It’s nearly impossible for a modern business to work without a virtual assistant, but it hasn’t always been like this. In fact, it wasn’t like this just a few years or decades back. The history of the virtual assistant industry is a brief and intensive one, but it’s one worth hearing from anyone who’s seriously considering hiring a virtual assistant. So, how did this story start?
- Start In the Early 1990s
The concept of virtual assistants started in the early 1990s as a pretty simple idea. These were the assistants who didn’t have to come to the main office.
Mostly, they were in charge of the administrative and secretarial tasks.
Some of their earliest tasks where managing emails, scheduling appointments, and organizing documents. For the first time in history, they could submit these documents via fax or early internet, and entrepreneurs all over the globe just jumped on the opportunity.
The huge selling point of this concept was the fact that it was cheap and convenient. You were no longer confined to the local hiring pool and you didn’t have to find office space for people who lived there. You didn’t have to buy a workstation either. Sure, this was still the age when these technologies were in development, and most people didn’t have the equipment they needed. Therefore, it was the responsibility of the employer to provide it.
So, the main reason why this happened in the early 1990s and not before is the fact that communication technology was finally at a point where it was possible to handle business this way.
- The Rise of Remote Work (Late 1990s)
Next came the period of the growth of internet connectivity. The expansion of the internet made it easier to communicate and share information across distances. This means that remote work has become more efficient and more convenient.
Naturally, when there’s the demand, the supply soon appears. So, this is the age when the first expansion of remote working tools happened. Now, there is a market for it, and you can’t stop progress. Early instant messaging and conferencing tools were made in this era, but this was also the beginning of the early collaboration tools.
This also leads to an increased demand for virtual assistants. Today, you can hire a virtual assistant from an agency like Rocket Station or find one on your own, but in the late 1990s, they were still a rare commodity.
Now, not everything was perfect. Despite all the advantages, now that the business was so connected and shareable, there were a lot of concerns over data privacy. At the time, the question of how to protect sensitive data came to surface but not the potential solution to the problem.
- Early Privacy Concerns (2000s)
One of the problems we started addressing in the previous section is handling sensitive information remotely. You see, administrative assistants can handle anything from supplier costs and payrolls to trade secrets. Handling this online was problematic, let alone the idea that you hired people remotely with limited ability to vet them.
So, mandatory cybersecurity practices became a necessity. First of all, email encryption has become necessary. While this may seem like a simple practice, it was long in the making, and it signified a start of standardizing all sorts of cybersecurity measures. Why start with email? It’s simple because this was (and still is) the main form of communication in the business world.
Companies have also started taking basic cybersecurity measures much more seriously. They started insisting on firewalls, antivirus software, and secure networks, not just for on-site staff but for remote employees and virtual assistants.
There was also the issue of trust between clients and assistants. You and your assistants were not the only parties affected by this, so you also had to offer some assurances to others.
- The Impact of Cloud Computing (2010s)
The mass migration to the cloud signified the start of a whole new era for virtual assistants and remote work in general. This has made file-sharing not just cheap and simple but also standard. Collaboration tools were at their peak, and multiple people working on the same document became a standard business practice.
Diagnostic and analytic tools made version control simple, and the fact that everything people did left a digital footprint made this type of work even safer. With conventional documents, you had no way of knowing who made the edit or an entry except to analyze the handwriting, which was incredibly inaccurate and lacked needed dependency.
Collaboration tools became mainstream, and companies even encouraged their use by on-site employees. Even today, two coworkers sitting a few desks apart are more likely to chat via Slack or Skype than to talk in person.
Also, this was the age of enhanced privacy protocols. A hybrid workspace also ensured that you needed a good BYOD policy.
Lastly, the regulation was there, and the next big step was that everyone became familiar with the legal implications of data breaches.
- Introduction of AI-Driven Assistants (Late 2010s)
One of the biggest changes on the eve of the 2020s was the massive transition from human to AI assistants. You see, most of the work that was outsourced to virtual assistants was menial and repetitive. This meant that software had the potential to do it without the factor of human error and at a reduced cost. It just wasn’t there yet.
Next, it was all about automated data processing. AI-driven assistants were much faster and worked almost instantaneously.
Now, there are some privacy concerns with AI handling personal data. There was a lack of clear oversight here, as well as the fact that AI is a tool and cannot be held accountable.
Most importantly, there was an increased scrutiny over data usage and storage involved in these processes.
Wrap up
Overall, the history of virtual assistants is actually the history of remote work. However, since the invention of remote work, virtual assistants have been most used. In fact, since the technological capabilities of early remote work were so restrictive, virtual assistants were the only type of remote employees who actually made sense. We stop our story there since you’re likely familiar with the current state of affairs in the world of virtual assistants. If not, it can be a story for another time.
