Why You May Not Need An Assistant After All
An assistant or virtual assistant is a great way to help grow your business. Delegating minor tasks to another person, such as scheduling, answering emails, and returning phone calls, frees up time for you to invest in other areas of your business.
However, hiring an assistant is costly, with entry-level assistants starting at $18 an hour. There’s also a lot of time spent onboarding and training and the possibility of them moving on to other opportunities just as things are getting settled.
When growing a small business, paying for an assistant can be a hard pill to swallow. The truth is, many administrative assistant or virtual assistant tasks can be automated with low-cost tools. Scheduling, for example, can be outsourced to an online scheduling system such as Acuity, which connects with your work calendar so others can see and select from your available meeting times.
You can also automate emails. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the average person spends about 28% of their workweek clearing their inbox. This makes wanting to hire an assistant to tackle your emails understandable. However, automating your inbox can drastically cut down on time spent on emails. Your inbox can become much more manageable once you have the right tools set in place (e.g., email templates, labels for incoming mail, Google Tasks, Google Apps Scripts).
Phone calls are important for most businesses. They can also take up a lot of time and energy that can be spent on growing your business. Incoming calls can be handled with an automated receptionist that greets customers, redirects calls, and takes voicemails and transcribes them.
Some things an assistant does can’t be replaced with technology, such as greeting customers and taking on unforeseen tasks. They can become an integral part of your business and should not be overlooked. That said, if your business is in the early stages of its growth, streamlining and automating tasks is a good solution until it’s time to hire an assistant.