You’re used to being in the same office as those you work with / for. Yeah, you possibly adapted to virtual working while we were locked indoors during the pandemic, but you were likely totally guided by your employers on how to send and receive work.
As a Virtual Assistant it’s rare there will be anyone to guide you. Many clients look to us to take control of the tasks they’re handing over, including how to send and receive work, passwords, documents, etc virtually.
If you need any help in this area; here are a few ways we send and receive work as VAs and why you might choose certain methods.
Firstly, here are a few things you may be sending and receiving as a Virtual Assistant:
- Passwords
- Credit card information
- Google docs / Microsoft docs
- Confidential data
- Two factor authentication codes (I like to replace ‘factor’ with ‘fucker’)
- Work instructions
- Requests for tasks to be completed
- Completed work
The list can go on.
Emails
Emails are probably the first way that came to your mind and yes, this is a fabulous way to send and receive anything, but please – for the love of God – don’t use something like Hotmail as it gets such a bad reputation for being hacked.
Emails (rather than calls) ensure that you have a record of things to refer back to with your client and a timeline of when instructions were given. Priceless if you’re anything like me and – don’t tell anyone – like to print stuff out! (it’s okay, I planted two trees in my garden!)
Emails are useful for giving ad-hoc work instructions, as when working ad-hoc rather than providing a package it would be difficult to foresee any work which may occur to be able to put it on a booking sheet.
I really don’t recommend using emails to send and receive login details, passwords or full credit card details. Although, saying that anything can be hacked, right? Just try and ensure you’re on a safe password protected wifi thingy when sending anything back and forth.
For the clients own insurance purposes they shouldn’t give card details out to anyone. If a sudden transaction for a five star night at Chewton Glen pops up on their statement and it wasn’t them, they might think it’s you!
It’s best if your client uses a password manager to store both and share them with you without you being able to see/store the details. I use and recommend LastPass. Yeah, they’ve had data breaches, but the thing there is 1. we know about them and 2. they addressed them. Who says that other less known password sharing software haven’t just kept quiet about their data breaches?
Emails are fine for attaching images, meeting requests from your calendar, etc. But if it’s a work in progress document or spreadsheet it’s better to share these other ways – as I’ll list below.
Ensure your own email account has a unique secure password and not ‘Password123!’. LastPass have a password generator that comes up with the most obscure sequences and that’s what I use.
I’m always aware nothing is impenetrable – anything can be hacked but if you’ve taken care to do the above then you should be fine, or at the very least be covered, if some master hacker has managed to infiltrate your system. You’ll have proof for the ICO that you took measures to try and ensure data was safe.
Be careful if you like to take your work out of the home. The easiest way for someone to see the confidential data in your email is to literally see it, so if you are in public make sure Pete the scaffolder, sat behind you, isn’t looking over your shoulder. Also, find out about open wifi, I don’t know enough, but it’s hackable I believe.
Some VAs like to use a VPN (virtual private network) when out and about so take a look at that if you’re going to be working in public places a lot.
Calls
If you have read/seen anything from me you will probably know I don’t like to do calls with clients and this is one of the many reasons why…
It’s way too easy to forget what’s said in a call, and you have no comeback if what the client asked for and what they actually want are two different things.
“Can you format this document, proofread and add another 150 words at the end for me. Oh and add my branding’. You send the it back, with your time report and invoice and suddenly they think they just asked you to change the text to Arial 12. And before you know it, you’re stressing that they won’t pay you and no one will ever work with you again!
Trust me, things like that happen.
Therefore, having it written down somewhere – email or project management system, text, DM – is invaluable. If you do ever take instructions via a call, follow up with an email to confirm everything.
Calls are useful for getting in touch quickly if you know your client isn’t checking their inbox or is away from their office.
If you and your client are organised there shouldn’t really be much need for urgent contact but they might ask you to do this if they are expecting an urgent email that they need to deal with immediately. You know, the new client who needs a bit of extra special nurturing to feel comfortable with his brand new VA.
Calls can also be useful for sharing a part of credit card information. Some people are so fearful of their card details being hacked they don’t even trust a password manager with the full information. If this is the case they could share part of it with you in the password manager and then give you the CVC on a call.
Project Management System
Our clients are busy and don’t often have time to learn something new or want to log in to yet another program but if they are using a PM system already, something like Asana or Trello, then this is a great way to share and keep all sorts of information.
What I like about PM systems is that you can often add task timelines, for example: X needs doing by DD/MM, Y needs doing by DD/MM and you can mark off when they’re done. This means the client can logon and check on progress without any need for calls or Zooms.
If a client wants you to access their PM system and it has 2FA on it then ask them for your own login, they should be able to set you up as an admin.
I had a client once who wouldn’t pay extra to set me up as an admin so instead, removed the 2FA. That was their choice. It’s an option, but not really one we should suggest as it obviously decreases security. While I fully appreciate the necessity for the extra security 2FA provides it is an utter pain in the ****, isn’t it. I particularly hate it when I login from my phone and it says ‘Nope, don’t think we know you. We’ll send a code to your phone – the one we don’t recognise’. Seriously, make it make sense.
WhatsApp does have end-to-end encryption (I don’t know what that actually means but sounds secure) and so is apparently secure to use for sending confidential data and a lot of people like using it for business.
As well as its main use, for chat, you can attach photos, GIFs, files, pretty much anything you need to discuss really but the reason I don’t use it is I know I would read the message and then, if in the middle of something, probably forget it instantly. You may not have a mind like a sieve and like using it for work, and if your client does then there’s no real reason not to. If you’re happy with WhatsApp you might want to ensure the client is aware of your day / time boundaries around calls and texts.
I used to ask clients to send a photo of their credit card number via WhatsApp then an email with the CVC, but these days they put all the damn numbers on one side of the card or, worse still, no numbers on there at all. Talk about making our lives more difficult.
Booking Form
Once you’ve had your discovery call, asked the right questions (I have a YouTube video which goes through what to ask on a discovery call – click here to watch), discussed what your client needs and agreed what you’ll provide, you should outline this and all the information you’ll need on your booking form. Often that’s all you need to get started, but sometimes you do need additional information, like documents, branding details. Any further work or changes to work shouldn’t require a new booking form signing. Any inconsequential further information can just be shared on email.
If you’ve not got a booking form – they’re brilliant! They come with your Terms of Business from KoffeeKlatch.
DMs
I allow one, only one, client to send me pictures of his invoices through FB messenger so I can reconcile his bookkeeping. There’s no sensitive data there and he’s a long time friend so ‘special’. It would be good practice to not do this with your clients. Remember you don’t own your FB profile and they can take access off you at any time. It’s generally seen as a casual way to chat and is not usually used for business purposes. At least other than ‘special friend’ I know no-one who uses it in that way.
Google Drive / Microsoft Office
If you’re working on documents / spreadsheets of any kind with a client it’s best not to share them via email, instead share them via Google Drive / Microsoft Office.
This ensures everyone is always working on the same document.
You know how it is if you share documents via email ‘xxxfinal.doc. xxxfinalfinal.doc, xxxfinalfinalfinal.doc’ and before you know it everyone’s been updating a different bloody version.
Canva
If you’re creating graphics for clients, share ‘view only’ access with them via Canva. This again, means they always see the most up to date version and avoids an email going into spam their end because it’s got an image attached.