By Tina Hilton of Clerical Advantage 

The response to my post from last week was so strong that I felt the need to post a follow-up this week.  I loved the fact that so many people felt strongly enough about the subject of a virtual assistance industry standard definition that they commented on it.  And if anyone had doubted my assessment that the virtual assistance industry was divided into factions, I think reading through the comments would prove my point.  It also shows how difficult, if not impossible it may be to ever get virtual assistants to agree on just what a VA is and/or does.

So after reading and pondering all of the comments regarding the issue, one comment kept me thinking longer.   It wasn’t left by a virtual assistant, but by a businessman who uses a virtual assistant.  He didn’t see a need for a unified definition at all. His point that the ‘cream’ of the virtual assistance industry would rise to the top struck a chord with me.  I totally agreed. 

Its like any service provider I’ve ever dealt with in my personal and professional life. If I hired a copier repair person for the office copier and the black line re-appeared down the center of the page two days later, will I be using him for copier repair in the future?  Highly unlikely.  But…and there is always a but, isn’t there?…  if one of the office copiers breaks down you have to find a repair person.  If you hire a inept virtual assistant, perhaps someone who is just looking for that easy work from home meal ticket, and you have a truly bad experience how will you react?

Will you, the first time user of virtual assistance, see it as being one bad apple in what is actually an excellent bushel?  Or will you see it as this ‘new-fangled’ idea being a bust.  My opinion is that many new clients would just write off virtual assistance completely.  They may never connect the fact that they went with the lowest price or the VA who offered two hundred and fifty different services as being a contributing factor. And this would be the driving force behind why I felt that an industry standard would be helpful. 

But perhaps I’m wrong.  I like to think of myself as an open-minded businesswoman and as such, I’d love to hear from both virtual assistance clients and those who are thinking about hiring a VA.  What do you think?  Would it help you to know that someone calling themselves a virtual assistant fit into a certain definition?  Are you confused by the fact that right now just about anyone can slap the title ‘virtual assistant’ at the end of their name?  Here’s your chance to either change my mind or let VA’s everywhere know that we need to put down our differences and get some consistency.