When thinking about outsourcing their administration, many people think the best option is to go for cheap offshore assistance in a belief that there’s no real difference. The truth is, that it’s not the same, and while it will cost you a little more to hire a local Virtual Assistant. It’s going to be much less expensive in the long run. Here are five of the best reasons to pick someone local:
- If they’re really local, you can get together when necessary. Or even just meet up so you know who you’re working with. The majority of my clients are from the suburbs immediately surrounding me. The few that aren’t are either referrals from mutual friends, or people who spent quite a lot of time and effort during the interviewing phase. That said, I only have 2 clients that I’ve never met in person. Personal meetings make it much easier to develop a relationship and it seems to give clients a greater sense of security. It’s also really convenient if you can meet up to go over something, or drop paperwork in to someone’s office. It’s by no means impossible to get around those issues, but being local makes them irrelevant.
- They’re working under the same legal conditions as you are. A local Virtual Assistant not only has a local office that makes it much easier to serve papers to if necessary, but they’re working under the same laws regarding information security and privacy, tax, workplace health & safety, contractor vs employee and any other relevant state and federal legislation.
- They understand local geography. Not just that these suburbs are close together and quick to travel between, but also which roads start peak hour at 1pm on Fridays, which roads are a nightmare at school drop-off and pick up and which roads you need to avoid if there’s an event on nearby. While traffic issues will be easily picked up by your GPS while you’re travelling, you still need to have your meetings set far enough apart that you can make them on time. So, your options are to reduce the number of meetings you have so you have plenty of down time between them in case of traffic problems, or you can get someone who knows the local area to set your appointments so that you have realistic travel times. Also, someone within the local area is more likely to see or hear traffic updates during the day and be able to text you to let you know of incidents on a route you need to take shortly.
- They have a better understanding of the local culture. Every region has its own cultural norms and while Australia is pretty laid back, there are a lot of things that can cause confusion. A local Virtual Assistant is more likely to be able to understand nuances of conversations and be able to strike the right note when talking to people. They’re also more likely to know when there are public holidays and the customs around those holidays.
- They’re in the same time zone as you. Disclosure: a couple of my clients are in NSW and yes, that does mean I need to take a little extra care when I’m doing tasks involving time – but we’re only an hour apart during daylight savings time so it’s still easy when we need to talk to each other. There’s no worry about accidentally contacting each other at ungodly o’clock, or of not being able to get in contact when we want. That said, I still have the occasional problem with software wanting to change the time zone on appointments I set, such as webinars or meetings, to my Queensland time zone rather than to my clients NSW time zone.
If you’ve got your heart set on hiring an offshore Virtual Assistant, by all means give it a go. Just don’t think that you’ll need to put the same amount of time and effort in to managing a local Virtual Assistant.
