Personal Assistant
What is the mark of a great service? Read on to find out…
Mr. Allen is planning a business trip to Los Angeles this weekend and has a very busy schedule, packed with back-to-back meetings with multiple clients located in different parts of the city. Included in his agenda is a dinner meeting with a client who selected the venue. This client sent him an email with the name of the restaurant where they would meet for dinner.My task was to include the appointment in his calendar so that he had the name and address of the restaurant. I did not stop there, however. As Mr. Allen’s schedule was pretty hectic, and I thought that it would help if he was familiar with the restaurant’s menu - one less thing to think about. So I called the restaurant and asked them to send me a copy of their menu.
As I was updating Mr. Allen on his agenda, I mentioned to him that I am sending him a copy of the restaurant’s menu so that he could get an idea of what he wanted to order. He was very pleased about it and mentioned that those are the types of things that he expects from our service.
This was an email from Bert Landa, one of our personal assistants. Bert was given kudos by the member who felt compelled to speak with one of Prialto’s managers to let him know how impressed he was with Bert.
We can’t say it too often: People are at the core of what we do here at Prialto. They are our most important resource. And when every single employee feels empowered, and when they care about what they do and the quality of work they produce, you get service that is, well, pretty great.
“You rock!”
Here’s just one of the ways we make life easier for our members:
After trying unsuccessfully to book three nights at the Yosemite Lodge where he is planning to take a vacation with his wife, James, one of our members, sought my help. He gave me the dates and asked me to call the Lodge every now and then to see if any rooms become available - he was aware that the dates fell in the middle of the high season.
I called the Lodge consistently for two weeks when finally, a room freed up. Although it was only for two nights, not three, I asked the Lodge to hold the room and notified James immediately. I was hoping to add an extra night later on. I suggested to James that he take the room. He said yes, and the reservation was made.
Today I called the Lodge to see if we could extend the reservation to three days. They answered in the affirmative. I booked the extra night right away.
James was thrilled to know that he can plan his vacation the way he wanted without spending a lot of his valuable time making it happen, and I was glad to do it for him.
He sent me a succinct email that said it all:
“You rock, thank you.”
James
Yes, you can still afford to travel…
As a travel junkie who’s always looking for deals, I came across this great article on money-saving travel tips from Travel + Leisure. Reading it, however, I began to wonder how much time I’ll be spending on the phone and on the web researching the deals that are currently being offered by hotels, cruise lines, etc. Then I thought, “I’ll just have my Prialto assistant do it for me.” Problem solved. Now I can continue with my work so I can afford these vacations!
To read the article from CNN.com, click on the following link:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/traveltips/01/20/money.saving.tips/index.html
Why hire a personal assistant?
It’s 8:30 a.m. on a Monday. You’re staring at your calendar for the week and already you can feel the stress building up: board meetings, department meetings, emails and phone calls to return, hair cut appointment to be made, soccer practice to attend, new hard drive to research. How will you get through it?
Hire a personal assistant. Too costly, you say. Well, not any more. Thanks to the Internet and advances in technology and telephony, gone are the days when having a personal assistant is the domain of wealthy entrepreneurs or CEOs. Remote personal assistants can perform any tasks that do not require face-to-face interaction. Prialto’s remote assistants or time managers have been helping our members with a myriad of services ranging from restaurant reservations, event planning, research on a new computer, and recurring reminders, tracking down a specific style of antique desk on Craigslist, research on financial sponsors, etc.
How to best work with your assistant
People are almost always thrilled by the prospect of having their own dedicated personal assistant. They often stumble, however, when working to determine exactly how they will use a new helping hand. They deliberate on what they will off-load and how best to work with someone remotely.
Our members have successfully handed off hundreds of unique tasks to their Prialto assistants, many of which I will discuss individually in upcoming posts. Regardless of the tasks that our members have sought to hand off, some simple practices have proven to be universally helpful in making their time manager/productivity assistant their go-to person. Following are some of the practices you can establish that have been useful to our members: