Every business exists for one and only reason- to provide their services to the en masse. It is a simple matter of how well your product is received by the masses that makes or breaks a product. However, a reviews plays a pivotal role to bring in more and more clients and makes your product a go-to solution for many.

However, recently I met a friend how asked me-“How should I differentiate between a true and a fake review?” My friend was in search of a good virtual assistance company that would help his company, and I, being a veteran virtual assistant myself decided to investigate more on how reviews altered the branding of a company and its product, virtual assistance being the case here.

I quickly found that it wasn’t too arduous a process to fib a review and many were known to do it. This taught me the importance of reviews, and very swiftly I learnt that reviews were either deal clinchers or deal breakers. Any service/product that received rave reviews quickly found an exponential increase in their sales and the opposite caused a quick decline in business. A study showed me that out 9 out of 10 consumers read online reviews to determine the quality of a particular and 88% go through online reviews as well as personal recommendations.

However, what I realised was that most virtual assistance companies were rated on 4 key factors. Depending on these factors, most customers were asked to rate the company’s services.

Factor 1

Overall Rating: The overall rating of a virtual assistance service is based on the service as a whole. It takes in factors such as the promptness and efficiency of the company’s assistants, the manner in which they communicate with their clients (i.e. linguistic and verbal skilsl, how quickly they understand and begin to work on a particular task, etc ) and generally how satisfied a client is with their service.

Factor 2

Quality of Work: This is the chief and the most fundamental factor a person wanting to avail virtual assistance service must concentrate on. This is the one and only reason why you are availing the service in the first place. It is imperative that you choose a virtual assistance company that is reviewed and rated highly in this factor.

Factor 3

Communication: If not as important as the quality of work, the ‘communication’ factor garners the next highest importance. This becomes a major factor especially when you need to work with someone who lives thousands of miles away from you, and maintaining a smooth and hiccup-free communication between you and your assistant is crucial. Most companies provide numerous means of communication to stay constantly in touch and in the age of the Internet this is not too difficult a job.

Factor 4

Value: The last but not the least factor that customers usually review a company on is value. Value is typically equated by the time-cost ratio that a company takes to deliver a particular task. This again is a very important factor because no one wants to hire a company which takes ages to deliver a trivial task; as that is not how experienced professionals are meant to work.

As you begin your search for the virtual assistance company that fits your specifications, it is crucial that you read up on as many reviews as you to be a better judge of the service you’re about to pay for. Always try to look for reviews from authentic websites and you’ll never go astray!