As a business owner, you tend to operate your business rather than focus on growing it, which should be the other way around. However, as your business grows, repetitive tasks seem to be growing and consuming all of your daily time. Gradually, you feel tired and bored with the mundane tasks.

Luckily, you have an option to choose whether to stay the way you run your business, or hire a virtual assistant where you can delegate those monotonous tasks. But the question is, how (and where) to hire a virtual assistant?

Let’s face it. Hiring a virtual staff in the US or Australia can costs you much. For example in the USA alone, a virtual assistant can range from $7.25 to $38.40, having an average of $16.15 per hour of work.

So, if you would want to hire someone just to answer emails and other non-phone jobs, you might be having a second thought of hiring a virtual employee because of the high rate.

But hiring a reliable virtual assistant should not costs you that much. There are lots of recruitment service companies that offers much less expensive hourly rate.

The Top 2 Countries for Sourcing Virtual Assistants.

India and the Philippines are considered as the top two destinations when it comes to outsourcing virtual staff. Accordingly, before Elance became Upwork, it has reported that almost 13% of its 8 million virtual assistants are from the Philippines.

Why do companies and businesses favor India and the Philippines?

• India is the second largest English-speaking country. When it comes to IT and back office works, clients favor Indian virtual assistants.
• Philippines has one of the highest literacy rate in the world. According to Global English’s survey of 180,000 global employees, it came out that the Philippines is considered as the world’s best in terms of Business English.
• Foreign companies find it easy to work with Filipino virtual staff. The reason is that Filipinos can adapt to different cultures and have a great understanding.

How to Hire Your Virtual Assistants?

Probably you may already have the idea on where to hire. But hiring the right virtual staff for your business needs a thorough assessment first of what kind of tasks your virtual staff should work for you. To give you an outline on how to prioritize your on-going tasks, we compiled a detailed breakdown of the different tasks of virtual assistants who have customer service skills.

Tasks of Virtual assistants include:

• Listening and responding to customer’s concerns and other queries.
• Establishing long-term relationships and trust with clients.
• Assessing clients’ concerns to achieve customer satisfaction.
• Providing an accurate details of company’s products and services.
• Providing solutions as needed.
• Recording of customers’ data.
• Lead generation.
• Resolving customer complaints.
• Handling of returned products, if there’s any.
• Going an extra mile for customer engagement.

Hiring a virtual assistant/s to delegate monotonous tasks is considered as one of the best decisions you would ever made for your business. Imagine focusing on things that matter most while your virtual staff is managing the tasks you used to do. Wouldn’t it be great to have enough time for things that mostly need your attention?

Skills to look out for During Training and Probation Period

You will never know how good a virtual assistant is unless he or she’s already inside. Here are some of the necessary skills to look out for during the “temporary days”.

The Ability to Follow Instructions the RIGHT WAY

• First and foremost, this ability should be recognizable to any VAs out there. Let’s take a good example:  You’ve asked your virtual assistant to create a new logo for you upcoming website. Of course, included are the specifications such as colors, sizes and fonts. However, the logo is way smaller than what you required. So the next thing your VA would do is to edit the logo, which is actually time-consuming and would eventually lead to a lot of wasted hours.

For things to run smoothly, your VA should have the ability to follow instructions in a precise manner.

Taking Initiative

• Usually, VAs work on repetitive but essential tasks on a daily basis. By saying this, it means that you don’t necessarily need to give daily instructions. However, if you would provide instructions every day, you would noticed that your virtual staff wouldn’t start working without receiving your daily dose of instruction. And honestly? This is exhausting and time-consuming as well.

Ability to BEAT the Deadline

• Let’s admit it. Slow working staff are to be considered as hindrance if you are trying to scale up your business.

A good example is your graphic designer submits the logo beyond the scheduled launch date of your new website. It only means that you are missing out a lot of potential income!

 Where to Find Virtual Assistants Fit for your Business?

As mentioned earlier, the Philippines is a powerhouse in the outsourcing industry. But maybe you would ask, “Aside from less expensive rate, what other qualities do Filipino virtual assistants have?” A very good question indeed! And to answer that, below are the reasons why you should hire a virtual assistant from the Philippines.

• Higher education levels compared to others.
• Competency in English language.
• Past experiences with Westerners.
• Advantages when it comes to Time Zone.
• A well-balanced work-life situation.

Why GoVirtuals?

Hiring your virtual assistant from GoVirtuals will certainly provide you the most enjoyable benefit of getting your personal virtual assistant. It is from our personal experience here in GoVirtuals speaking when we tell you that hiring your VA from us is one of the best decisions you would make.

Discover now how we can lift off your tasks and ease your burden by delegating them to our dedicated team.

Book a discovery call today and let one of our Outsourcing Specialists help you figure out the necessary step to successful hiring of your virtual assistant. 

by Deanna Visperas of GoVirtuals.com