Hello? Virtual Assistants

Filed in archive Believe It or Not on September 15, 2007

Almost everything could now be outsourced today and outsourcing personal and menial tasks is now a possibility.

This article entitled Offshoring: At your beck and call shows the delightful tale of hiring virtual assistants to help you in whatever you need as long as an Internet connection would be the main pathway between you and your problem. Here is an excerpt from this article:

Right away, an assistant would be made available to me six days a week, 24 hours a day. But I must feel free to call the manager in person any time on his mobile, he insisted, because (poor mug) he works British hours despite the time difference in Bangalore. At this point he handed me over to my dedicated VA and Shashi entered my life.

Not since I was a baby in nappies have I felt so completely cared for by anyone. Within two hours, she had resolved the tangle of our family car insurance, with its assorted speeding endorsements, vehicles and drivers, saving me several hundred pounds a year on premiums.

She also gently hounded the reclusive local farmer who was supposed to deliver the manure, phoning him relentlessly over several days to leave imploring messages, and whenever she went off duty she handed over to her colleagues on the late shift who continued to chase him into the night.

I really don't know what my reaction should be when I read this article considering that I also happen to know the outsourcing employee's side of the story. I guess that any job which would help these people is a very welcoming to them and I am glad that clients appreciate the effort that these employees devote to their job.