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