Have you thought about how to communicate effectively with your VA to help achieve your goals?

For most business owners, outsourcing to Virtual Assistants is one of the most practical solutions when scaling a business. Although there are many different options on growing your business further, studies have shown that outsourcing is one of the keys to achieving success in both your business and personal goals.

Everyday, Virtual Assistants strive to become instrumental to their Client’s success. They stay proactive at finding ways to improve the services they provide. Through consistent communication, creating systems and implementing strategies, VAs go above and beyond to maximise their productivity. But how can you measure VAs work more efficiently?

The answer is through effective communication. In any business, it is an essential component to exchange information and ideas, implement strategies and address challenges. Effective communication is crucial to team collaboration. It provides means to execute plans and successfully achieve goals in a timely manner.

Setting Goals through Communication

VAs and clients come from different countries and nationalities, yet how do you communicate with ease and spontaneity? Current statistics show that around 13% of virtual assistants come from the Philippines. A truly remarkable fact, most outsourcing companies find Philippine virtual assistants’ fluency in speaking the English language one of the advantages of outsourcing in the Philippines. Virtual assistants who can articulate thoughts well can be sought after, as most clients appreciate learning new ideas and turning those into action steps contributing to success. In any business, clients mostly focus on implementing strategies to achieve business goals. Effective communication is one of the ways to have a direction on how to carry out plans successfully. Below are some tips to keep in mind when thinking about practicing effective team communication across your team:

• Weekly Huddle: It’s important to practice a good “start of the week chat” as a part of a routine activity to promote healthy interaction and engagement among team members. In addition, it’s also a creative way of checking if weekly/monthly goals align to the strategy agreed upon in the beginning of the month/quarter.

• Time for Q & A: Encourage your VA to share their input into detail as there might have been things missed during weekly huddles. For most busy professionals, using a communication platform for real-time chat is a value-plus tool. It is a significant aspect of maintaining consistency in the output as well as identifying the do’s and don’ts of a specific task.

• Providing Feedback and Suggestions: A process can be declared as successfully done if and when you provide your VA with constructive feedback. By doing this, both the VA and you can evaluate which tasks have been done according to the standards. Through active communication, you can identify your VAs strengths and praise them for their effort for doing it well. This motivates them to work harder and to strive for better results.

Using Communication Tools

Using communication platforms to provide a systematic approach to effective communication also helps in ensuring a smooth workflow. Here are a few examples of communication apps commonly used in outsourcing.

• Slack is an example of an instant messaging app which allows a client to have a chat with the VA. It may be used for doing simple check-ins in the morning to signal the client that the VA starts to do his daily activities, as well addressing simple questions to clarify instructions on a given task. While all other messaging apps have unique features, Slack works best for team collaborations and communication across different channels. Creating open lines of communication is necessary for both client and VA to ensure clarity of ideas hence maximising productivity.

• Zoom is another communication platform mainly used for video conferencing. It allows a person to host the virtual meeting and let others participate by joining it as it has been scheduled. Additionally, it has unique features which includes real-time presentation of information by sharing slides previously prepared.

• Similar to Zoom, Google Meet is mostly used for virtual meetings online. Using a link, It allows multiple participants to interact during discussions as well as collaborate through video conferencing and document sharing.

• Telegram is another example of an instant messaging app. It has similar features to almost all messaging platforms. However, most clients prefer to use communication platforms with integrations like Asana and Airtable for project management and Zoom for video conferencing. These integrations are all available on Slack.

Choosing the right communication channel is vital to getting messages across and vice versa. It is a valuable tool in understanding priorities and helping address concerns as needed.

Addressing Challenges

In any organisation or team, effective communication is also the primary solution for addressing concerns. Though it is not anticipated, challenges in communication are considered normal as each one of us has a different perspective. But when it comes to achieving goals, it is necessary to develop a strategy to avoid confusion and miscommunication. Here are some tips you can use:

• Prepare a SOP: This approach enumerates a step-by-step process which eliminates spending too much time figuring out which task needs to be prioritised. Along with this document is a list of Frequently Asked Questions page, where your VA can find commonly asked questions with detailed answers to clarify confusing procedures on a specific task.

• End of Day Reporting: Your VAs daily tasks may vary from time to time. Therefore, checking on your VAs output for the day would be a helpful way to understand and measure if he has achieved his KPIs. Through identifying what he was able to do for the day, you’ll also get the opportunity to answer concerns and inquiries which may have been overlooked in the process.

• Upskill: While it is good to know your VA’s expertise, encourage him to update his training by upskilling. Every now and then, new trends level up a VAs knowledge. Set a goal each month to let him participate in training that will help increase his resources and fine tune his expertise as a VA.

Overall, effective communication goes a long way when working towards achieving goals. It is a significant method of ensuring quality results whilst working alongside your reliable VA. With proper guidance through communication, tools and resources, you’re in a sure spot in achieving your business goals in no time!

Are you looking to achieve your business goals with a Virtual Assistant?

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