Save time with TimeSvr virtual assistants

Thursday, December 18, 2008

I’ve always been a big advocate of outsourcing through the use of virtual assistants. In fact, I wrote about personal assistants back in March and had started using a service called GetFriday. I had some mixed experiences (like sending a birthday greeting when it wasn’t someone’s birthday) and decided the cost was no longer justified.

TimeSvr exceeds my expectations

Out of the blue, as I was thinking I needed to drop my assistant, I received an e-mail from the CEO of TimeSvr. He and I exchanged e-mails a bit. Let me pause and note: I was getting e-mail responses from the CEO faster than my assistant at GetFriday. I decided I needed to give TimeSvr a test run and I’m so glad I did.

Now this post isn’t meant to put down any other services (including the one popularized by Tim Ferriss), it’s to demonstrate how my expectations were far exceeded within my first day of use:

• Web-based task tracking: with other services, you send an e-mail to your assistant and wait for a confirmation. TimeSvr provides you with a dashboard that shows all your tasks with and responses, updates, etc.
• Timeliness of responses: the service has remained small to provide for better quality. Many of the other virtual assistant services have grown far larger than they could handle. I’ve found TimeSvr will get back to me in as little as an hour as opposed to a day.
• Excellent English skills: it was very obvious to me that the assistants excel at the language. Some of my more enjoyable e-mails had been from previous assistants in broken English. I can actually talk to my assistant on the phone now, I couldn’t easily do that before.
• Effectiveness exceeds expectations: every time I get a response from an assigned task I always think “wow, s/he’s good!”. I had to find a replacement kitchen accessory: my assistant placed calls to numerous retailers to find the part, the manufacturer, provided me with the warranty details, etc. I was floored with the level of detail I was handed.

I love assigning a task and getting a call back in an hour or two with my assistant and a customer service representative on the line. “Hello Devin, this is __\_, I have ___ on the line with me and they’d like to confirm ___\__. Okay, thank you, Devin.” Wow. I didn’t even realize you could get someone on the phone from ______.

The best part of TimeSvr is the fact they probably don’t put themselves in the same category of services that I’ve used in the past (which were touted as the best, at the time):

We really don’t compare ourselves to anyone. We just saw a market underserved and decided to fill the void. -Zaki Mahomed, CEO

TimeSvr features

This is a company that “gets it”. They understand the web worker like myself, especially. You have various mediums to submit a task, no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

• E-mail: Sending tasks to the tasks e-mail will automatically get routed and assigned immediately. You can see these tasks appear in your dashboard.
• Skype: Chat with the Skype account to submit a task. If you’re on instant messenger all day, why not?
• Phone: If you’re on the road and need to cancel an appointment just pick up the phone and let them know.

And here’s one of the best features, if you’re a trusting person: complete your profile. Simply fill out your contact details, calendar credentials, authorized credit card number, shipping address, travel preferences, etc. Once you’ve provided all your details, the possibilities for easily assigning tasks open up.

If you don’t want to provide everything up front, then simply include it in the task. I’ve had insurance payments made, online subscriptions canceled. I even “lost” a gift certificate applied to my Amazon account. Within minutes my assistant found which item the certificate was applied to. I thought it had just expired… oops.

Try it for yourself

TimeSvr is far more affordable than any comparable service I’ve found out there. At $69 per month you receive unlimited basic tasks (book a flight, cancel this appointment) and up to 8 hours of extended (or complex) task time. The team is available 24/7 including holidays which exceeds most other service I’ve looked into.

I can’t recommend these guys enough. Go ahead and sign up today. You can try them out for three days, free.

My assistant wrote this post

Just joking. But I did ask them (in the form of a task) what they thought were the three best things about the service. They were “saving precious time”, “really cost effective solutions”, and “privacy control” (with explanations for each). I was impressed and agree. Sorry to disappoint but I really haven’t found anything negative to say about this group.