36 Tasks Administrative Virtual Assistants Can Do

No matter what industry you’re in, eCommerce, real estate, finance, etc., administrative tasks and paperwork are inevitable. Making travel arrangements, managing your calendar, answering emails, responding to customer inquiries, doing research — all these are essential in business. Unfortunately, they are also tedious and time-consuming, which is why many business owners are looking into hiring administrative virtual assistants.

As a business owner, your time is better spent growing your business. This includes going to important meetings with potential business partners and shareholder or brainstorming business development ideas. This could also mean attending conferences that will help you forge important connections and learn new business ideas and strategies. Sadly, for many entrepreneurs, especially those who are just starting out, most of their time is actually wasted on basic admin assistant duties.

Small Business Statistics You Need to Know

According to statistics compiled by Small Business Trends, only 80% of businesses started in 2014 made it to their second year. Even fewer, a measly 56%, of those businesses survived until their fifth year.

The same article listed the top causes of failure for these businesses. Here’s why 44% of the businesses started in 2014 didn’t make it to their fifth year:

• 42% said there was no market need for their product/service
• 29% ran out of funds
• 23% said that their team composition was not right
• 19% succumbed to the competition
• 18% said that issues with cost and pricing caused their business to fail
• 17% had problems with the user-friendliness of their product
• 17% did not have a business model
• 14% were not able to market their product/service properly
• 14% did not provide proper customer service
• 13% attributed their failure to improper timing

Issues such as poor marketing, bad team composition, and customer service problems, can be resolved with the help of an administrative VA. Hiring an admin VA to help you deal with the crucial but repetitive tasks in business is an excellent investment.

When you hire virtual assistants, they can deal with the routine work. This allows you to focus on the more important business aspects and decisions that only the business owner or CEO can do.

Read on to know more about what administrative virtual assistants are and what they can do for your business.

What is an Administrative Virtual Assistant?

An administrative virtual assistant, or admin VA, is someone who is trained to deal with the routine but essential tasks in business. Think of them as a virtual office assistant. They function similar to your typical in-house executive assistant, administrative assistant, or administrative support. The main difference is that an admin VA will do all these administrative jobs while working remotely from their home office.

Like any office admin assistant, your admin VA’s duties can include: answering calls and emails, scheduling meetings, data entry, etc. A virtual administrative assistant is a great entry point into virtual staffing.

 

Hire an Admin Virtual Assistant to Do These Tasks

What exactly can you hire an admin VA for? Here’s a comprehensive list of the most common virtual assistant jobs that business owners assign to their admin VAs.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

Ensuring that your customers get the assistance they need is essential to keeping your business afloat. Providing exceptional customer experience is a lot easier when you’ve got an admin VA or two to deal with the following tasks.

• Email Support – monitoring and answering email queries about your products and services and addressing customer concerns. 
• Phone Support – answering customer questions about your products or services over the phone.
• Chat Support – responding to questions, challenges, and concerns from customers through any chat or messaging platform used by your company.
• Helpdesk Support – providing technical assistance to your customers or employees as in the case of internal help desks.
• Lead Generation – identifying potential leads through manual lead generation methods such as online networking, industry research, and lead generation software.
• Lead Nurturing – keeping leads engaged by answering their questions and sending them relevant information that could encourage a purchase or conversion.
• Dispatching Support – receiving dispatch calls, recording call logs, addressing dispatch problems, and receiving and dispatching orders.
• Sales Calling – doing outbound sales calls and cold calling to find new customers or turn old leads into customers.
• Onboarding Assistance –  welcoming new employees and informing them about your company’s processes, tools and software, communication guidelines, and more.

DATA MANIPULATION

Data entry is a common task assigned to admin VAs, but many admin VAs can actually do more than simply typing jobs. Here are some data manipulation duties that you can delegate to an administrative VA.

• Data Analysis – mining and analyzing raw data and statistics using data analysis tools to create useful reports that can help you with important business decisions.
• Spreadsheet Data Entry – entering data into business spreadsheets and ensuring its accuracy.
• Database Management – using database management systems to ensure that important information such as customer and product data are up-to-date.
• Bookkeeping – keeping digital records of your financial transactions, uploading receipts, and entering cash flow data for your accountants.
• CRM Data Management – working on your CRM software to ensure accuracy of customer data, and generating customer data reports as needed.
• Invoice Creation – creating invoices on your preferred invoicing or payments platforms and sending invoices to customers.
• Payment Tracking – using your payment tracking system to collect payments and keep accurate records of transactions.
• Graphical Data Representation – generating charts, diagrams, and graphs to aid or speed up interpretation and understanding of data.
• Scheduling Bill Payments – helping ensure that your company’s bills are paid on time to avoid late payment fees and penalties.

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Basic duties related to your business operations can also be adequately handled by some admin VAs. In the case of more experienced admin VAs, they can also assist with more advanced operations management tasks such as project management. Here are some operations tasks that your admin VA can deal with.

• Project Management – planning and overseeing all aspects of specific projects. This can also include budgeting and documentation.
• Reservation Scheduling – taking calls and monitoring emails for reservations, ensuring that there is no double booking, and handling reservation changes.
• Calendar Management – ensuring that travel plans, meetings, appointments, and events are plotted in the office or team calendars.
• Crew Scheduling – managing crew shifts, monitoring staff schedules, and rearranging shifts according to the availability of staff.
• Appointment Setting – contacting customers and setting appointments for sales callers.
• File & Records Management – creating and/or implementing file and record management procedures to ensure that all files are secure and accessible.
• Personal Assistance – doing typical tasks assigned to a personal assistant, but limited to tasks that can be fulfilled remotely.
• Receptionist & Call Routing – answering calls and routing calls to the relevant persons or departments.
• Research – performing basic research tasks including competitor research, industry research, and so on.

BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT

Finally, your admin VA can also help you make crucial improvements to your business. As someone with first-hand experience with your business operations, your admin VA can help you out in the following areas.

• Customer Engagement – helping keep customers engaged by gathering feedback from them, sending timely and informative messages, and responding to their comments on online.
• Report Generation – compiling data, customer insight, and other relevant information and turning them into reports, ideas, and suggestions for business improvement.
• Business Communication – drafting content for public relations, marketing, advertising, social media, and web.
• KPI Generation & Tracking – creating and tracking key performance indicators (KPI) for your teams and projects to aid with making changes to existing strategies.
• Market Research – conducting online interviews, generating and interpreting surveys, and performing internet research about your target consumers.
• Data Quality Checking – ensuring that all your data are accurate and reliable.
• Reviewing Documents – reviewing documents for typos, content inaccuracies, and other issues before publication.
• Process Documentation – creating documentation for the various processes across different areas and teams within your company.
• Training Assistance – helping you, your company trainers or your managers or supervisors conduct any training for your staff.

Don’t expect a single admin VA to do all of the tasks above. Like any other office worker, administrative VAs also have individual skills, strengths, and weaknesses.

If you want to build a virtual team that works, don’t give one VA way too many duties. Don’t expect them to know everything and have all the skills needed to do all the tasks above either.

Do You Need an Administrative VA?

Any business, no matter how small, will always benefit by hiring at least one admin VA. While it’s tempting to go at it alone, an admin VA can actually help you save time and money. Instead of wasting your skills and knowledge on trivial tasks, you can hire one admin VA to help you scale your business faster.

Schedule a free, no-obligation consultation call with us today and start finding your administrative VA now.