Time for Estate Agents to outsource work to Virtual Employees?

Nowadays we see a lot of online estate agents popping up all over UK. I personally think it is an excellent concept, basically taking the traditional high street estate agency online and making most of the business virtual.

But this does come with a drawback, which worries me to be honest. This increasing competition from online agents are going to really squeeze the margins for high street estate agents who have high overheads. The last thing I want to see is high street estate agents closing down due to this new competition.

Perhaps it is time for high street estate agents to start using outsourcing work to virtual employees to keep up with competition?

Here are a few areas of the business estate agents can consider outsourcing. Remember, when you outsource work to virtual employee, you are effectively hiring virtual employees to work directly with you, so you are not losing control over the work. Think of virtual employees, as your own remote employee.

Job Role /Candidate Type	Details	Cost
Online Chat Support Email Support	You could have people providing real live chat support on your website thus enhancing your customer experience. As well as email support of course. People prefer to email or chat as opposed to picking up the phone all the time, so providing online chat support is becoming increasingly important. For this type of role you would need employees that have good written English, and able to communicate well with your customer and provide the correct support.	Each virtual employee will require a hourly rate of £2.99 per hour.
Managing property advertising	We all know how time consuming this part of the admin work can be. This is an easy part to outsource to virtual employees. Why have an agent spending valuable time doing this admin work, when this can be handed over to a virtual employee? For this type of role a semi-tech virtual employee who would be able to learn and understand these platforms quickly would be ideal.	Each virtual employee will require a hourly rate of £2.99 per hour.
24 hr Call Answering	Have you thought about having a 24 hour call answering service? Being an estate agency, you could truly demonstrate that by being open 24 hours a day, and have virtual employee answering your phone calls, taking messages, thus giving your agents time to focus on the real stuff, as well as ensuring every enquiry gets the personal attention it need. For this type of role you would get virtual employee who are fluent in speaking, these guys tend to have quite natural accents as well. As we are not in mainland india, the accent is much better in our local job market.	Standard pay level of £2.99 per hour
VAs for handling tenant issues/referencing etc	This is a very time consuming aspect of the work, a Virtual Assistant would be ideal for a role like this, just churning out tenant references, liaising with tenants and getting things done.	Standard pay level of £2.99 per hour
Video Animator	You could set yourself apart on the property portals by having ‘video previews’ of your properties. We all agree video is far better than pictures. Imagine having someone to make semi-pro level videos of your properties to make your customers really engage with you.	These guys have a niche skill so they need around £3.99 per hour.
Web Developers - PHP	These type of candidates tend to be weaker on communication skills, but more tech savvy. Your website is your online shop, you should consider having a dedicated web developer to handle everything on your website.	Standard pay level of £3.99 per hour For more skilled developers, you can hire them at around £4.99 -£5.99 per hour.

The above are only a few ideas of the type of work that Estate Agents can start outsourcing today to remain competitive in the changing market. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any other ideas, or if you are unsure if something would work.

You be wondering what kind of virtual employee can I expect for these low rates? Read my article on What to expect when outsourcing work for virtual employees to get an better idea, or just drop me an email!

As always thanks again for reading, feel free to contribute with your comments, feedback, questions etc, or feel free to email me directly on rob@myvirtualpeople.com

---