News & Updates

An Unusual Request

This unusual request came in from a client on the Euro Zone, some time back (Dec-2010). Bouquets and brickbats from clients are part of everyday life in the services business. But appreciation that is thoughtful would go a long way to positively motivate employees or just about anyone. Pradeep, the team lead on the Euro shift at that point of time received this request from a client, Kevin. Rini is her assistant. Read on… Hello Pradeep, As my usage has changed I will move to a pay as you go plan shortly. Before this happens I expect to have some un used time on my current plan. I believe there will be 2-3 hours left on the 14 of December. Given the exceptional help that Rini has provided I wonder would it be possible to use my unused time to allow Rini to leave for home early one day as a thank you to her for all her help ? Given I will have paid for her time I am hoping this unusual request is possible please ? Thanks and regards Kevin So simple a request, but so very thoughtful. The client thought it would be so nice to let Rini go early for a day, while having already paid for those hours. Did we have a choice with such a request? Nope, we just happily obliged. Incidentally, Rini has a young child at home and she was mighty happy with this wonderful gesture. Thank you, Kevin. You made her day! It is simple things that can make a huge difference in people’s lives and the way they perceive it. On a different note but on the same topic. Here is a RSA video I love, adapted from Dan Pink’s talk titled ‘The surprising truth about motivates people’. Happy viewing!! Sunder P CEO

An Unusual Request Read More »

This unusual request came in from a client on the Euro Zone, some time back (Dec-2010). Bouquets and brickbats from clients are part of everyday life in the services business. But appreciation that is thoughtful would go a long way to positively motivate employees or just about anyone. Pradeep, the team lead on the Euro shift at that point of time received this request from a client, Kevin. Rini is her assistant. Read on… Hello Pradeep, As my usage has changed I will move to a pay as you go plan shortly. Before this happens I expect to have some un used time on my current plan. I believe there will be 2-3 hours left on the 14 of December. Given the exceptional help that Rini has provided I wonder would it be possible to use my unused time to allow Rini to leave for home early one day as a thank you to her for all her help ? Given I will have paid for her time I am hoping this unusual request is possible please ? Thanks and regards Kevin So simple a request, but so very thoughtful. The client thought it would be so nice to let Rini go early for a day, while having already paid for those hours. Did we have a choice with such a request? Nope, we just happily obliged. Incidentally, Rini has a young child at home and she was mighty happy with this wonderful gesture. Thank you, Kevin. You made her day! It is simple things that can make a huge difference in people’s lives and the way they perceive it. On a different note but on the same topic. Here is a RSA video I love, adapted from Dan Pink’s talk titled ‘The surprising truth about motivates people’. Happy viewing!! Sunder P CEO

A New religion

The world’s second most populous nation went into a tizzy on Wednesday, 30th March. All because of a cricket match. Well, it wasn’t just any cricket match though. It was the World Cup semi-final between arch rivals and neighbors, India and Pakistan. It obviously had the advertisers and the media bandwagon salivating at the prospect of a never before kind of audience watching the Big Match. According to some initial reports, an estimated 67 million viewers were watching. In my opinion, a lot more would have, given that it is pretty hard to estimate the number of viewers per TV set, in a place like India. Any guesses? Compare this with the Super Bowl (National Football League) in the world’s richest nation, the US. An estimated national audience of 100 million watch the Super Bowl. The most expensive advertising happens during this time. A 30 second spot on the network costs a cool US$3 million. So what’s the rate for an ad spot during the World cup cricket match finals to be played this Saturday between India and Sri Lanka. Estimates put it at Rs.24 lakhs per 10 second spot or in dollar terms, that is US$ 160K per 30 second spot. Not bad, at all for a country where 410 million live below the poverty line of $1.25 per day!! Despite all that, Indian cricket with its own league format called IPL may just go past the Super Bowl economy, sometime in the near future. Why would I venture into thinking that such a thing could happen? Am banking on the fact that this CricketMania has evolved into a New Religion in this country of 1.2 billion, uniting people beyond caste, creed or religion. It evokes passionate and intense emotions, especially when a match like this happens between the neighbors. Apart from the usual celebrities there was also a twist of diplomacy this time, with the Indian Prime Minister informally inviting his Pakistani counterpart to India, for the match. Imagine Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez or Raul Castro sitting together for the Super Bowl game. Not that such back door diplomacy has helped either of the two countries in the past to get over their squabbling. India almost came to a stop for a good half of the day. While Pakistan officially shut down in entirety. My fellow colleague, Venky who can’t understand what the fuss is all about (he dislikes cricket, a rare breed in India) was raring to have a go at quantifying the GDP impact due to the productivity loss. Good luck to him. Most leading companies closed down for half of the day or started their work early to close before the match. Some of them made arrangements for employees to watch the match at the workplace. Given that we couldn’t shut down completely, we decided to telecast the match live on our premises. The bottom line was pretty simple: Don’t miss any calls; don’t miss any deadlines; don’t let down any of your clients. But go ahead, this is a new religion!! Here are some pics for you. (Click to enlarge) Sunder P CEO

A New religion Read More »

The world’s second most populous nation went into a tizzy on Wednesday, 30th March. All because of a cricket match. Well, it wasn’t just any cricket match though. It was the World Cup semi-final between arch rivals and neighbors, India and Pakistan. It obviously had the advertisers and the media bandwagon salivating at the prospect of a never before kind of audience watching the Big Match. According to some initial reports, an estimated 67 million viewers were watching. In my opinion, a lot more would have, given that it is pretty hard to estimate the number of viewers per TV set, in a place like India. Any guesses? Compare this with the Super Bowl (National Football League) in the world’s richest nation, the US. An estimated national audience of 100 million watch the Super Bowl. The most expensive advertising happens during this time. A 30 second spot on the network costs a cool US$3 million. So what’s the rate for an ad spot during the World cup cricket match finals to be played this Saturday between India and Sri Lanka. Estimates put it at Rs.24 lakhs per 10 second spot or in dollar terms, that is US$ 160K per 30 second spot. Not bad, at all for a country where 410 million live below the poverty line of $1.25 per day!! Despite all that, Indian cricket with its own league format called IPL may just go past the Super Bowl economy, sometime in the near future. Why would I venture into thinking that such a thing could happen? Am banking on the fact that this CricketMania has evolved into a New Religion in this country of 1.2 billion, uniting people beyond caste, creed or religion. It evokes passionate and intense emotions, especially when a match like this happens between the neighbors. Apart from the usual celebrities there was also a twist of diplomacy this time, with the Indian Prime Minister informally inviting his Pakistani counterpart to India, for the match. Imagine Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez or Raul Castro sitting together for the Super Bowl game. Not that such back door diplomacy has helped either of the two countries in the past to get over their squabbling. India almost came to a stop for a good half of the day. While Pakistan officially shut down in entirety. My fellow colleague, Venky who can’t understand what the fuss is all about (he dislikes cricket, a rare breed in India) was raring to have a go at quantifying the GDP impact due to the productivity loss. Good luck to him. Most leading companies closed down for half of the day or started their work early to close before the match. Some of them made arrangements for employees to watch the match at the workplace. Given that we couldn’t shut down completely, we decided to telecast the match live on our premises. The bottom line was pretty simple: Don’t miss any calls; don’t miss any deadlines; don’t let down any of your clients. But go ahead, this is a new religion!! Here are some pics for you. (Click to enlarge) Sunder P CEO

Back in action and the news

Back in Action We have been a little sluggish with our social media efforts till now. Reason why you haven’t seen too many blog posts since inception. But that is all set to change. In the recent past, in general we have been initiating a shift towards more openness and transparency. We expect that this will help our clients make better sense of their long distance personal, business relationship with their VAs. It’s a push towards opening our doors a little wider, for the whole world to see. So you will get to see a lot more posts from us, very frequently on what is happening out here. Stay tuned! Back in the News Leah Milner from the Times Money (UK) did a story on GetFriday titled “Individuals are now outsourcing to India”. After running a thorough road test wherein she tested Madhu Abraham (our VA) on a variety of tasks including some mischievous ones where she tests his tact, here is her verdict. “Testing the limits of the service, I request that he writes a humorous blog for Money Central on the cheapest wedding venues, but Maddy says that while he is happy to do the background research he is “not a good writer”. I reflect that it is probably just as well that I cannot outsource every aspect of my work or I would soon be out of a job.” Thanks, Leah!! Here’s the link, if you do have a Times subscription. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/money/consumeraffairs/article2926600.ece (Unfortunately, the article cannot be accessed without a subscription and Times will take offense if we publish it without a syndication. Don’t quite get the logic. You take a picture and write a story about us for the entire world to see and won’t allow us to publish it without syndication!) Sunder P CEO

Back in action and the news Read More »

Back in Action We have been a little sluggish with our social media efforts till now. Reason why you haven’t seen too many blog posts since inception. But that is all set to change. In the recent past, in general we have been initiating a shift towards more openness and transparency. We expect that this will help our clients make better sense of their long distance personal, business relationship with their VAs. It’s a push towards opening our doors a little wider, for the whole world to see. So you will get to see a lot more posts from us, very frequently on what is happening out here. Stay tuned! Back in the News Leah Milner from the Times Money (UK) did a story on GetFriday titled “Individuals are now outsourcing to India”. After running a thorough road test wherein she tested Madhu Abraham (our VA) on a variety of tasks including some mischievous ones where she tests his tact, here is her verdict. “Testing the limits of the service, I request that he writes a humorous blog for Money Central on the cheapest wedding venues, but Maddy says that while he is happy to do the background research he is “not a good writer”. I reflect that it is probably just as well that I cannot outsource every aspect of my work or I would soon be out of a job.” Thanks, Leah!! Here’s the link, if you do have a Times subscription. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/money/consumeraffairs/article2926600.ece (Unfortunately, the article cannot be accessed without a subscription and Times will take offense if we publish it without a syndication. Don’t quite get the logic. You take a picture and write a story about us for the entire world to see and won’t allow us to publish it without syndication!) Sunder P CEO

Closing down the German Service

I thought it might just help to share my perspective (the inside story) of what went wrong with the German service necessitating a shut down in December of 2010 after a rather successful run. In fact, the German service at that point of time was adding clients, making money and had by then been featured in every popular magazine and media in Germany that I can think of. Something that not many services can boast of. So to say “It had everything going for it.” Now having gone through it I will amend that to “Well almost!” So this is our story of failure at something that looked seemingly possible on the surface (at least to us). On the journey, we did learn some valuable lessons. And most importantly and thankfully, the lesson was not too costly to drown us and throw us back into oblivion. Here we go… 02nd June 2009: It was a momentous occasion! We launched our German language version of the Virtual Assistant services. It was done after a rather elaborate pilot with a few select clients in Germany over a 6 month period where we overlapped the English service with German, on a test basis. We had hired a German native, but of Indian origin who had just relocated to India for personal reasons. At the end of the pilot the verdict was overwhelmingly positive. So we went ahead to assemble a team of German speakers in place and trained them as VAs. The initial days were heady. Largely satisfied clients and employees who were even more satisfied due to the unique exposure such a job presented. This was probably the first kind of job where a non-native German speaker living in a non-German country gets the opportunity to speak & breathe German for 8 hours a day. Their proficiency in the language sky rocketed and so did their skills. Looked like a perfect model that could work because we provided a great platform for an aspiring German workforce in a predominantly English India. A year went by and we added more clients and needed more people to serve them. This is when we started running into a hitch. We had estimated the German resource pool in India to be rather small but still good enough for us to scale it up to a reasonable level. But slowly and steadily, it became increasingly difficult for us to get people with right skills and the language proficiency (the package). And we found that the companies that offered the most dreary jobs (merely translating documents) most certainly offered the biggest pay packets. We found it difficult to match them without being able to increase prices significantly. The market was still not ready to pay steeper prices on untried and untested things. Outsourcing at an individual or small business level for the German market was still a niche novelty and not mainstream. It was still experimental and not established. Added to that, the resources we had were becoming really good at their language and hence were most sought after by the MNCs. This model could still have worked if there was a constant pool of resources being created in significantly large numbers. The German pool in India was too small for it. In hindsight, I think the German language pool outside of Europe is just too small to support any significant, scalable outsourcing activity. I have heard from other outsourcing companies based in Poland / Romania that even there, it is not as easy to scale. Frequent attrition led to inability in providing stable services and that started affecting the quality of service that we delivered to our clients. We started getting frequent complaints and nothing much could be done about them. It was getting to a helpless situation and that was when we decided ‘it is OK to not provide services, if you can’t provide it right’. September 2010: The fateful decision to shut down was made and it was indeed a really hard decision. We first took the step of informing the German team employees about it. They understood. They were given a severance package that was more than the stipulation as per contract and some of them stayed back with us till the last week to help clients wind up, before moving to their new jobs. My sincere thanks to them. Given the kind of skills they had, finding another job was never a problem. We also informed our clients and gave them a 3 month notice period for the shut down. Our clients were incredibly understanding too. My thanks and apologies to them. Wherever possible, we helped them in the transition and closed the contract with every single customer, amicably by December 2010. It was a low point for us. But the decision helped ease a lot of pressure and brought back the focus to things we possibly had a better control over. Sunder P CEO

Closing down the German Service Read More »

I thought it might just help to share my perspective (the inside story) of what went wrong with the German service necessitating a shut down in December of 2010 after a rather successful run. In fact, the German service at that point of time was adding clients, making money and had by then been featured in every popular magazine and media in Germany that I can think of. Something that not many services can boast of. So to say “It had everything going for it.” Now having gone through it I will amend that to “Well almost!” So this is our story of failure at something that looked seemingly possible on the surface (at least to us). On the journey, we did learn some valuable lessons. And most importantly and thankfully, the lesson was not too costly to drown us and throw us back into oblivion. Here we go… 02nd June 2009: It was a momentous occasion! We launched our German language version of the Virtual Assistant services. It was done after a rather elaborate pilot with a few select clients in Germany over a 6 month period where we overlapped the English service with German, on a test basis. We had hired a German native, but of Indian origin who had just relocated to India for personal reasons. At the end of the pilot the verdict was overwhelmingly positive. So we went ahead to assemble a team of German speakers in place and trained them as VAs. The initial days were heady. Largely satisfied clients and employees who were even more satisfied due to the unique exposure such a job presented. This was probably the first kind of job where a non-native German speaker living in a non-German country gets the opportunity to speak & breathe German for 8 hours a day. Their proficiency in the language sky rocketed and so did their skills. Looked like a perfect model that could work because we provided a great platform for an aspiring German workforce in a predominantly English India. A year went by and we added more clients and needed more people to serve them. This is when we started running into a hitch. We had estimated the German resource pool in India to be rather small but still good enough for us to scale it up to a reasonable level. But slowly and steadily, it became increasingly difficult for us to get people with right skills and the language proficiency (the package). And we found that the companies that offered the most dreary jobs (merely translating documents) most certainly offered the biggest pay packets. We found it difficult to match them without being able to increase prices significantly. The market was still not ready to pay steeper prices on untried and untested things. Outsourcing at an individual or small business level for the German market was still a niche novelty and not mainstream. It was still experimental and not established. Added to that, the resources we had were becoming really good at their language and hence were most sought after by the MNCs. This model could still have worked if there was a constant pool of resources being created in significantly large numbers. The German pool in India was too small for it. In hindsight, I think the German language pool outside of Europe is just too small to support any significant, scalable outsourcing activity. I have heard from other outsourcing companies based in Poland / Romania that even there, it is not as easy to scale. Frequent attrition led to inability in providing stable services and that started affecting the quality of service that we delivered to our clients. We started getting frequent complaints and nothing much could be done about them. It was getting to a helpless situation and that was when we decided ‘it is OK to not provide services, if you can’t provide it right’. September 2010: The fateful decision to shut down was made and it was indeed a really hard decision. We first took the step of informing the German team employees about it. They understood. They were given a severance package that was more than the stipulation as per contract and some of them stayed back with us till the last week to help clients wind up, before moving to their new jobs. My sincere thanks to them. Given the kind of skills they had, finding another job was never a problem. We also informed our clients and gave them a 3 month notice period for the shut down. Our clients were incredibly understanding too. My thanks and apologies to them. Wherever possible, we helped them in the transition and closed the contract with every single customer, amicably by December 2010. It was a low point for us. But the decision helped ease a lot of pressure and brought back the focus to things we possibly had a better control over. Sunder P CEO

The Satyam Scandal

We at GetFriday understand the concerns raised in the wake of the Satyam scandal. The scandal is unfortunate and particularly shocking given that Satyam is the 4th largest IT firm in India. But the Indian industry believes that this is an isolated cased and an aberration. It may be recalled that some of the best Indian firms like Infosys have earned their reputation through adhering to good business ethics and the highest standards of corporate governance. It should be noted that other countries and industries also have bad apples. The likes of Enron, Worldcom and the recent Madoff case come to mind. Even in this case, the audit firm involved was PriceWaterhouseCoopers, one of the big 5. No matter how well planned a system is there will always be people who will find a way around it. The Indian regulatory system is strong and robust and is expected to act as swiftly as possible to ensure that the hard earned reputation of India Inc. is protected. GetFriday: We are not a listed company with public investors. We are closely held with the majority stakeholder being the TTK Group, a business conglomerate that is synonymous with trust, since 1928. The group is known for its conservatism and its unblemished reputation. Over the last 80 years, the group has worked with many international companies and brands including Cadburys, Ponds, Sara Lee and Durex. Many of its brands have been household names in India now for decades. While being a client is quite different from being an investor, we would like you to know that GetFriday is backed by an 80-year-old group with a rock solid foundation. Issues that are relevant to the context: 1) Security of financial information Right from the inception of GetFriday in 2005, we realized that the security of financial information was critical to our success. So we implemented a system that does not allow the assistants to access any credit card information. While online shopping on behalf of clients is an everyday affair at GetFriday, we have ensured that assistants can go only up to the check out stage and then have to hand over the shopping to their team-lead for completion. This is thanks to our secure Safe-Access system that requires two levels of authorization for any transaction. Each transaction is tracked and the details stored so that there is a clear audit trail. This has ensured a trouble free and safe operation with zero fraud reported so far since 2005. With our online billing system, all information is double encrypted, password protected and then secured with a pass phrase (never stored on any system). The information resides on a secure network with firewall protection and is PCI compliant to ensure that the information is secure. Again, the audit trail clearly fixes accountability and responsibility based on access. 2) Confidentiality of Personal / Business information As a matter of utmost precaution we ask all our assistants to communicate and handle tasks only through our CRM system (Pivotal from CDC Software, a top ten ranked CRM vendor globally). This ensures the tracking and safety of client information. Communicating on personal email ids is prohibited and even on official email ids is allowed only when there is a maintenance break or unscheduled breakdown on the CRM system. Our privacy policy and confidentiality clauses as per terms of service require every assistant to not share information pertaining to one client with another. We conduct regular training sessions and sensitize staff on the importance of these measures. Employees are required to sign an NDA and confidentiality agreement as part of their employment contract with us. If some clients require specific NDA’s signed then we review them on a case-by-case basis and then take it forward on a mutually agreeable basis. 3) Business Continuity While business continuity is a cause for major concern if someone is outsourcing critical parts of their business, it is imperative in the case of a VA service that there are no long-term contracts and commitments. If clients want to drop out, all that is needed is a month’s notice. Similarly if GetFriday is unable to provide service for any reasons or if the contract is terminated, then it is our duty and commitment to hand over confidential information or destroy it within the specific time mentioned in the NDA and confidentiality agreement. In fact, there can’t be a better option than a service like us which protects and insulates clients from the issues of attrition, sudden surges / drops in business, and unavailability of assistants on account on normal issues like vacation, sickness etc. This is as nice and dependable as it can get for small outsourcing that is not worth a million dollars. We have maintained utmost transparency with our clients across the globe and always encourage clients who are on a visit to India to drop by and get to know us in flesh and blood. Outsourcing is here to stay, and this scam shall not affect Indian businesses adversely. Read more on this. If you have any concerns or question, you can post a comment here or contact us through our website, www.getfriday.com

The Satyam Scandal Read More »

We at GetFriday understand the concerns raised in the wake of the Satyam scandal. The scandal is unfortunate and particularly shocking given that Satyam is the 4th largest IT firm in India. But the Indian industry believes that this is an isolated cased and an aberration. It may be recalled that some of the best Indian firms like Infosys have earned their reputation through adhering to good business ethics and the highest standards of corporate governance. It should be noted that other countries and industries also have bad apples. The likes of Enron, Worldcom and the recent Madoff case come to mind. Even in this case, the audit firm involved was PriceWaterhouseCoopers, one of the big 5. No matter how well planned a system is there will always be people who will find a way around it. The Indian regulatory system is strong and robust and is expected to act as swiftly as possible to ensure that the hard earned reputation of India Inc. is protected. GetFriday: We are not a listed company with public investors. We are closely held with the majority stakeholder being the TTK Group, a business conglomerate that is synonymous with trust, since 1928. The group is known for its conservatism and its unblemished reputation. Over the last 80 years, the group has worked with many international companies and brands including Cadburys, Ponds, Sara Lee and Durex. Many of its brands have been household names in India now for decades. While being a client is quite different from being an investor, we would like you to know that GetFriday is backed by an 80-year-old group with a rock solid foundation. Issues that are relevant to the context: 1) Security of financial information Right from the inception of GetFriday in 2005, we realized that the security of financial information was critical to our success. So we implemented a system that does not allow the assistants to access any credit card information. While online shopping on behalf of clients is an everyday affair at GetFriday, we have ensured that assistants can go only up to the check out stage and then have to hand over the shopping to their team-lead for completion. This is thanks to our secure Safe-Access system that requires two levels of authorization for any transaction. Each transaction is tracked and the details stored so that there is a clear audit trail. This has ensured a trouble free and safe operation with zero fraud reported so far since 2005. With our online billing system, all information is double encrypted, password protected and then secured with a pass phrase (never stored on any system). The information resides on a secure network with firewall protection and is PCI compliant to ensure that the information is secure. Again, the audit trail clearly fixes accountability and responsibility based on access. 2) Confidentiality of Personal / Business information As a matter of utmost precaution we ask all our assistants to communicate and handle tasks only through our CRM system (Pivotal from CDC Software, a top ten ranked CRM vendor globally). This ensures the tracking and safety of client information. Communicating on personal email ids is prohibited and even on official email ids is allowed only when there is a maintenance break or unscheduled breakdown on the CRM system. Our privacy policy and confidentiality clauses as per terms of service require every assistant to not share information pertaining to one client with another. We conduct regular training sessions and sensitize staff on the importance of these measures. Employees are required to sign an NDA and confidentiality agreement as part of their employment contract with us. If some clients require specific NDA’s signed then we review them on a case-by-case basis and then take it forward on a mutually agreeable basis. 3) Business Continuity While business continuity is a cause for major concern if someone is outsourcing critical parts of their business, it is imperative in the case of a VA service that there are no long-term contracts and commitments. If clients want to drop out, all that is needed is a month’s notice. Similarly if GetFriday is unable to provide service for any reasons or if the contract is terminated, then it is our duty and commitment to hand over confidential information or destroy it within the specific time mentioned in the NDA and confidentiality agreement. In fact, there can’t be a better option than a service like us which protects and insulates clients from the issues of attrition, sudden surges / drops in business, and unavailability of assistants on account on normal issues like vacation, sickness etc. This is as nice and dependable as it can get for small outsourcing that is not worth a million dollars. We have maintained utmost transparency with our clients across the globe and always encourage clients who are on a visit to India to drop by and get to know us in flesh and blood. Outsourcing is here to stay, and this scam shall not affect Indian businesses adversely. Read more on this. If you have any concerns or question, you can post a comment here or contact us through our website, www.getfriday.com

Coping with the deluge

GetFriday has been in the news quite often in the last month including getting onto the Wall Street Journal and an exclusive online daily in the UK called ‘The First Post’. Here are the links to those articles. Outsourcing your life – Ellen Gamerman for the Wall Street Journal Outsource your life – Linton Chiswick for The First Post. Coping with the deluge of inquiries ever since has been tough. No one wants to wait and everyone wants an instant assistant. The company has been hiring and training staff on the double. We also heeded some feedback on the web about our slow sign up process and put up the membership form on the website for download. But the resource allocation still has to be manual. Due to the shortage of staff we have also put up an announcement on the site about the wait time after sign up. Despite all this we have been keeping our promise to all those who signed up with us by either commencing service on the due date or well ahead of it. -GetFriday Management

Coping with the deluge Read More »

GetFriday has been in the news quite often in the last month including getting onto the Wall Street Journal and an exclusive online daily in the UK called ‘The First Post’. Here are the links to those articles. Outsourcing your life – Ellen Gamerman for the Wall Street Journal Outsource your life – Linton Chiswick for The First Post. Coping with the deluge of inquiries ever since has been tough. No one wants to wait and everyone wants an instant assistant. The company has been hiring and training staff on the double. We also heeded some feedback on the web about our slow sign up process and put up the membership form on the website for download. But the resource allocation still has to be manual. Due to the shortage of staff we have also put up an announcement on the site about the wait time after sign up. Despite all this we have been keeping our promise to all those who signed up with us by either commencing service on the due date or well ahead of it. -GetFriday Management

Virtual Assistant

Getting snowed in

Tim Ferriss’s book has done wonders for the popularity of this service. The number of people who want to sign up has increased dramatically and the credit goes to Tim for opening people’s eyes to the potential of outsourcing. We have been keeping an active eye on blogs about comments on the GetFriday service. Quoting from Tim’s own blog he says “Even GetFriday, which has done great work for me, is getting snowed under with work since their mentions in the book. The price of success! Be careful what you ask for ;)”. This is very much true. Though we had prepared well for this, you aren’t ever completely prepared for the reality. So it is a fact that we are struggling to keep pace with the enquiries. However our processes have evolved so well over the last year that we have been able to cope with the influx amazingly well. We also found some blogs where prospective clients had posted that our sign up process was not online and that our service was good post the sign up. Let me explain this. The sign up process is intentionally not online. While the sign up and payment for our other sister service “YourManInIndia(YMII)” – the Indian concierge service is completely online, we kept it offline for GetFriday. It is nice to think of a factory situation where you sign up online, pay for a plan and get alloted a human robot automatically as an assistant. It may work well in a highly automated supply chain and manufacturing system where parts are sourced as you place your order for let’s say a computer (like Dell), or even in the world of digital downloads, software etc. But here we are dealing with providing human assistants and it requires a great deal of resource planning and fitment before we can assign an assistant to a client. Hence the sign up process is kept intentionally offline wherein we study the requirement, send an appropriate form, get a secure fax sign up from client before commencing service. In our opinion it is better to have a slightly longer process of understanding client requirements and sign up than have a prolonged process of waiting to get an assistant assigned after an instant sign up. This isn’t instant coffee or Nirvana. Again this may change in the near future if we are able to automate resource fitment and allocation. Another article that has brought quite a buzz for us in Canada is this one by Patrick White for the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. Thanks to Patrick we are now known in Canada as well. On a closing note, we are getting snowed in but we aren’t finished yet with taking on new clients. We remain as keen as ever to serve more and more people globally and make their lives better. If there has been a prolonged wait with our service, kindly bear with us we should be having you on board soon. -GetFriday Management

Getting snowed in Read More »

Tim Ferriss’s book has done wonders for the popularity of this service. The number of people who want to sign up has increased dramatically and the credit goes to Tim for opening people’s eyes to the potential of outsourcing. We have been keeping an active eye on blogs about comments on the GetFriday service. Quoting from Tim’s own blog he says “Even GetFriday, which has done great work for me, is getting snowed under with work since their mentions in the book. The price of success! Be careful what you ask for ;)”. This is very much true. Though we had prepared well for this, you aren’t ever completely prepared for the reality. So it is a fact that we are struggling to keep pace with the enquiries. However our processes have evolved so well over the last year that we have been able to cope with the influx amazingly well. We also found some blogs where prospective clients had posted that our sign up process was not online and that our service was good post the sign up. Let me explain this. The sign up process is intentionally not online. While the sign up and payment for our other sister service “YourManInIndia(YMII)” – the Indian concierge service is completely online, we kept it offline for GetFriday. It is nice to think of a factory situation where you sign up online, pay for a plan and get alloted a human robot automatically as an assistant. It may work well in a highly automated supply chain and manufacturing system where parts are sourced as you place your order for let’s say a computer (like Dell), or even in the world of digital downloads, software etc. But here we are dealing with providing human assistants and it requires a great deal of resource planning and fitment before we can assign an assistant to a client. Hence the sign up process is kept intentionally offline wherein we study the requirement, send an appropriate form, get a secure fax sign up from client before commencing service. In our opinion it is better to have a slightly longer process of understanding client requirements and sign up than have a prolonged process of waiting to get an assistant assigned after an instant sign up. This isn’t instant coffee or Nirvana. Again this may change in the near future if we are able to automate resource fitment and allocation. Another article that has brought quite a buzz for us in Canada is this one by Patrick White for the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. Thanks to Patrick we are now known in Canada as well. On a closing note, we are getting snowed in but we aren’t finished yet with taking on new clients. We remain as keen as ever to serve more and more people globally and make their lives better. If there has been a prolonged wait with our service, kindly bear with us we should be having you on board soon. -GetFriday Management

virtual personal assistant

In the beginning….

As you might be able to tell from the title, this blog is dedicated to Virtual Assistants and Remote Offices. This first entry is about the creation of GetFriday. Let’s set the scene: It was the summer of 2005. Your Man In India (GetFriday’s sister service) had been around since 2000, providing services in India and carrying out physical tasks in India for non-resident Indians across the world. They were approached by AJ Jacobs, an editor-at-large for Esquire. He had just finished reading The World is Flat, and had an interesting idea: Can individuals outsource their personal tasks across the world. YMII took up the challenge and launched a brief pilot. You can read Jacob’s article here. GetFriday was officially launched in August of 2005, dedicated to providing outsourcing solutions for small businesses and busy individuals across the world. A simple story launching a simple but incredibly powerful service. Stay tuned to this blog to see the things that GetFriday is capable of.

In the beginning…. Read More »

As you might be able to tell from the title, this blog is dedicated to Virtual Assistants and Remote Offices. This first entry is about the creation of GetFriday. Let’s set the scene: It was the summer of 2005. Your Man In India (GetFriday’s sister service) had been around since 2000, providing services in India and carrying out physical tasks in India for non-resident Indians across the world. They were approached by AJ Jacobs, an editor-at-large for Esquire. He had just finished reading The World is Flat, and had an interesting idea: Can individuals outsource their personal tasks across the world. YMII took up the challenge and launched a brief pilot. You can read Jacob’s article here. GetFriday was officially launched in August of 2005, dedicated to providing outsourcing solutions for small businesses and busy individuals across the world. A simple story launching a simple but incredibly powerful service. Stay tuned to this blog to see the things that GetFriday is capable of.

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