when you’re not able to.

Improve your business’ communication with the right virtual assistant services

Whether you want phone answering, a full switchboard or a live chat on your website, a virtual assistant can be a great investment.

It can free you up to spend more time completing projects or working on your business, without worrying that you’re missing calls and sales.

Plus, it can add to the channels customers can use to contact you, improving your communication and reputation even more.

One of the biggest benefits of hiring a virtual assistant over a full-time receptionist, is that you only pay for the services you use – instead of paying a full-time salary and taking on the additional tax, holiday, illness and admin responsibilities that come with hiring staff.

If you’re looking to hire a virtual assistant or receptionist and want more information about which services would best serve you, get in touch with us today.