Property ManagementTry Hiring a Virtual Assistant
Once upon a time, before voice mail, cell phones, beepers and email, a
personal assistant took your calls and forwarded or screened them, depending
upon your discretion. But now, you are too busy, on the road, or out of pocket
to be able to take advantage of all the communication tools you have.
Now, three Internet marketers are proposing to offer you the same services
as a personal assistant can provide, but with some interesting twists. Using speech recognition software to communicate with you and your clients, family and friends, the new virtual assistant is on call twenty-four-seven, reducing
the need for you to carry so much hardware around. The virtual assistant is
totally interactive, responsive to your requests, and comes with a distinctive
personality, like Webley, the English-accented butler, or Wildfire, the sexy
personal assistant.
The three services, Wildfire, Portico, and Webley, offer a variety of services using
telephones and voice recognition technology. Portico and Webley are offered
nationally, while Wildfire is up and coming in certain markets. Their primary
attraction is the ability to centralize information from an assortment of
communication tools that will help you in your daily business - from gathering
stock quotes to answering your email for you. The services are voice activated,
so you can interrupt your assistant, make changes in your schedule or in what
you want to hear, and the assistant will immediatly change gears to your new
request.
Product demonstrations are available on each Web site, providing you have
RealPlayer (Portico) or Emblaze (Webley) audio software on your computer, or
the time to download a free demonstration from Wildfire.
According to Alan Goldstein, author of "You Rang?" featured in the
Dallas Morning News, virtual assistants can "handle everything but the
coffee."
Goldstein reports that Webley can "juggle incoming faxes, electronic mail
and voice messages in a single service." Conference calling is possible with up
to 32 people on the same call. Offered at $9.95 per month, minutes are billed
at about 15 cents each.
On Portico"s Web site, you are told you can now access your email, voice
mail, address book, calendar, news, and stock quotes over the phone or the web
and reply to messages immediately. Less expensive than Webley, Portico charges
$19.95 per month for 60 bundled minutes with extra minutes billed at 20 cents
each.
Each system works by assigning the subscriber a local or toll-free numer whi
ch will take the calles from other numbers, including fax, pager, mobile phone,
work and home numbers. The service will even forward your email messages, using
text-to-speech technology. The user can program in a number where s/he can take
calls or allow the virtual assistant to take a message.
Some additional technology may be needed to make the virtual assistant work
at an optimum level. For example, Portico offers voice mail retrieval via
computer if the subscriber has RealPlayer software loaded.
One of the advantages is that you can program the virtual assistant with a
calendar. If you aren"t available to take calls, the assistant doesn"t hesitate
to take a message. Otherwise, s/he will find out if you are available and
forward the call, or take a number.
Since real estate agents spends so much time away from the desk, doing much
of his/her business on the road, what could be easier? Now you can make changes
to your calendar, answer calls, retrieve and send messages without having to
pull your car over or take your eyes off the road or "off the ball."