A Complete Guide to Why and How Should an Amazon Seller Hire Virtual Assistants

In this competitive world, Amazon sellers need to work smartly and put in sufficient effort. But naturally, one person (or one small team) can’t handle everything. One way to tackle this is to decide which priorities must be handled in-house and which can be delegated to third-party agencies (for instance, outsourcing bulk product listing, customer support, or review monitoring). Sellers can assign such responsibilities to an Amazon virtual assistant and eliminate the need for a full-time employee while saving money, time, and resource-power. 

This comprehensive guide will help Amazon sellers get relevant information about Amazon VA, their responsibilities, advantages, and the right way to hire one.

Who is an Amazon Virtual Assistant?

An Amazon Virtual Assistant is a professional who assists sellers in managing and growing their Amazon business. They can handle time-consuming duties like adding product listing, addressing questions and problems from customers, and doing daily Amazon Seller maintenance tasks. 

Having a VA for administrative responsibilities and repetitive tasks allows you to redirect your focus on core operations and scale up business performance. In addition, delegating side tasks and focusing solely on important tasks can help a company aim for a higher market position.

As these experts can do various tasks for Amazon sellers, we have mentioned a few of them below. 

Tasks a Seller can outsource to an Amazon Virtual Assistant

1. Customer service tasks 

Customer service is one of the secrets to running a thriving business on Amazon. Customers must come first, but you must also concentrate on other aspects of your business. To save your time and cost, an Amazon VA will take care of all the following tasks: 

• Virtual Assistants Handle customer queries

The virtual assistant for Amazon will be in charge of building relationships with customers by providing prompt answers to their inquiries. The VA can interact with customers through different modes:

1. Phone calls
2. Chats
3. Text messages
4. Emails
5. Social media platforms

• Create message templates

VA also offers the service of creating template messages to answer FAQs. These message templates help experts quickly respond to the customer’s feedback or comments.

• Handling comments

Both satisfied and unhappy consumers will leave comments about your FBA business. In response to compliments, the virtual assistant for Amazon will thank the user and inquire if they require any more help. But there will also be some negative comments that need to be handled with politeness and sincerity. But if a seller handles the negative comment by himself, they may get demotivated and can get emotionally impacted as well. Thus to avoid such situations, hiring VA is a good option as they have the relevant experience handling such comments. They will also ensure that the customer’s feedback is conveyed to the seller’s team so that it can be worked upon.

2. Managing operational tasks

• Managing product listing

Amazon Product listing is the most crucial process in selling; thus, one needs to do it carefully. There are different factors that the seller needs to focus on while uploading the product and creating the listing. A new seller will need to invest time and effort to learn the listing process from scratch and get expertise in the same. But a VA eliminates this problem by presenting their expertise. The virtual assistant from Amazon will check the product page regularly and assist in adding or updating information such as titles, product descriptions, photos, and pricing.

Must Read: Amazon Product Listings: Leverage Them The Right Way!

• Keep track of the order process

Processing orders is a time-consuming process that needs a regular inspection. If a seller does it alone, they will realize most of their time is wasted checking the order, tracking down the order, etc. But the seller can take care of the other tasks that need their time and attention while an Amazon virtual assistant handles the order processing. 

Sending in FBA inventory, collecting Amazon barcodes for each unit, downloading mailing labels, tracking shipments, and inspecting units received are a few of the order processing procedures that an Amazon VA can do for you.

3. Marketing tasks

Market research is another component that contributes to an Amazon business’s success. Before starting your firm, you should conduct essential research on the goods you plan to offer. There are two important things to research before choosing the product to sell on Amazon one is the target audience, and the other is your rivals.

Instead of hiring a dedicated research team, if you hire VA, you will get high-quality information about the market trends, which products are at the top of the list, and who all are competing in the categories. They are experts in discovering the rivals and what strategies they are using to help you overpower them. 

• Data analysis by Virtual Assistant

Not only do VA indulge in in-depth research, but they are also well-versed in data analysis. The Amazon virtual assistant evaluates the findings of their investigation and determines how they might benefit from it. 

• Amazon ad campaign

As 70% of Amazon visitors don’t click after checking out the first page, running an Amazon ad campaign is one of the successful methods to grab the customer’s attention towards the seller’s product listing. But not all sellers know how to set up the campaign or run it successfully. Thus, hiring a VA is a smart decision. They create campaigns utilizing Seller Central’s tools, include negative key phrases to cut down on wasteful expenditure, analyze analytics to see how well your campaigns are doing, and alter your advertisements as required.

• Review generation

Reviews play a very important role in the customer’s buying process. Research also suggests that 95% of online shoppers read reviews before buying any product. Thus, Amazon sellers need to work hard to get a positive rating from their customers. But many sellers are clueless about how to get positive reviews from customers. For the right guidance, sellers can hire a VA to contact customers through email to follow up and get feedback on their purchases. VA also asks for their genuine opinions by sending them newsletters and social media messages.

How can virtual assistants help ease an Amazon seller’s stress?

1. Save operational costs

A 2020 research found that using virtual assistants instead of in-house employees can result in operating cost savings of up to 78%. By hiring Amazon online assistants, sellers may simply reduce the power and other utility expenditures because they won’t take up any room in the workplace. Contrary to a full-time, in-house team where you need to pay for office space, regular income, and other perks, you simply pay for the exact service you need and the period for which you hire VA. 

2.  Save hiring and training costs by hiring Virtual Assistant

In addition to operational expenditures, owning a firm entails hiring and onboarding charges. To find talent, employers frequently turn to their human resources department or recruiting firms, and these processes take time and money. Although the candidate may be qualified, it’s possible that they haven’t received the kind of training you need for the job. 

VA sellers can eliminate this pain as they already have relevant training and experience to handle the process carefully. Sellers don’t have to spend extra bucks on the training sessions, material, and trainers to get the employee onboard. Research has also suggested that hiring VA instead of in-house employees keeps the attrition rate of the business to a minimal level, saving further costs.

3. Increased efficiency and productivity

Virtual Assistant works remotely, so they don’t have to waste time traveling to the office daily. As a result, they have more time on their hands and are able to work at their leisure with flexible hours. Hence, they don’t have to worry about completing hours; rather, they just have to focus solely on providing quality work to their client. Research has shown that virtual employees are 20-25% more productive than employees who work from the office. 

Furthermore, with more productivity, virtual assistants offer higher work efficiency. Inefficiency occurs when you spend more money than necessary cost to get the same outcome. For example, due to mismanagement of inventory, Amazon sellers have a huge stock of products piled up in the warehouse, which leads to significant maintenance costs. The longer you use the warehouse the more you have to pay for it leading to unnecessary expenses. 

Hence, you can solve this issue by employing a VA to assist you in keeping track of your inventory. A VA will efficiently plan to ship the products in smaller batches but more frequently; this will help you eliminate your surplus inventory, eventually lowering costs.

4. No Need to Buy Tools and Software

To compete with the existing Amazon players, sellers need access to relevant software and tools. But sellers might hesitate to purchase them as they are available on a subscription basis. However, when the seller decides to outsource Amazon service to a VA agency, they don’t have to worry about buying these tools as these companies already have access to the latest tools for finding, launching, and selling items on Amazon. 

5. Smooth design and editing work

When a buyer decides whether or not to buy your goods, the aesthetics and look of the product are crucial factors. A virtual assistant from Amazon can create product visuals, enhance existing information, edit photos, and carry out several other designing activities. As VA knows that a consumer is more inclined to acquire appealing products, they will edit the photographs of the product in the required way. 

6. Improved conversion Rate

Your conversion rate might be significantly increased with the help of an Amazon virtual assistant. Your Amazon VA will take care of all the ways to increase conversion rate like:

1. SEO-optimized product listing
2. Promoting your product through Amazon ads
3. Transforming Product images into high-quality ones
4. Conducting research on price 
5. Increasing positive customer rating
6. Evaluating your competition 

7. Higher peace of mind

You need not worry about running your Amazon business if you have a virtual assistant from Amazon by your side. Everything from adding new goods to your account to keeping track of your inventory and maintaining customer support will be handled by your Amazon personal assistant. You will experience better peace of mind because you know your account is being handled by experts who have extensive experience in this field. 

How to hire an Amazon Virtual Assistant?

As there are many VA available in the market, you need to do thorough research to find the best one. So, before hiring Amazon experts, you must go through the following procedure to make the right decision. 

1. Conduct a need analysis

Identify the need to hire a VA in your company. Since we have discussed various tasks and benefits of VA in the above sections, it should be easier for you to answer the following questions now:

1. What tasks do you want to outsource?
2. Why do you want to outsource?
3. Does your budget allow you to hire a VA?
4. How soon do you want to hire?
5. For which location do you need to hire?

2. Start the search by consulting a third party

One of the most successful search engines we all know of is “Google.” You can type Virtual Assistant for Amazon” on Google, and you will have various websites available in front of you. Apart from using Google, you can also use other platforms like Upwork and Freelancer or can post the ad on LinkedIn. These platforms have yielded a positive result for the sellers looking for VA.

3. Filter out

Once you have chosen the platform, you need to prepare a sheet to list all the potential VA you are considering. After this, you must filter out the listed experts according to your requirements. 

For example, if you want to hire a VA to handle all the processes of your Amazon selling account, then you can filter out the VA that only provides photo editing services or only product listing services. This way, you will be left with relevant choices only.

4. Get in touch with the Virtual Assistant

Once you have 4-5 VAs left on the list, you can contact them and ask for their quotes. After knowing the cost of their service, you can further filter out the options. For example, if a VA quotes $1000 for their service, but your budget is only $800, then you can filter out this option to save time as it does not align with your budget.

5. Background check

In background check, you can ask for references of the clients they have worked with before. You can check various reviews on the website or on another third-party website so that you get to know the accurate picture. You can also ask your employees if they have heard of it or not.

6. Ask for a demo

Many VAs provide free demos to their clients to help them know their working style and the results they can yield. Therefore, you should also request a free trial and let them know your requirements so they can prepare the demo for you accordingly.

7. Make a big decision.

After a demo from 2-3 VAs, you will be clear about which one to choose. If you are still confused, then you can have further discussion with them so that they can tell you whether your requirements can be further incorporated or not. 

Conclusion

The number of sellers on Amazon is growing dramatically. This growth has led to many opportunities as well as massive competition in the online marketplace. Sellers who want to survive in the race need to make smart decisions with proper implementation. One of them is to hire Amazon experts who can manage their Amazon accounts from scratch. Hopefully, this post gave you the information needed to land the right VA for your Amazon business.