There is a wide range of services that a virtual assistant can provide to business owners.
These can be administrative tasks like data entry, calendar management, and managing your travel arrangements.
Or it could be something more specialized like bookkeeping, customer support, and social media management.
But first, let’s establish why you need to hire one.
Why Hire a Virtual Assistant?
Outsourcing your non-core tasks to a virtual assistant provides cost-effective yet flexible administrative support for business owners. They free you from these time-consuming yet vital tasks, so you can focus on running your business.
And since they’re working remotely in countries like the Philippines where the exchange rate is in your favor, you can still pay them competitive salaries while still saving on labor costs. Virtual assistants enable your company to scale faster, making them especially ideal for small businesses starting out.
What is a Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant is an independent contractor that remotely carries out administrative work for entrepreneurs. They can either work full-time or part-time as a freelancer with an hourly rate.
How Do Virtual Personal Assistant Services Work?
A virtual PA service utilizes various apps and software like scheduling apps to help keep track of and manage your daily schedule. They can also set your appointments with your clients or team members and even help make purchases for you.
What Services Does a Virtual Assistant Offer?
VA services cover just about anything these days.
They can answer your phone calls, oversee project management, manage your socmed accounts, and even do a bit of bookkeeping for you. Some can also help with lead generation and web design!
Tasks to Outsource to a Virtual Assistant
Here are some of the most common tasks that big and small businesses alike are assigning to virtual assistants:
Responsibility: General Virtual Assistance
The most common of the virtual assistant services is general virtual assistance. These range from managing your schedule, answering customer queries through emails or calls, invoicing, and making travel arrangements.
Responsibility: Content Writing and Management
Another reason companies avail of virtual assistant services is to help their in-house team produce quality content for their website. For this task, your VA must be proficient in writing quality content and using web content management systems like WordPress.
Responsibility: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Digital Marketing.
Given how valuable a strong online presence is today, anyone capable of driving traffic to your website would be invaluable. However, this task requires a lot of patience and an awareness of the latest trends, skills which you or your team may not have.
Fortunately, there is always the option of outsourcing your SEO and digital marketing tasks to VAs. Many VAs can help improve your website’s visibility on Google and other search engines, allowing you to reach a larger audience.
Responsibility: Social Media Management
Besides your website, your social media accounts are often your most effective means to engage with your target audience. However, managing your accounts, especially if you have several, can be tedious and time-consuming.
That is why many companies today are outsourcing their socmed management to virtual assistants. Having a more experienced and socmed-savvy VA handle this task gives you better insights into what your target audience wants -and how your company can provide it.
Responsibility: Web Development
Hiring an in-house web developer to build and maintain your website may sound smart, but their services don’t come cheap. Instead, many companies, particularly those with smaller budgets, prefer to outsource this task to a virtual assistant.
Many VAs are proficient in web development and design, enabling them to design, develop, and maintain your website (among other tasks).
Responsibility: Audio and Video Editing.
Despite what some may believe, editing audio clips and videos is neither easy nor cheap. Because of this, many companies outsource this to virtual assistant services.
VAs can trim down or combine clips, add music or sound effects, adjust video lighting, and apply color corrections to produce professional-looking videos for their client.
Responsibility: Miscellaneous.
Aside from the ones mentioned above, there are many more tasks that a company can outsource to VAs. These include research, graphic design, taking down the minutes of a meeting, and even ordering office supplies online.
How to Decide What You Should Outsource to a VA
Identifying which tasks to outsource can be tricky, especially if it’s your first time to do so. To help you decide, here are some pointers to remember:
- List down all your everyday tasks.
- Categorize these into four categories:
- Tasks you don’t like doing.
- Tasks you don’t know how to do.
- Tasks you don’t have time to do.
- Tasks only you can do.
- Next, establish a budget, so you know what pricing you can afford. This way, you can outsource tasks to a VA while minimizing your spending.
- Finally, prioritize getting a VA on tasks you’re not good at or don’t like doing, so you can focus on things only you can do.
What’s the First Thing to Outsource to My Virtual Assistant?
Usually, the first set of tasks companies outsource to a virtual assistant are administrative tasks, hence the popularity of administrative assistant jobs. These tasks are a vital part of your company’s everyday operations, but are tedious and time-consuming.
What You Need to Know About Choosing a Virtual Assistant
First, you need to look at your applicants’ credentials. The VA you’ll hire should have all the necessary skills they’ll need for the job you’re hiring them for.
Next, you need to know their work hours. If you hire a VA from another country, such as in the Philippines, you may have to make allowances for differences in time zones- although many VAs are happy to adjust to yours..
Finally, you must probe into your applicant’s personality and work ethic. No matter how good a VA is at their assigned tasks, if their values aren’t a good fit with yours, the arrangement isn’t likely to last long.
What Qualities Should a Virtual Assistant Possess?
A good VA should be reliable in the sense that you can trust them to accomplish their tasks on time.
In addition, they must also possess strong communication skills and resourcefulness, as well as the ability to multitask effectively.
Which Virtual Assistant Service is Best for You?
There is no single “best” type of virtual assistant, as each one specializes in a specific task and is suitable for a client’s different needs.
For example, if you need someone to liaise with your customers, you need an account manager.
But if you need a VA to help you manage your day-to-day tasks while you run your company, you need an executive assistant.
And if you’re in the real estate business, you need a real estate VA.
Advantages of Working With PH Virtual Assistants
The Philippines is often considered one of the best countries to outsource VAs from. These are some of the qualities that PH VAs are known and valued for:
Easy Communication.
One advantage of hiring a Filipino VA is that it’ll be easier to communicate with them since most are proficient in English. This is because English is the country’s second language, is widely taught in schools, and is used in public communication.
Less Training
Many Filipino virtual assistants are college graduates, which means they’re already highly skilled in their chosen fields. This makes it easier to onboard them, as you don’t need to spend a lot of time training them.
Challenges of Hiring PH Virtual Assistants
So, what challenges do you need to look out for? There aren’t a lot, to be honest, but some have reported the following.
Productivity Concerns
No, this isn’t because Filipino VAs are inefficient or ineffective. The productivity concern most first-time clients are concerned with is keeping track of their VA’s tasks from afar. After all, it’s not like you’re working on the same continent, let alone the same office, right?
Fortunately, one solution for this problem is utilizing the right monitoring software.
With fifteen years of experience matching highly-skilled VAs to the right company, Remote Staff has been able to pick one of the most effective tracking softwares out there – and have made it available to its clients and subcontractors.
Do You Need an Experienced Virtual Assistant?
Still on the fence about whether you’d want to hire a VA? Here are some common types of support a VA can provide you and your company with.
Executive Virtual Assistance
An Executive Assistant provides administrative support specifically to high-level executives. They’ll manage their client’s schedules, act as a point of contact between their client, employees, and customers, and even take on the role of project manager.
Marketing Virtual Assistance
If you’re having difficulty managing your company’s marketing campaigns online, a marketing assistant can help. They can take charge of your current marketing campaigns, gather feedback, and conduct market research.
Customer Service
Today, many companies hire virtual assistants to improve their customer service and better retain existing customers while attracting new ones. They can also handle inbound customer queries and complaints 24/7, allowing you to provide round-the-clock customer service.
Project Management
Does your team struggle to achieve its performance targets? Then you should consider getting a VA to oversee projects to their completion.
And once the project is finished, you can also decide to end their contract as project-based freelancers or hire them full-time.
Social Media Assistance
Social media can up your business to a bigger audience…if you know how to utilize it. If you don’t have the skills, or don’t have the time to manage your social media accounts, you can hire a VA to do that for you and get much better results.
Copywriting
Writing sales pages, email sequences, and online ads to promote your products and services and drive sales is a difficult skill to master.
Why spend time and money learning something you might not be good at when you can hire a perfectly good copywriter instead?
How Can a Virtual Assistant Service Help You?
Hiring a virtual assistant can help you focus on the more vital aspects of your business while your VA takes care of the more mundane tasks.
Besides these, VAs can also help improve your socmed presence, handle project management concerns, write articles and FAQs for your webpage, and provide customer service.
How Can I Hire A Virtual Assistant?
Hiring a virtual assistant can be challenging. In order to find quality talent, you have to recruit through different channels — and many often still end up with mediocre virtual assistants. It’s both time-consuming and frustrating.
That’s why you save more time and money when you outsource your recruitment process through a reliable agency like Remote Staff, since we constantly maintain a roster of highly qualified and experienced virtual assistants for a wide variety of business needs.
How Much Should You Pay For Virtual Personal Assistant Services?
Virtual assistant fees vary, depending on their specializations. VPA service rates range from $5.32 – $6.55.
Here are virtual assistant rates for :
- Accounting Virtual Assistant $9.22 – $10.65
- Executive Virtual Assistant $6.04 – $8.60
- Marketing Virtual Assistant $5.32 – $6.55
- Technical Virtual Assistant $6.04 – $7.06
- Ecommerce Virtual Assistant $5.83 – $7.58
Is Using A Virtual Assistant Service Cost-effective, Even For A Small Business?
Hiring Filipino virtual assistants is often more cost-effective than hiring their local counterparts. The rates are competitive and affordable, even for small businesses with tight budgets.
But the real value here lies in time savings. Use the time a VA frees up for you to focus on business activities that really move the needle forward. Or simply spend more quality time with your loved ones!
What Methods Of Payment Are Available?
We take care of your VA’s payroll for you and you can settle Remote Staff’s service fee via electronic fund transfer or credit card.
Once your payment clears, we will send your VA’s compensation straight to their Philippine bank accounts on their appointed pay days.
Why Should I Use Remote Staff For My Virtual Assistance Needs?
With all the recruitment agencies out there, why should you use Remote Staff?
Remote Staff has been one of the pioneers in the remote talent industry for over 15 years and counting. You can bet that we can find the right talent for you.
A Virtual Assistant Who Is Ready To Jump Right In
We will provide you with the best match for your virtual assistant needs in as little as 6 business days. And your chosen VA can start in as early as 3 business days upon hiring.
Top-notch Quality Virtual Assistants
Our top-notch virtual assistants are highly-skilled at their craft. Just communicate your expectations and provide the tools needed for the job and you can expect high-quality output from your VAs.
Organized & Secure Virtual Assistants
Our VAs have outstanding organizational skills for your business tasks.
They can help with tasks such as scheduling appointments, creating spreadsheets, and bookkeeping, while safeguarding your proprietary business data.
Time Management Nightmares To Blissful Focus
Up to your eyeballs in tasks that you don’t know where to begin? Delegate most of them to your highly-qualified VAs and turn your time management nightmares to blissful focus while you get closer to your business goals.
Not Enough Hands On Deck To An Optimized Team
Want to expand your business operations but lack manpower? Hire top-notch VAs to optimize your team’s productivity faster.
FAQs
Are Virtual Personal Assistants Worth It?
Of course! Hiring Filipino Virtual Assistants is often more cost-effective compared to local office-based talent.
But the real value is the time you save on all the tasks you can delegate. You can use the extra hours for tasks that grow your business further – or spend it with the people that matter most.
Are Virtual Assistants Only For Work Related Administrative Tasks?
Aside from admin tasks, some of our VAs specialize in different fields like accounting, social media management, graphic design, content writing, and more.
Just inform us of your needs and we can match you with the best VA in our talent pool.
When Is The Right Time To Hire Virtual Assistants?
Our clients usually hire virtual assistants when:
- Their admin tasks are taking up too much of their time
- They lack the expertise in a certain field like social media or accounting.
- They want to free-up their schedule for more productive pursuits.
- They want a cost-effective option for scaling their business operations.
So if you have the same concerns, it might be the right time to hire a virtual assistant today.
Is Hiring A Virtual Assistant Difficult?
Hiring the right virtual assistant is difficult if you’re doing it without experience (or without experienced assistance). You might have to go through a lot of trial and error just to source a few good candidates.
But hiring through Remote Staff can make the recruitment process easier. We have a pool of highly qualified virtual assistants ready to work as early as 3 business days after being hired.
How Many Hours Does A Virtual Assistant Work?
In Remote Staff, you can hire either part-time (minimum 20 hours a week) or full-time (minimum 40 hours a week) VAs.
Your VAs can also work overtime temporarily if needed. (Extra service fees will apply for extra hours.)
But if you need your VAs to work more than 40 hours a week, we suggest that you hire additional VAs to cover that extra shift.
How Many Hours A Week Will I Save?
How many hours do you spend on admin tasks? Maybe you spend 4 hours answering emails and data entry per day. That’s 20 hours a week!
Write down all the tasks you can delegate. They can include menial tasks as well as specialized tasks like web design – and then add up how long they take to do. That’s how many hours you’ll save per week.
Imagine what you could do with those additional hours!
Are Your VAs Trained?
Our VAs are highly skilled and experienced in their respective fields. But we highly encourage you to provide onboarding and any additional training to better equip them for their tasks, if needed.
What If You’re Too Overwhelmed And Don’t Want To Train A Virtual Assistant?
Our VAs are highly trained and experienced and thus aren’t likely to need a lot of hand-holding.
However, if you feel that they might need additional training, we highly recommend that you at least brief them on what they might need to know about your company and the tasks you need them to do.
Are All Of Your VAs Proficient In English?
Yes! When we source VAs, we ensure they are proficient in conversational English to better communicate and collaborate with you and your team.
How Do You Oversee Your VAs?
When you hire your VAs with Remote Staff, you’ll have access to advanced technology that tracks your VA’s productivity online. That includes screenshots of their desktop, application usage, idle time, and more.
And you’ll have access to all the productivity reports of your VAs.
Do You Need A Nondisclosure Agreement?
We value your privacy as your VAs will handle sensitive information about your business. We have stipulations in our service agreement protecting your proprietary information.
But your VAs can sign an additional nondisclosure agreement if needed.
Can We Handle Your Unique Virtual Assistance Needs?
Definitely! Upon our first meeting, we will discuss your unique virtual assistance needs.
You can specify a special skill set or even a particular license or certification.
And we will strive to match you with the best talent for your specific needs.
Is There Anything Virtual Assistants Can’t Do?
You will agree upon the scope of work and work schedule with your VAs. For additional tasks on top of the initial scope of work, you can renegotiate with a possible increase in fees.
As long as the work can be done online and doesn’t cross ethical and legal boundaries, your VAs can usually take care of it.
What Is The Application Process For Your Virtual Assistants?
Our virtual assistants must pass a rigorous screening process, depending on their specializations and skill level. Once they pass our initial interview, they officially enter our talent database.
This way, we always have a rich talent pool ready for matching with our clients.
It should also be noted that our matching process also includes a personality compatibility assessment to ensure that a talent will most likely be a good fit for you and your company in the long run.
What Niches Do Our Virtual Assistants Work In?
Our virtual assistants have a wide range of niches and specializations. Most of our clients contract the following roles:
- Accounting Virtual Assistant
- Executive Virtual Assistant
- Marketing Virtual Assistant
- Personal Virtual Assistant
- Technical Virtual Assistant
- Ecommerce Virtual Assistant
If ever you need someone with a specific skill set, inform us in our discovery call and we’ll either find a match in our database or scout someone just for you.
Ready To Hire Virtual Assistants?
Ready to hire virtual assistants? It only takes a few simple steps.
Let Us Know What Your Business Needs
First, request a call back and let us know your specific business needs during the discovery call.
Select And Match Whom You Want To Work With
We have a roster of highly-qualified virtual assistants ready. After signing the service agreement, we will provide you with a shortlist of the most suitable candidates in as early as 6 business days.
Afterwards, we can set up an interview with your shortlisted candidates. Once you select a candidate to hire, your VA can start working within 3 business days.
Partner Up And Start Doing Business
With Remote Staff, we go beyond matching the right remote talent to your specific business needs. We also administer a personality compatibility test to ensure that they will be able to work harmoniously with you.
We also generate your VA’s productivity reports with our advanced tracking software and even handle the payroll concerns for you.
Our service doesn’t end with recruitment. We are here to help you grow your business in the fastest and most sustainable way possible.
Hire your virtual assistant through Remote Staff today!
John Carlo Pagsolingan is a carefree yet hardworking writer with aspirations of becoming a teacher in the future. He believes that remote working isn’t just a substitute; but is a legitimate alternative to face-to-face work. Learn more as he writes about the advantages of remote work and tips for aspiring remote workers.
Leandro is a content creator and digital nomad who started his career as a remote working content writer. He is an advocate of location independent sources of income. And he believes that everyone has the ability to be one as well.
