This post is by Connor Gillivan, co-founder of Outsource School.
In this post, I will discuss the importance of having the right team in place for your ecommerce company. I will introduce the concept of virtual assistants and teach how you, as an ecommerce business owner, can hire remote workers to support the operations and growth of your business.
Whether this is your first time learning about virtual assistants or if you have performed remote hiring in the past, this is a superb crash course to the best practices I have been using to run multiple ecommerce companies. If you have any questions about the details inside this guide, feel free to leave them in the comments and I will be glad to respond.
View Top Outsourcing and VA ServicesHow virtual assistants can help
Virtual assistants are individuals located around the world that work part- or full-time as remote freelancers for businesses in tasks that they specialize in. They can be data-entry experts from the Philippines or they can be email marketing experts from the United States. The skill sets that are available from virtual assistants has truly become endless.
Virtual assistants act as independent contractors leaving the employer with less responsibilities when it comes to normal HR benefits, i.e. paid vacation, health plans, etc. Virtual assistants also don’t require additional office space. You pay the rate they charge for the hours that they work. You can find them on handfuls of hiring websites.
Remote workers have become more and more popular over the past ten years as the ecommerce industry around the globe has continued to grow at a rapid pace. Hundreds, probably thousands, of new ecommerce companies are popping up every month and millions of people are becoming more familiar with the process of shopping on their computer, tablet, and mobile device.
With this growth has come more opportunity for professional virtual assistants around the world to begin offering their skills to these emerging ecommerce companies. As an ecommerce business, there are a multitude of operational tasks that must be maintained in order to create a positive shopping experience. Most don’t require an excessive level of expertise. Rather, they require disciplined employees that can follow provided systems and procedures.
This is where remote workers can help the most. Let’s look at an example:
John owns a store on Amazon.com selling a variety of toys and games. On a daily basis, John is checking and fulfilling orders, updating inventory levels, sending tracking information, handling negative customer feedback, managing seller metrics, setting up returns, and trying to add new products when he has free time.
John has become so consumed in the daily operations of his online store that he doesn’t have time to work on the growth projects that he’s outlined for the business. At times, John feels stuck in his situation. He wishes he could be focused on growing the business with his marketing expertise.
In this situation, John is weighed down by the daily operations of the business. He wishes he had more time to create new supplier relationships and focus on optimizing his listings for more sales. John can have all of that with the help of affordable, skilled, and reliable remote workers.
Where are virtual assistants most helpful in an ecommerce business?
As we saw with John’s situation, there are plenty of operations that go into running a successful ecommerce business. While the business owner should be involved in some aspects of the operations, there are ten key areas where ecommerce virtual assistants can really help.
Check out these positions and think of how filling one or more of them may impact your involvement in the business.
1. Customer service
This includes a wide variety of specific tasks within your ecommerce operations. Hire virtual assistants for live chat, phone calls, emails, returns, cancellations, refunds, and feedback management.
2. Store management
Once your ecommerce operations have reached a certain level, it is important to have someone who is always overseeing all aspects of the business.
A remote store manager is someone that has once performed all of the standard operations of an online store and now manages the team you have in place to make sure everything is working perfectly.
3. Managing inventory virtually
If you are running a dropship business, having a virtual assistant to update inventory levels communicated by your suppliers is crucial. You want to make sure that you are always selling products that are in stock, but it takes significant time to process the spreadsheets the supplier provides you and then upload them into each sales channel.
The same goes for if you are running a wholesale business. As you receive new inventory, it needs to be added into your software and properly communicated out to your sales channels.
4. Processing orders
Every ecommerce business needs someone to process orders so they are shipped to the correct customer. With all of the different sales channels and ecommerce platforms, there is also always a unique way that they need to be managed.
Having someone on hand who can become an expert in your order fulfillment processes is key to happy customers.
