It's not just for Fortune 500 companies, you can use a company like Brickwork and pay someone $4/hr to sit on hold for you. From the website:
Remote Executive Assistant
- Do you spend more time on routine administrative tasks instead of important business issues?
- Are you suffering from information overload?
- Are you finding less time to devote to your personal interests?
- Are you up against a deadline and need help with research on your project?
- Do you have an interesting idea but need help in creating a business plan?
- Do you need assistance for extensive internet research and database creation?
- Do you want to create/improve your website which gets you more customers?
Tasks they do:
- Formatting/beautifying any MS office files like word, excel, PowerPoint
- Quick mail mergers and sending mass mails in your name; Email & fax blast
- Internet search or any other sources that you provide them access to
- Designing customized greetings cards and sending them on your behalf
- Fine tuning your logo, business cards and other stationary including converting image to vector
- Data processing like data entry, OCR conversion; creating the PowerPoint presentation from the handwritten data;
- Updation, normalization & standardization of database;
- photo edits; b/w to color
- Shopping assistance like comparison of models & prices, listing of shops within a specific area with address, phone number & route map
Has anyone tried this?