Recently I was invited to take a survey that intended to find out more information about virtual assistants – a survey about virtual assistants created by a virtual assistant to be taken by other virtual assistants.   Great idea in theory, right?

Needless to say, I was excited to take the survey.  I think the more statistics we can pull together, the greater we can grow our industry.  I answered the first series of questions, and one of the questions was very interesting and got me thinking.  The question was something along the lines of, “Virtual Assistance is the profession of ADMINISTRATIVE experts who work in ongoing, collaborative relationship with clients providing administrative support across the board.”*  Of course, I marked the answer “disagree,” because I offer more to my clients than just administrative support.  Unfortunately, I was booted out of the survey and was not able to finish the rest of the survey.  I hope that I was not just booted out because of my differing opinion as that would make the study (and any statistical analysis of the results) completely invalid.

This question started me thinking...

What is the definition of a virtual assistant? 

The International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA.org) defines a Virtual Assistant (VA) as:

"A Virtual Assistant (VA) is an independent entrepreneur providing administrative, creative and/or technical services. Utilizing advanced technological modes of communication and data delivery, a professional VA assists clients in his/her area of expertise from his/her own office on a contractual basis."

Please note that they specifically mention administrative, creative and/or technical services, not just ADMINISTRATIVE.  They also specify that the VA assists clients in his/her area of expertise.  This does not mean specifically administrative.  While most Virtual Assistants do offer administrative tasks to their clients, most do not specialize in general administrative tasks.

But we should not be limited by the definition of an administrative assistant.  We shouldn’t be tied into defining ourselves right now – or at the very least not “setting in stone” any definitions we use for now.  As technology advances, and more small business owners and consultants partner with VAs for their needs, we will keep redefining our new industry.

“Traditional thinking is all about ‘what is.’
Future thinking will also need to be about what can be.”
~ Edward de Bono

Who would fall into this career category? 

While it’s true that there are no “regulating committees” or “licensing boards” for the VA industry, and almost anyone can hang out their shingle as a VA, the ethical, professional Virtual Assistants who are practicing today offer a lot of common services to their clients, such as:

Some of these tasks do fall under what would be considered “general administrative” or “secretarial,” but these additional services offered are changing and the boundaries for Virtual Assistants (VAs) aren’t yet defined.

Who should decide the definition of a virtual assistant?

It’s my strong belief that Virtual Assistants should be the only ones deciding what the definition of a Virtual Assistant should be.  I also believe that this term will have a changing definition.  With an industry that is only, at best, a few decades old, and with the power of the virtual workforce being barely tapped at this point, the term Virtual Assistant will not be clearly defined (and agreed upon) for many, many years.

“They say a year in the Internet business is like a dog year… equivalent to seven years in a regular person’s life.  In other words, it’s evolving fast and faster.”
~ Vinton Cerf

Most importantly what do clients want from their virtual assistants, just general administrative services or more?

More and more, we’re running into clients who want more than just general administrative support from their clients.  As we’re going through our coaching classes, we do stress to our students that it’s important for them to be going above and beyond with their clients…  For example, instead of just doing some internet research and organizing the data the way the client requested in a spreadsheet, go beyond that to offer some further suggestions – useful data that could have also been collected, offer suggestions for how they could better organize/sort the data, up-sell to other services (for example, a web-based data sheet for their virtual team to work off of), etc.

Each time I learn about something new in this ever-changing virtual marketplace, I expand my services offering.  More times than not, my clients are interested in what they can do to take advantage of the new services and/or how it would benefit them.  When blogging became popular, my clients wanted to know if my team could help with setting up, writing and promoting their blogs.  When social marketing started becoming really popular for SOHO business owners, they wanted to know if we offered social marketing plans and how we could help them get noticed.

If we truly are creating a virtual world, with endless possibilities, why should the term virtual assistant be limited to what an administrative assistant can do in the office?

I would like to hear others’ thoughts and opinions on this question, so I have started a discussion on our blog, http://www.fromawomansheart.com/ and I will be featuring some of these posts in my next newsletter. 

*This question is a direct quote from the undisclosed survey for example purposes only.