Any business owner knows the importance of smart delegation. When the more mundane of your admin, sales, and customer service tasks can be taken off your hands, you’re freed up to focus on the fun stuff: the higher-level tasks that really grow your business. Virtual assistants might just be the best possible way to gain this freedom. So let’s look in detail at the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant and exactly what they can do for your business.
What Do Virtual Assistants Do?
A virtual assistant (VA) can effectively do any administrative task that doesn’t require an in-person presence in your office. If one of your personal administrators or secretaries works remotely using the internet, then that job could be taken by a VA, usually at a fraction of the cost. That VA could be anywhere in the world as long as they have a good fast internet connection. This is the essence of online outsourcing.
The Phenomenal Rise of Outsourcing
Since the global pandemic and its swathe of lockdowns, there’s been a deep shift in the mindset of employers all over the world. With so many people working from home for extended periods of time, it’s become glaringly apparent just how many everyday business tasks can be performed perfectly well from outside the office. Naturally, more and more eyes have turned toward virtual hiring.
Today, the global outsourcing market is valued at $92.5 billion, $62 billion of which is from the US alone. In fact, the majority of businesses already outsource, with 66 percent of US businesses outsourcing at least one department. And this trend is only growing.
Cut Operating Costs By Over Sixty Percent
Outsourcing your tasks and departments to virtual assistants can be expected to cut your operating costs by sixty percent or more over hiring local full-time employees. For any budget-conscious business owner, that’s a savings not to be sniffed at!
The fact is, with VAs, you can hire more experienced, better-qualified, better-educated workers under more flexible working conditions, and for lower wages. You can also say goodbye to the majority of your equipment upkeep, benefits, paid training, and more costs.
Flexible Hiring Arrangements
There’s also a great deal of flexibility when it comes to hiring VAs. There’s no need to jump into a full-time job offering with VAs, with all the risks such a commitment entails. Instead, it’s often best to start on part-time terms.
You can hire a variety of candidates to complete certain trial tasks for an extended period of time, carefully short-listing those who perform best and expanding the hours you give them. You can choose to hire on an hourly basis or purely on a performance basis, with payments released when milestones are achieved. There’s practically unlimited flexibility in hiring arrangements with VAs.
Super-Easy Communication
You might imagine that employing someone so far away would make it hard to communicate clearly. But these days, we have Skype, Zoom, Slack, Troop Messenger, Chanty, and a whole range of other chat, conference, and collaboration tools that make digital communication effortless. There really is no need to have your employees and assistants physically sitting in the room with you in order to outline tasks, talk over strategy, and give detailed feedback.
Instant screen capture video tools like Loom and TechSmith Capture allow you to describe any task in detail in person, and then later share the link to your video with someone in Buenos Aires. For quick, secure file sharing, you have Google Docs, Dropbox, Microsoft Office Online, and many other options. All of these allow for total control over what any individual can and cannot access.
Even Fax Is Freed From the Office!
You might be wondering how someone outside of your office and country can use a US-based telephone number or fax machine. Well, with VoIP phones and online fax, even these can be easily outsourced.
Your assistant in Rio can call and fax your clients in Los Angeles with zero loss of function, quality, or results. Better yet, digitalizing your telephone lines will almost always cost far less than maintaining an office landline, phone, and fax machine.
Try to Align Your Timezones
The only possible detriment to hiring someone in another country is a large difference in time zones. This might not be an issue at all, but if you wish to communicate with your VA throughout the day, it’s wise to hire someone who lives in a similar time zone to yours.
This is one reason why Latin America is ideal for US-based businesses when it comes to outsourcing. When you’re hiring someone in Brazil, Argentina, Puerto Rico, or Chile, your time zones will never be more than a few hours out of sync.
Dip Into the Vast Pool of VA Talent
Some business owners worry that the quality of work and workers will drop when they outsource. It’s true that if you jump into outsourcing head first without guidance, you’re likely to have a few false starts and it will take a while to find the right person for the job. But when you use an established VA agency that carefully selects and verifies the credentials of their candidates, picking only the cream of the crop, you’ll be amazed at the quality and credentials of VA you can find.
All candidates from Latin America should be bilingual and fluent in English, for instance, and at least college-educated. No matter what field of work you’re looking for help in, you’re options are vast. When it comes to hiring virtual assistants, it really is a buyer’s market. You can expect candidates with years of relevant experience and training.
Happy, Keen, Dedicated Workers
Another very pleasant realization awaiting most business owners who first dip their toes into outsourcing is how delighted your VA can be with a wage that you might consider to be low. Unless you’ve traveled and lived abroad extensively, it’s often difficult to understand the enormous difference in the cost of living between most western countries and popular outsourcing regions like Latin America.
Hiring a virtual assistant really is a win-win situation. Even though you’re cutting your wage costs in half (at the very least), you’re providing your new workers with an excellent quality of life. They’d often be hard-pressed to find such a well-paid job in their local vicinity. They’re often extremely keen to perform well, help your business grow, and stay with you for as long as they can.
What Tasks Can a Virtual Assistant Do?
There’s really no limit to the tasks you can give your VA as long as it doesn’t require their physical presence in another location. You’ll most commonly find VAs helping businesses in the administrative roles of back office support, in the client-facing roles of customer service, and in sales support.
VAs in Admin
One area a VA can truly shine is in admin roles that support you and the daily functioning of your business. A VA can manage your calendar, improving your productivity. They can manage, filter, and respond to your emails and phone calls. They can organize your business trips by booking plane and train tickets, accommodation, and restaurant tables.
They can manage your contact lists, and prepare spreadsheets and databases of customer details. They can set up email autoresponders, and follow up personally with customers, sending reminder emails and thank you notes. They can set up and manage social media accounts and manage your company’s blog: managing comments, interacting with freelance writers, or producing content themselves. They can do endless research tasks into any area of marketing or business you desire.
Reduce Your Stress With Personal Care
There’s no reason to limit your VA’s duties to business-related only. After all, if you’re a more productive individual, then your business will benefit too.
So why not have your VA help with personal errands, such as reminding you of the upcoming birthdays of your friends and family? They can even find your gifts and help you prepare special events. They can help you arrange holidays, do grocery and clothes shopping, and solve all kinds of miscellaneous daily problems and odd jobs. Anything virtual activity that will free you up and reduce your stress, they can do.
VAs in Customer Support
Customer-facing support is another terrific area for virtual assistants to work in. You can set up 24-hour support with individuals who are personable, well-trained, and fluent in English interacting with your customers over chat, email, social media, or the phone.
VAs are perfectly suited to handle customer service tickets, inbound support calls, and more. They can deal with the delicate, finicky details of resolving queries and complaints, allowing you to pay attention to other things like finding more customers.
Super-Charge Your Customer Service
We all know from personal experience how important good customer service is. It makes us trust and like a company more, which in turn means we spend more and stay longer. In fact, 89 percent of customers are more likely to do more business with any company after a positive customer support experience.
And with VAs, a company’s customer service budget can stretch a whole lot farther. By outsourcing, you can hire more experienced customer service agents for less in every customer-facing area of your business.
VAs in Sales
One area you might not have thought of for hiring VAs is your sales department. But there’s a vast pool of skilled, experienced, talented sales professionals in Latin America and elsewhere.
A VA can handle cold calling, warm calling, and any kind of follow-up with prospects. They can manage your lead database, screening and nurturing leads, bringing them to fruition. They can deliver quotes and even give online sales presentations. Any sales task that doesn’t require someone physically visiting a client can be handled and knocked out of the park by an experienced VA.
You can get started finding the perfect VA today. Schedule a free consultation with Viva. We’re an agency specializing in outsourcing to Latin America. All our candidates are bilingual, college-educated, and ready to support your business.
