How do you pay virtual assistants?
In my continuing search for virtual support personnel, I've come across a number of issues regarding exactly how to pay these folks. There are really only three ways to pay support people.
- Hourly - your support person keeps track of his or her hours worked, and then bills you based on those hours.
- Per-Ticket - your support person tracks the number of tickets answered and charges you a fixed fee per ticket.
- Fixed Salary - regardless of how much support work is needed, the support person earns a fixed weekly or monthly fee.
Of course, you can have an arrangement based on a blend of the above options, but that's another story 
So, what's the best way to pay your support personnel? At first glance, hourly or per-ticket seem like the best ways. After all, you only want to pay for actual work done, right? If you have an arrangement to pay someone $200 per week for support tasks, and there are only 3 or 4 tickets one week, it doesn't make sense to pay them the whole $200, does it?
Wrongo. Paying support personnel a fixed amount per week or per month is the only way to align the support person's goals with your own goals. Let me explain:
When you pay someone hourly to perform support, the more tickets there are, and the more work there is to be done, the more your support person gets paid. Your support staff will be praying for more and more tickets, so that they can earn more. There is absolutely no incentive for them to do anything to try to decrease the support burden.
When you pay someone on a per-ticket basis, the same situation is in place. The more tickets there are, the more your support person gets paid. Once again, your support rep is hoping for more and more tickets, so he can make more money.
In these two situations, you'll find yourself competing with your support reps, trying to make more Camtasia videos, more documentation, more tutorials, to try and stave off support requests. This creates extra work for you which, if you remember from my previous posts, is exactly what you are trying to avoid.
As you increase documentation and tutorials, and do other things to try and reduce the support burden, you are reducing your support rep's earning power. If you do too good of a job in this effort, you may find yourself once again without a support rep. After all, if you've reduced your support rep's ability to earn money to only a few dollars a day, there is no longer incentive for him to check tickets or answer emails in a timely fashion - you've just made it so that he is not even earning enough to justify checking tickets twice a day.
However, when you pay someone a fixed rate for support, and interesting thing happens, assuming that your support rep is an enterprising person. He will look at the current support situation, and attempt to do things to reduce the amount of work that needs to be done in order to get paid the same amount.
For example, put yourself in a support rep's shoes. On an average week, let's say you spend 20 hours working for your boss doing support, and that you have a fixed salary of $400 per week. Knowing that you are on a fixed salary, wouldn't you want to make up additional documentation, FAQ pages, and even video tutorials to reduce the support burden? Doing so may diminish the number of hours you have to work to 10 or less per work, thanks to the existance of the new support content that you have created.
Using this payment system, you've created a symbiotic relationship between yourself and your support rep. Instead of the two of you fighting over support burden (you as the business owner trying to reduce it, and the hourly or per-ticket support rep fighting for more), you both have an incentive to reduce the support burden. The support rep creates additional support content in order to reduce the number of tickets submitted, which reduces his workload. If he has an assurance that his salary will not diminish because of this, the intelligent support rep will be all for building your support content for you.
The end result is happy customers - they are happy because they will be able to find answers to their questions before they even have to submit a support ticket. They'll praise you for having such a comprehensive support system in place. And your support rep will love his job because, after having put forth the effort up front, he is able to do minimal work and maintain a very nice payment for so little work.
This, in turn, frees up your support persons time and allows him to support a new product. After you launch this new product, the same cycle happens again - the support person creates new support content for the new product, thereby reducing his workload, and freeing his time up again.
Another benefit of this method is for bugeting purposes. At a fixed rate, you know what your expenses for support will be up front - there will be no suprises at the end of the week.
The trick to this system is to get a support person who "gets it". Explain to prospective hires what your plan is, and tell them up front that if they create additional support content in order to reduce the number of tickets submitted, they'll still get paid the same amount as their workload decreases. This is a huge incentive and, when you launch your next product, they will likely be more than willing to do support for the new product as well. Just add on an additional 20 or 30 % to their normal salary for this new product, and you can end up having one person handle all your support, while getting paid very well for the minimal amount of actual work that needs to be done.
Here's a sample progression:
Product 1 - you hire Bob to do support at a rate of $200 per week. Initially, he's working 20 hours per week, but he starts creating additional support content that answers people's questions before they have to submit a ticket. After a month, he's only putting in 5 hours per week for that $200.
Product 2 - you launch product 2, and agree to pay Bob an additional $100 per week. This new product generates 20 hours per week of support. Bob creates additional support content over the next month and reduces his workload to 5 hours per week for product 2. He is now doing 10 hours per week of work, and being paid $300 per week.
Product 3 launches, and you repeat the process. After another month, Bob is now working 15 hours per week for $400 per week. Along the way, he is likely finding innovative ways to reduce his workload for products 1 and 2 even further (after all, he wants to maximize his pay while minimizing his workload - the same thing that you are trying to do).
Along the way, customers are finding answers to their questions, and are generally very happy, reducing refunds and increasing your bottom line… well worth the $400 you are paying Bob each week. The end result is that you are Bob are working as a team, with the common goal of making things as easy as possible for your customers… and who doesn't want happy customers?
Marc