What is a virtual assistant? When did it start? What they do and how they help a business to grow within their expertise.
Due to the pandemic, work became challenging for employers, employees, businesses, and of course, in our lives. Under community quarantine, employers can't risk their employees' experience in commuting and getting infected on their way to work. They offered their employees to bring their work at home and work from home.
But even after the pandemic hits, a virtual assistant is already running and operating in the scene for years. What virtual assistant is? How did it start? What they do and how they help the business to boom and prosper while doing their task virtually.
What Is a Virtual Assistant?
Virtual assistants are independent contractors and individuals who work remotely to provide technical, administrative support, and other various services. They specialize in assisting business owners and companies virtually without needing physical appearance working in an office but can still do and finish tasks.
Virtual assistant duties and virtual support are not only limited to administrative work. However, some virtual assistant specializes in a specific set of skills and can only perform tasks related to their expertise; a virtual assistant may provide other services such as, web design, marketing, content creation, bookkeeping and other services that fall under what a business is looking for.
The Beginning of Virtual Assistant Services
The Beginning
In the early 1800s, Sir Isaac Pitman and his invention— the shorthand method established the first school to teach secretarial services where only men were given a chance to study and practice its teachings. Women worked back then revolving around doing house chores.
Women finally gain access to secretarial services because of the technology's opportunity to create the typewriter. In the late 1880s, the number of women who went to fill secretarial jobs blows up, and women dominated the industry as the year passed.
In 1942, an organization sought to professionalize the secretarial services field in the United States
The National Secretaries Association (NSA), later on, develops the Certified Professional Secretaries (CPS) examination to test that an individual is fit to be a professional secretary.
The sexist stereotyping associated with the name of NSA led the proposition to renamed it Professional Secretaries International three decades after to avoid further conflicts. After six years, it was changed to the International Association of Administrative Professionals.
Going Virtual
The term virtual assistant was invented in between the exchange of conversation of a life coach Thomas Leonard and the women. They started working home-based and virtually in 1996, Anastacia Brice. The term is being used to name a developing vocation. A year later, the formalization of the new profession takes place in front of Brice's eyes.
The first virtual assistants' organization Brice introduced and created in February 1997 was named AssistU that is still operating to these dates. Later on, an international virtual assistant's organization was created because the number of people connected to business widens. This is to reach and offer services all over the world.
It can't be denied that virtual is indeed getting more in demand. The profession has grown beautifully under its mother profession. Now it has surpassed it by marking, producing, and earn its identity as a career.
What virtual assistant do?
A virtual assistant can offer lots of services from doing simple administrative tasks to more complicated business operational tasks under their knowledge, niche, capabilities, and expertise to finish a task or job assigned for them to do. These individuals can offer lots of assistance, but we narrow it down to 5 everyday virtual tasks.
Administrative tasks – a virtual assistant can do what an ordinary secretary do, such as typing or encoding data, answering emails and phone calls, organizing and ready your calendar, managing finances, and more administrative tasks without a personal appearance in the office.
Social Media Management - the virtual assistant helps businesses handle their social media pages such as Facebook, Instagram, website, and more. They also make content creation to manage these accounts. It is the best marketing strategy to gain customers' interest and the top digital ladder.
Customer service – aside from administrative works, they can also offer customer service. They answer a client's inquiries through calls and emails; aside from handling questions, they also can handle customer's complaints and troubleshoot it for them.
Web research – in web research, it is an internet-based research virtual assistant would conduct. It is a time-consuming task that needs efficient and competent researching skills. This helps guide a business in giving the pain points of what a business strength could be, its competitors, the best location to open the company, and more.
Personal Task- a virtual assistant, is also reliable on your personal life apart from business, it is like having a personal assistant who manages your to-do-list, help you pay bills, purchase an item, the book you travel, book and search for an excellent place to eat with your family and more.
How a Virtual Assistant help a business grow?
A virtual assistant's written task can do above is the gateway or the takeaway of a business that's lacking or having a hard time handling industry. The skills of a virtual assistant are perfect. In line with what a company needs to improve in their business, their job would become more comfortable with this proficient individual who has the heart to help others.
With the wide variety of virtual assistant skills and the task they can finish, present, and fulfill, there's no doubt that virtual assistant can produce effective and efficient results even though it is not working inside an office but working inside the comfort of their homes.
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