Getting a Virtual Assistant to help with your email can be a huge help and there are several different ways they can help depending on the result you’re after. So before you even think about it, think about what you want to achieve and how you’ll feel most comfortable doing it.
If your desired end result is:
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- Your Virtual Assistant will need to work from your email account, either in the cloud, or using a computer sharing application such as LogMeIn or Teamviewer.
- Get a Virtual Assistant to organise rules and unsubscribe from emails you don’t want to receive.
- Your Virtual Assistant can divert emails that you don’t need to respond to.
- Your Virtual Assistant can create autotext responses for frequently used phrases.
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- You’re best off setting up a separate email account, or even several accounts (i.e. Accounts@yourdomain, Help@yourdomain, Admin@yourdomain, or Sales@yourdomain)
- If turnaround time is a big issue, consider having several Virtual Assistants in different time zones, get your primary Virtual Assistant to organise & coordinate
- Get your Virtual Assistant to keep track of questions and comments for use in a FAQ, product development or testimonials.
The practicalities you’ll need to consider are:
- What platform do you use for emails?
- What level of privacy do you require on your inbox?
- How important is it for you to keep up with the conversation?
Platform:
Gmail is particularly easy to share as you can give your Virtual Assistant access to your account form theirs. So they can view your email account easily, without having to have your password.
Any of the desktop email clients are more difficult to share as you would have to grant remote access to your actual computer. Alternatively you could have the Virtual Assistant access the emails from your server, just make sure you all use IMAP to connect to your server. Another option is having your client use Microsoft Exchange, then you can be given access to their emails, calendar and address book.
Privacy:
While you should be able to trust any Virtual Assistant that you hire, you may have a variety of reasons you don’t want them to be able to access your personal email account. There may be things you’d rather not have anyone else see, or you may have signed a confidentiality agreement that prevents or restricts sharing your email account. In this case, using a separate email address for your Virtual Assistant is the best idea.
Keeping up with conversations:
The easiest way to do this, is just by BCCing everyone who needs to be in the loop. That way the full conversation is available at any time. Just note that this only works if everyone can access the sending email account – otherwise replies may be missed.
It may sound like a lot of work to get a virtual assistant to help with email. This is definitely an area where putting in the time initially is worth it in the long run.
