Automations help businesses increase their productivity by collecting information from one platform and updating another. For example, if someone makes a booking in your scheduling app like Calendly. It can update your CRM deal/contact card in a tool such as Hubspot to let you know this person has booked in.

If you wanted to, you could also create a follow up email reminder to be set to a person should they have not booked say within 2 days of the initial contact.

This process helps reduce you and your team's mental load, by not having to 'think' about updating your CRM and/or sending a follow up. As it's all been automated for you.

For more examples of various automations that can be created check out: https://untask.me/automations

We like to take an automation without coding (no code) or low code approach for any system built to be run by a virtual assistant. As this makes it easy for anybody to manage. What this means is: we use tools like Zapier, Make (formerly Integromat), Pabbly or Insightly to digitally glue the programs together.

There are more advanced and technical software such as Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism and UI Path - however for the average consulting service these tools might be out of budget and unnecessary.

A virtual assistant (also known as VA) is a human who can work for you and your business, without having to step foot in your office. They work remotely either in their own home, a call centre type place or a co-working space deepening on your needs and requirements.

What a virtual assistant can do is wide and varied from admin support to social media marketing to data entry and report writing. Some virtual assistant can take phone calls and handle a wide range of tasks from appointment setting to recruitment management to project management.

Ultimately, a virtual assistant works best when given a role and set of tasks that they need to do regularly. Then if time and rhythm should allow it they can also squeeze in other adhoc tasks as requested depending on their capability.

Whether you are hiring in the Philippines, India or Africa or somewhere more close to your home base like Australia, America or New Zealand, each person needs a set of guides and some training to get started.

At UnTask.Me when we talk about Virtual Assistants - we talk about humans - people typically located in the Philippines, but they can also be located in Australia, Africa, America or other locations in the world. These humans have a skill set in managing a basic level of business.

If you need strategic support in your business, then we recommend hiring a consultant, Online Business Manager (OBM) or Project Manager.

Automations require human setup, using a Correlation and If-this-than-that approach to ensuring the automated workflow gets executed as it should. The beauty of an automation is that once setup, a series of tasks that typically could be delayed due to human unavailability, can be executed by the program (robot) in under a minute 24/7.

The downside of automations is, like any piece of technology, you or your virtual assistant needs to check for updates and manage errors.

AI on the other hand, acts human like and provides answers if prompted to. AI is able pull from a data base of resources to get answers. For example Chatbots (can also be referred to a virtual assistants - but here at UnTask.Me we will refer to them as chatbots or AI) are able to supply solutions to your enquiry by using the inputted resources to get your answer.

Does AI get it right 100% of the time - no - it's probably closer to 80% accuracy. However, this is where having a human Virtual Assistant can support you, as they can assess and address the enquiry.