Thought Press.

I have spoken in the past about delegating. It’s becoming a much larger trend, now with services popping up overseas in, where else, India. Blogs and news articles discuss outsourcing your personal tasks. Now companies like Your Man In India, Get Friday, and AskSunday allow you to outsource individual tasks or projects and pay by the hour. Small businesses may choose this cheaper route as an alternative to hiring another full-time employee.

Tim Ferriss wrote The 4-Hour Workweek, which talks about living your “dream life” by outsourcing a lot of your life / tasks. His book doesn’t come without criticism, and many say he is selfish that something comes from taking pride in work. Still, outsourcing and delegating tasks help you manage your time. Sunday is a personal assistant service co-founded by Steve Ludmer, a Penn grad with a great deal of business management background. “Sunday is committed to simplifying our member’s lives by providing personal, travel and tech support assistance via the Internet and telephone.” Their call centers are in India and the Philippines.

What makes Sunday different from a typical concierge service is that there are few limits. Most concierge services will try to stay away from medical or financial requests and they won’t give you a wake up call. They won’t but something on eBay for you or Craigslist and they won”t purchase tickets from just any source. Sunday will. Sunday will call your cable company, wait on hold for you and patch you in when a rep comes on the line. They’ve called a magazine for me to check on the status of a gift subscription. The best part is that they turn around results in often less than an hour. The price is cheap: $29 for 30 requests per month. Less than a dollar per request. Hey, it’s outsourcing.

Feedback on Sunday:

• The few times I’ve called, I tend to reach one individual (Bruce). Sunday is not about caller experience. They barely ask questions. Because of this you have to be as detailed as possible. They listen to you and say, “Okay, we’ll email you.” No date or time when to expect the results.
• Since speaking with a person is more like speaking at them, it’s probably better to use their voicemail feature and leave a message with your request.
• Turnaround time impressed me. Less than an hour for Boston restaurants with wine tasting menus (they even called the places to confirm). 12 minutes for a request to call a magazine customer service for me (I emailed the request).
• Most large US-based concierge services take your request and simply add it to their queue, often taking 24 hours for the restaurant request (above). I asked Sunday to send me a spreadsheet with external hard drive options, prices, etc. I got that in one hour. My credit card concierge said it would be three business days!
• It’s great if you want to make a personal call (like to your bank) but can’t at work. Email your details and they’ll call for you.

The bottom line is that Sunday is impressive in getting it done in a timely manner and doing exactly what you ask without much of an “experience.” Larger concierges strive to give you a call experience, often provide pull and access, and try to add value–but turnaround time can be way too long.

Sunday Perks:

• Reminder calls
• Make your doctor appointment
• General information
• International calling (make calls for you and patch you in as needed)
• An online profile that the rep can access
• They typically begin a request right away
• Can access your email accounts or Google calendar (passwords are encrypted through the Sunday Portal)
• Travel agency
• Computer tech support

Sunday Projects is similar to sites like Your Man In India (YMII), which perform larger projects (business, data, entry, research, presentations) and charge by the hour or quote a price depending on the project. YMII focuses mainly on NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) and can assist with anything regarding India such as sending your family flowers, helping with taxes, relocating to India, etcetera. Outsourcing has become personal. It’s obvious that Sunday can only offer their services so cheap because of this. They’re looking for a cheap solution, not something focused on customer experience.

>> Read more about Americans outsourcing to Asia [1, 2, 3]