Scheduling appointments sound rather easy on paper that you’d rather DIY it than hire someone else to look after your schedule. But in reality, it is more complicated than just picking dates and marking them on a timetable.
As a business owner, you need to constantly meet clients and suppliers, set meetings, and find time in your crazy schedule that’ll work for both parties. So most likely, you’d spend hours just to come up with a workable arrangement— mundane ventures that you obviously don’t have the time for.
When you’re running the show of your company, you can’t be out there doing the menial tasks in the back office. Whatever you do, you need to efficiently manage your time and make good use of it.
Thankfully, a Virtual Scheduling Assistant can solve your jumble mix of inefficient scheduling. They can arrange your time for the day, tomorrow and for the next few days without you having to worry.
Bad scheduling can wreak havoc on your entire workflow, you know.
Read on and explore what it means to work with a Virtual Scheduling Assistant; the what, how and why.
As the job title implies, a Virtual Scheduling Assistant is someone who manages your schedule — pays attention to your calendar and email to make sure you’re always on time, and ready to perform.
They will take care of any scheduling mishaps such as cancellations, rescheduling, and double bookings, so you don’t have to. VAs will help you get to your priorities first, and then push back non-essential meetings.
To put it briefly, a Virtual Scheduling Assistant would do your work for you, at least the little things that you shouldn’t be doing personally, so you can advance on the more important stuff.
Here are some common activities that a VA can assist you with.
Pretty sure a busy boss such as yourself will have each day packed with a list of to-dos. And it will only get chaotic as the day progresses.
Good thing though that a virtual assistant can take care of this certain aspect of your calendar. They will talk with the people you’re meeting over the phone and email. Then, they’ll plan out your meetings at the right time to make sure there are no overlaps in case it’ll take longer and there are some changes.
There are plenty of software tools that you can use to follow up with people. But still, it would prove rather difficult to keep up with all of them at once.
A Virtual Scheduling Assistant can help you out to make sure everyone is accommodated on your schedule, be it with potential clients or staff. VAs can send prompt reminders, so you don’t ever fall through the cracks of missing scheduled meetings.
Onboarding a Virtual Scheduling Assistant means “hands-off” from managing your schedule. From entering new logs and filling them up to making adjustments, a VA allows you to get to your priorities without worries by handling all the various parts of your schedule.
Though it’s easy to streamline modern scheduling tools, many still choose the old ways of communicating through emails. And in doing so, reaching out to people and keeping up with new messages can get really tedious.
It’s more efficient to collaborate with a virtual assistant to take care of your communication channel and save a huge chunk of time.
The thing about businesses going online is the challenge of varying time zones.
Despite that, a virtual assistant is proven to be quite handy in managing contacts from all over the world, as they have tons of experience with remote work. They can deal with setting appointments with your clients or other stakeholders, so you get coordinated with time.
If you think that a Virtual Scheduling Assistant is only great at administrative work, think again, because they can offer support too in growing your network.
For example, if you go to another state, a VA can set arrangements for you to meet potential clients or suppliers for your networking agenda — like they’re always ready to make suggestions and offer something to best use your time.
Every Virtual Scheduling Assistant follows different processes when managing your schedule. But generally, they mostly go by this set of steps.
This first step involves you, and your list of activities that need to find their place in your tight schedule.
To successfully compile this list, you must properly communicate with your VA on what you want to do for the day and have them check your email inbox and weigh your task’s priorities.
Every meeting that you go to has a fixed element to it— it has a start time and an end time.
It’s always important to determine how much time you need for a specific meeting, so you can efficiently manage the rest of your schedule.
Based on some factors like travel time or breaks, your virtual assistant will come up with the time required for each meeting and incorporate buffers in case unplanned situations surface out of nowhere.
VAs will even go to lengths and some extra research to make certain that the number of hours is exactly what is needed for your upcoming appointment.
Communication is key when you’re trying to work on a schedule that meets halfway.
With that being said, a Scheduling VA can communicate with attendees on your behalf, and clear out the communication haze.
They’ll send emails, make calls and even integrate collaboration tools to ensure that every party is well-informed and come up with the time best suited for everyone involved.
If you think that creating multiple calendars for different purposes will help you clear the clutter of your schedule, you’re wrong, because it will only add chaos to your calendar, resulting in oversights and risk.
Instead of doing it separately, your virtual assistant will create a single calendar, filled out with all your appointments, events and other personal commitments.
Is hiring a Virtual Scheduling Assistant worth your while?
If you are still unsure how to answer this, then, let us give you reasons to take on this modern business strategy by laying out the most amazing benefits of working with a VA.
Yes, you could hire a full-time assistant to manage your schedule. But are you ready to shoulder the additional cost of hiring one?
The truth is, you don’t actually need a regular employee to full-on work that many hours and follow you around. You only need someone to manage your schedule. So just spend on that and if you need more services, you can scale up.
Perhaps, the most enticing feature of virtual assistants is how cost-effective they are — they’re cheaper than hiring a full-time assistant.
VAs are freelancers rather than employees, so they don’t enjoy the same compensation benefits: no paid time off or health insurance. Moreover, they don’t go to a physical office, so that’s minus rent, utility and equipment costs.
In total, you’re saving around 78 percent of the total operational cost.
When you work with an experienced Virtual Scheduling Assistant, the probability of messing up your schedule is little to none. You can avoid the usual headaches of being late to a meeting or double bookings.
But more than that, VAs can optimize your schedule based on your needs, so you don’t fall into doing way too much.
41% of workers believe that stress is the main factor that affects their productivity. And do you know what adds up to stress in the workplace? Poor schedule.
A good schedule is a great place to start to avoid being overwhelmed. It gives you more freedom when you’re not running after chores and your to-do list isn’t in constant disarray.
Having a good schedule defends you from chaos and whim. It gets you ahead in the game, saving you time, money, and effort.
How great would it be to look around, have your entire day set up and complete every item in your schedule? And then you say, “What comes next?”
Well, if you work with a Virtual Scheduling Assistant, you can stop wondering and start living it.
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