Communication is key to effective outsourcing to the Philippines. Talking to your VA every day makes everything crystal clear, up to date, and in sync with what you want accomplished for the day. It is very important that you concretely establish communication at the earliest stages of your Client-VA relationship by setting up a project management system and/or communication system. You can do so by having skype conference calls, instant messages, mobile calls, webinars and emails (highly recommended).
The common cause of delays and mistakes of outsourcing to the Philippines is that no good daily communication is established. Weeks would go by and you assume that everything is okay. You totally have no idea of what’s going on: Is everything okay? Is everything done? What are the things to improve on? What are the things not to do moving forward?
There are three basic question your VA should answer daily. Make it your Standard Operation Procedure that your VA answer these questions at the end of the day.
- What did you do today?
- What problems did you ran into?
- What can I help you with?
This communication system achieves two things:
- It holds them accountable, so that they have to tell you what they did today and you also have a good idea on what they are working on.
- It allows you not to think about the tiniest details of what they are doing, which is very important if you want to focus more on your business.
Let them start answering these questions today. Let them be simple and concise. Let your VA know and understand that communication is key to outsourcing to the Philippines.