Whether a VA should work the client's hours or their own

Question

A question that gets skipped right up until signing for a seat: the clock. An agency will typically offer either overlap with the client's business day, which for the VA is overnight, or the VA's own daytime hours with async handoffs. Overlap means the client can ping them and get an answer, and any call work happens when sellers actually pick up. It also puts the VA on a night shift, and honest agencies are upfront that people burn out of those faster and cost more. Their hours means better retention and a lower rate, and the client's morning starts with a finished report. Anything needing clarification takes a day to round trip, and live calling is basically off the table. The version worth wanting is the one that keeps working when the client stops paying attention to it, and it is genuinely unclear which of these that is. What has held up for the people here?

gregpowell66 · Answer

Partial overlap tends to work best. Three hours of overlap covers every question that actually needs answering same day, and the rest of the shift is heads down work with nobody interrupting. On job sites the same pattern generally holds, a crew gets more done in the block where no one is standing there talking to them.

aaron_fitz10 · Answer

@tylerbrooks9 if the seat calls sellers, the schedule is not a preference, it is determined by when people answer their phones. Everything else can be async. Splitting the roles before splitting the clock is the safer call. A common pattern is one person doing both jobs and ending up doing two jobs badly.

Whether a VA should work the client's hours or their own

2 replies