If you run a small business or a dropshipping business, you know how hard it can be to keep track of all your orders after a certain point. When you’re just starting out, it’s fun to find your own products, pack, ship, and keep track of orders. But as your customer base grows, this task gets harder and harder, and before you know it, you’ve lost more hours of your personal time that you could have used to improve your business, do research, and more.
A lot of people have probably told you that this is how entrepreneurship works and that you have to work around the clock to make your business work. But that’s not quite right. You do need to pay more attention to your business, but you can still hire someone else to do the boring stuff. Because of this, you might need to hire a virtual assistant to take care of your orders.
A virtual assistant will be your right hand and help you sort orders and send them out on time.
How Does a Virtual Assistant Work?
A virtual assistant is a person who works for you and takes care of your orders. The word “virtual” is in the name because they work from afar and help clients from anywhere in the world. You get your work done.
Almost every entrepreneur or person who runs a dropshipping business hires a virtual assistant to help with things like marketing, order management, fulfillment, sales, etc.
You might think this job sounds a lot like that of a freelancer. Even though that is true, it doesn’t make sense. A freelancer might be good at a certain part of your business and be able to help you with it. A virtual assistant is a worker who can do a lot of different things. They might do some marketing, some sales, and regular tasks.
Businesses find virtual assistants so helpful because they are less expensive than full-time employees.
Think of a virtual assistant as a professional who does things for you like delegate, manage, and deal with emergencies.
You can give a virtual assistant tasks to do.
From what we’ve said about the job, you may already know that a virtual assistant does a lot of administrative work. This job, on the other hand, is not limited in that way. You can find a virtual assistant to help you keep track of your orders, sort them by importance, and keep an eye on their completion.
Here are a few things a VA can do:
- Order management: A virtual assistant (VA) could help manage orders as customers place them, sort the number of units left, update the system, keep track of logistics, and stay in touch with the customer until delivery.
- Customer service is when you talk to a customer on the phone or through chat and solve their problems.
- Social media management: This lets the VA take care of your social media tasks, like online reputation management (ORM).
- Data entry is a job that involves putting important information into a spreadsheet or system so that it can be done automatically in the future.
- A virtual assistant can also help your dropshipping or small business in a number of other ways. For example, calling customers out of the blue to help them make a purchase, getting feedback from customers after a purchase is made, finding out where a package is stuck in the logistics system, and sorting out the details of customer payments.
How to Choose a Good Virtual Assistant
Follow the steps given below to find a virtual assistant. You can change the order a little bit depending on your needs, but the process stays the same.
Find out how to hire a virtual assistant.
Documentation
When you’re working with a virtual assistant, you can’t just give them a call and expect them to get everything right. Creating documentation ahead of time is the only way to make sure there are fewer problems and mistakes for you to fix. This is because if you hire a virtual assistant once, you’ll probably hire another one in a few years or months. So, the best way to move forward is to write down some guidelines and ground rules.
How do you put this document together?
Figure out what you want your virtual assistant to know when they start working for you.
One example is a virtual assistant that helps you keep track of orders. Here’s the list of things you want them to know:
- Getting every order right, giving it the OK, and sending it on.
- approving return requests based on the customer’s videos and information.
- Keeping track of the package and knowing when it was delivered.
- Getting in touch with the logistics company when an order gets lost.
- letting the customer know that the order has been delivered.
- Getting answers to customer questions about an order.
- Keep in mind that you’re trying to cut down on your work here, so make sure to include every detail. This will give you the freedom you want after hiring this person.
What the job entails
Once you have all the paperwork, write up a job description that you can post on social media sites and job sites.
This explanation should make it clear:
- What kind of jobs the employee is expected to do.
- Tools and apps that they should know how to use.
- How important it is to have basic language and communication skills.
- Certain jobs that they might need to do.
- Required degree, if that’s a part of how you hire people.
- Hiring
Once you have the job description, you should post it online on social media and job sites. Follow these steps as applications come in:
- Check the candidate’s qualifications and see if they meet the job’s needs.
- Reach out to them and ask them if they want to keep doing this job.
- Do a formal interview so you can find out how much they know about the subject.
- Complete the hiring process, which includes paperwork, an agreement, feedback, etc.
Secure Data
After you find a virtual assistant, you need to make sure your information is safe. Know that this person might be able to get into important business files. So, go to your Shopify account, your PayPal dashboard, and the dashboard of your dropshipping tool to give them limited access. This lets you keep private information about the company safe.
But if you hire a VA to take care of orders, that might not be possible. In this case, you need to make a deal with the VA not to tell anyone. This document should list the information that the VA is not allowed to give to anyone else. It will keep fraud and data leaks from happening.
Make sure people are held responsible.
Make sure your VA is responsible for the work you give them from the first day. So, have a way to keep track of their work hours or evaluate their work. You can use tools to keep track of how much time your VA spends working, but this isn’t always possible. If that’s the case, you can ask your VA to give you a full report of his work every month. This can be a list or worksheet with details about the tasks that have been finished.
Conclusion
As the owner of a small business, you already have a lot to do. You don’t want to waste your time taking care of orders, posting on social media, and doing other things that are easy to outsource. Find a virtual assistant, tell them about your business, and give yourself some time off.