Virtual assistants may not have the most glamorous jobs on earth, but there’s no denying just how necessary they are to the success of most SMEs. A great offshore virtual assistant can free up your time, keep your business running efficiently even while you sleep, and ensure that important tasks never get overlooked. Meanwhile, hiring the wrong Virtual Assistant (VA) can cost you time and money and damage your reputation. Clearly, then, you need to know how to choose correctly before you begin the hiring process… And this is where established agencies become highly relevant.
Why Should You Hire Your Virtual Assistants From An Established Company?
Entrepreneurs operating on strict budgets are all too often lured in by the extremely low rates freelance offshore Virtual assistants offer. Sadly, when it comes to customer service quality, they usually get what they pay for: While there are good freelancers out there, the vast majority of them are inexperienced and may not have the language proficiencies required to communicate effectively on your behalf. This can lead to confusion, missed appointments and deadlines, and all manner of other snags. When you hire a VA from an established agency, on the other hand, you gain all of the following benefits:
Quality assurance
Agencies vet their VAs thoroughly. Why? A bad VA will reflect poorly on them as a company, so it’s in their best interest to hire only skilled, professional VAs. Furthermore, most agencies guide their clients through an initial consultation process, during which they’re paired with the VA most likely to meet their needs. This results in specific, personalized service you can count on.
The benefit of experience
Agencies require that all of their VAs have at least two-three years of experience, so you can rest assured that you’ll never be paired with an amateur when you hire through an agency. You will also save time when training your new VA as the agency will try to connect you with a VA who has experience in your industry.
A lack of language constraints
Agencies do their best to hire a number of different VAs with a wide variety of different language proficiencies. As such, even if your line of work requires bilingual or trilingual skills, you should have no problem finding an agency-based VA to fit your needs.
Access to backup
VAs may be extremely efficient, but they’re not machines. Like all human beings, they sometimes require sick leave, personal leave, maternity leave, etc. If you’re working with a freelancer this can represent a grave inconvenience—After all, you only have one VA! If, on the other hand, you hire through an agency, you’ll have access to multiple VAs. When your regular VA is not available, you’ll be quickly and conveniently connected with a replacement.
Finally, a really superb offshore agency will help you with a number of other subsidiary tasks as well. They will, for instance, usually provide you with a legally binding contract so you don’t have to write one yourself, and they may give you assistance in preparing your VA for their new role. Ergo, while hiring through an agency is slightly more expensive than hiring a freelancer, over the long term it tends to offer greater actual value.
