Office services are a dime a dozen these days. Instead of staffing a leased office space with your own staff, many virtual workers, as well as single-office users chose to outsource their administrative tasks to virtual assistants and contract workers who specialize in secretarial skills. These types of tasks can be anything from typing, word processing, formatting documents, creating and maintaining spreadsheets, to the more complicated duties like running a software, updating a Web site, using a calling software to handle and redirect incoming calls, creative writing, financial statements, book-keeping and more.

While the tasks mentioned above may seem menial, they are necessary to any professional business, and a professional business needs a professional office service to keep the show running smoothly. The trouble is that doing a search for “virtual assistant” or “office services” will return results galore, and mainly filled with the likes of inexperienced wannabe work-from-home job seekers. While some work-from-home assistants are legitimate businesses, the last thing a company wants to take risk with is having a wailing child in the background of company calls or an unreliable employee with lack of work-life balance and responsibility.

Here are some tips to choosing a professional office service that will guide you in the right direction and give you the right sense of quality when hiring on the extra help:

Business name: usually a company or quality service that offers virtual assistant-type work will operate under a real business name. Having a business name ensures you are dealing with someone that can be tracked down (in case they disappear with all your business information) and also that can be checked up on using reviewing tools such as on the Better Business Bureau site and others.

Belonging to an association: If the company belongs to associations that is a clear sign of reliability, since usually associations will disband members who don’t fulfill their legal or moral duties.

Business address: while some virtual assistants work from home, and that may not be a bad thing, when you opt for a company with a business address you know they are working out of a corporate environment, or at least have cared enough about their image to subscribe to a mailing address service.

Referrals: An experienced and well-liked administrative worker will have good referrals from other people he or she has worked for. Be sure to ask for references if not offered up front (such as on a testimonials page of a website).

Resume: when hiring a one-off virtual assistant, check the resume and make sure the candidate is experienced and educated in the field of secretarial work. Look for qualifications in Microsoft Office and related experience in customer service-driven environments (important if they are going to be taking your customer calls). If going with a company that offers office service work, check for case studies, length of time in business, experience of the manager or owner running the company, and other businesses using the service, if you can. You might not be able to get confidential data of the employees who work for an office service company.

Added value: Does the office service company or individual offer related services that can be of value to you in the future? This could be a time and head-ache saver when for instance, you might be looking for a mail handling service at an office building, or a call answering service with 1-800 number capabilities. Often business centers with packaged executive suites offer business support services as well, so they might be a good option if you are looking to expand your company down the road. That way you’ll be able to keep these related services all in one place, work for a company you are already comfortable with and deal with only one invoice at the end of the month, instead of several smaller bills.

Keep the above points in mind and you’re set to get a quality office service. You’ll also save yourself the hassle of switching providers numerous times because the previous one didn’t meet your expectations.

Author Bio: Queenie Ormidale works with Central Park Business Centre, which has been offering Vancouver office space, administrative services and virtual offices to businesses since 1986. You can republish this article without this last sentence so long as you credit the author with a link to their website at www.executivesuite.ca

Category: Business Management
Keywords: office, professional, service, virtual, assistant, secretarial, administrative, business, company