Automation and the Human Element
By Gayle Buske, President and CEO, Team Double-Click® and VirtualAssistingUSA;
In today’s business world, automation is the key. Auto responders, automatic order taking, automated voice response, and auto dialers. Don’t get me wrong, automation is a good thing! How else can a small or home-based business duplicate its efforts, increase its sales, and keep all the balls in the air? Simple – you can’t!
But with automation comes certain distrust amongst most humans. The Information Age and the advent of the Internet made it possible for scammers and shady, fly-by-night operations to prey upon the honest folks out there. And those same scammers and fly-by-nighters put distrust into even the most trusting souls: “Just who is honest”, they may be thinking.
While the Internet and all its glory is a fantastic tool, it and the inherent distrust that it brought along, have created a NEED for today’s businesses to keep the human element in their businesses. Customers need to know that there is a real, live body behind that web site, behind that email address.
So how does a busy business owner keep the human element in their business when they can’t possibly, personally respond to all the requests they receive on a daily basis? Enter virtual staffing.
For a fraction of the cost of hiring a full- or even part-time administrative assistant, marketing assistant or graphic designer, by hiring a virtual staffing agency, your business can essentially receive an entire staff of assistants, designers, writers, and web designers and only pay for what you use.
Consider this: If you could look like and act like a much larger business for a fraction of the price, wouldn’t that be an asset to your company? If you hired an assistant to come into your office or even home-based office for an agreed upon 20 hours per week, what would happen if your business was slow one week and you didn’t really need her to do anything? You’d still feel obligated to pay her, wouldn’t you?
Not with virtual staffing. All work done is on an as-needed basis. You only pay for what you use. And you only use it when you need it. So if you don’t have any work that week, you don’t pay! What a fantastic concept. And why not? You don’t walk into McDonald’s, order one meal, and pay for two, do you?
Virtual staffing allows even the smallest business to remain flexible, and perhaps most importantly, keep the human element in your business. Your assistant can act as an extension of you; answering phones, answering client requests, sending out information, processing mailings, making follow up calls, and processing the billing.
Virtual staffing allows you to look like and act like a larger business, while maintaining the flexibility of a smaller business. In today’s economy, these are important traits for any business to have!
About the author:
Gayle Buske is the co-founder, president and CEO of Team Double-Click® and VirtualAssistingUSA. As the head of a virtual staffing agency with over 57,000 virtual professionals in its pool, Ms. Buske is uniquely qualified to aid small business owners in their growth and development through virtual outsourcing. Virtual Assistants across the globe look to Ms. Buske and her organizations for guidance, mentoring and motivation.
Team Double-Click®, the country's foremost staffing agency for trained Virtual Assistants - Matching Top Virtual Workers with Top Companies! Visit www.teamdoubleclick.com or phone 888.827.9129 for a variety of full-service virtual staffing options.
VirtualAssistingUSA provides Virtual Assistants a place to upload their profile, advertise their services and get access to affordable training, marketing and billing assistance for their business. VirtualAssistingUSA gives small business owners direct access to our database of tens of thousands of virtual assistants - without the ongoing agency fees and gives them access to talent that is not available through other venues. Visit www.virtualassistingusa.com for more information.
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