By Alfredo Atanacio, Co-Founder UassistME.CO / Inc. 30 Under 30 2012 / AGLN Fellow.
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The most wonderful time of the year is here and is undoubtedly a promising time for many businesses. While business owners are looking forward to generating more sales and added income, it’s no secret that the holiday rush can still be stressful and overwhelming.
Due to the rise in demand associated with this time of year, you might be considering outsourcing some tasks you or your team typically tackle. Doing so ensures you and your employees can focus on more complicated, high-level matters.
But which tasks should you consider outsourcing? Based on my experience as the co-founder of a virtual assistant platform, here are five business tasks primed for outsourcing during the holiday season.
1. Customer Service
Outsourcing your customer service during the holidays is a smart strategy to ensure a timely response to customer concerns and complaints. After all, a solid customer experience, despite the overpouring number of transactions, is a fantastic way to promote brand trust and loyalty.
Outsourcing a customer service representative to deal with customer issues like refunds, order problems, returns and exchanges can also afford you the time to focus more on other essential aspects of your business.
2. Social Media Management
Hiring a remote social media manager to take care of your accounts can be an incredible asset, especially during the holiday season. Someone who oversees your online campaigns and implements digital strategies to promote your brand when people are on the Christmas hype can scale your business and boost your income.
Though some of the tasks are simple and uncomplicated, having someone do these for you on critical days can be a significant relief. After all, many of the customer questions and inquiries will be the same, so delegating this repetitive task can increase your business' effectiveness and efficiency by allowing others on your team to focus on other tasks.
3. Inventory Management
The holiday season can be the busiest time of the year for your business, and ensuring that you have enough stocks to accommodate the overwhelming orders is a must. However, maintaining and updating your inventory requires time, care and attention.
That’s why outsourcing the task of maintaining your inventory is an excellent idea if you want to maximize your holiday profits. During the holidays, you can opt to delegate the task of ordering, stocking and inventory to a trained virtual assistant to take off these tasks from your plate.
4. Administrative Tasks
Organizing your schedule, managing and sorting your email and answering phone calls can seem simple and easy. However, it’s a different story during peak season and holidays. You’ll often be keen to focus your time and attention on handling more significant and critical tasks. That’s the reason outsourcing administrative tasks on holidays makes a lot of sense.
Outsourcing these simple administrative tasks means taking some burden off your shoulders. So, despite your busy schedule, you will have someone to ensure that you stay updated on your email correspondence, organize your holiday schedule, even book your Christmas vacation for you.
5. Advertising
As business owners, you know the power of advertising to drive business success. Everyone is a competition in today’s saturated market, and you need to amp up your advertising game, especially during the holidays.
Hiring someone with expertise in online paid advertising can be beneficial for your business. Since most of the population spends their time online, supplementing your online advertising campaigns during the holidays can go a long way.
Conclusion
Being on top of things can be a significant advantage, and deciding to outsource some of your business tasks can significantly reduce stress for both your team and your customers. Deciding which tasks to outsource can be overwhelming though. Start by assessing the tasks listed here. Once you have a clear idea of which tasks can be outsourced, you can begin your search for the ideal partner for your organization.
