If it’s your first time hiring a virtual employee, you might be asking what tasks can you assign and furthermore, how to delegate tasks.  Task delegation is necessary as it helps boost the productivity of your business. It also helps to make sure your staff is maximizing the use of their time and your time as well. By delegation, you are also helping to develop the skills of your staff and bring out the very best in them.

Before you start assigning tasks to your staff, make a list of all duties that you feel you need help with. You need to determine the relevance and the difficulty of the duties at hand. Is it of low-level difficulty and relevance or is it a high-level difficulty-and –relevance task? This will enable you to efficiently assign the tasks to the right staff.

We have outlined 5 crucial steps to follow in the delegation process:

1. Select which staff to assign the task to. Your best indicator will be their past performances. New staff will always be assigned the low-level duties as they have not yet proven themselves. As time goes by, you can assign higher level tasks after they’ve successfully completed the initial tasks you’ve assigned. As you go along, it will enable you to determine your staff’s capacity to work. If they are able to finish the tasks before deadline, then you may delegate more responsibilities to them. Examples of low-level tasks are data entry, online research, travel arrangements/planning, calendar management, customer service, receptionist duties and doing personal errands (purchasing gifts online etc.) Higher level tasks would include but not limited to bookkeeping, training of new virtual staff, email marketing, appointment setting, content creation, and social media management.

2. Have a talk with your staff. The tasks you will assign will be part of their KPI (Key Performance Indicators) so you have to give them detailed instructions on how you expect the job to be done. Be clear with the outcome and make it measurable.

Example: If you want your staff to write an article for you, you have to give him/her an editorial calendar where she will have access to the topics you need to be written or you can teach her how to come up with the topics. You’d also have to be clear with the number of words per article and when you need each article to be done. Then you need to clarify the frequency and turn around that you expect.

3. Get agreement from your staff. Discuss with them the details of the project and set a deadline.

4. Be open for feedback. As part of their learning process, it is very helpful to let the staff know that you are open for suggestions and questions. There are times that your staff will have a very insightful idea or different way to approach something. Allowing them to have some latitude will encourage their best work.

5. Avoid micromanaging. Give full responsibility and accountability to your staff. Virtual employees always give their close-of-business reports every day so you can always quickly check if the work has been completed or are still in progress. There is minimal need for you to check the progress of the tasks you have assigned as doing so will only add to your current workload. Micromanaging forfeits the purpose of task delegation. It also does not encourage accountability on the part of your staff. Unless it is a critical task, allow your staff to finish it by the deadline and if it is a routine task you’ve assigned, you can have bi-weekly feedback with him or her to check how things are going.

Do you find yourself swamped with tasks that you don’t know which ones to give priority to? Your business cannot reach its full potential if you are missing deadlines. Why not start delegating your tasks? Contact us and we will help you get started.

When hiring help for a customer service job, you’d have to have a clear outline of your customer service job description. This includes the main job tasks and responsibilities, educational and minimum experience requirements, key competencies and systems requirements if the person you are going to hire will be working from home.

It is important to create the job description before hiring a person to set the expectations with the applicant on how they will be evaluated not only during the interview but also during their tenure with the company.

Virtual employee tasks can vary and even for some whose role is customer service as most also perform administrative tasks as well. Thanks to improved technology and faster internet speeds, a variety of tasks can now be done without being physically located in the same office.

What are some of the services that a customer service virtual employee can help you with?

1. Inbound and outbound calls
2. Email management/ filtering
3. Chat support
4. Calendar management
5. Managing social media and blogs
6. File Management
7. Research
8. Creating basic reports
9. Answering support tickets

Keep in mind though that these job descriptions are just a small sample of services a virtual employee can do.

After you’ve identified what your business needs, it is time to post an awesome job post that will attract the top talents in the customer service field. Below is an illustration of a good job post and the main components of what makes it a best practice.

1. A catchy headline: Just by the headline itself, a prospective employee can already tell if it’s something they want to apply for or not.

2. General Responsibilities and duties: Be as detailed as you can be and don’t forget to add in the essential task.

3. Skills set: While anyone may have the determination to learn, technically, anybody who is looking for a job qualifies. But if you don’t have time to train, you need to be specific on what specific skills your staff must have upon starting. This also applies to their knowledge of some software applications.

4. Hardware or System Requirements: Does your business use a certain software application that can only run at specific internet speed? Do you require video calls every now and then? Do you need some applications to be installed hence, requires a certain system requirement to allow to do so? If your answers are all yes, then it is best to put them in the hardware and system description box. Being an experienced virtual employee is not enough to qualify for the job. As they will be working from home, they need to have the proper facilities so your business will have very minimal interruptions.

5. Other details: What other information do you feel an applicant might be interested to know?
   • You need to put the schedule as some virtual staff may not be suitable for a graveyard shift or working on weekends.
   • Will it be part-time or does it need a full-time commitment?
   • Do you need your virtual staff to be in a specific location?
   • It is also best to include some application guidelines so they can prepare the information you need before the interview. You can also do pre-selection according to their personality profile, internet speed, communication skills according to their audio files and system requirements.

Need some help with your business and don’t know where to start? We are the easy button for hiring customer service staff. We understand it can be overwhelming especially if it is your first time. We take all the guess work out and present you with 3 amazing candidates all who meet your requirements perfectly.

Click here to schedule a call and see how we can help you.