VIRTUAL ASSISTANT SERVICE | myLoyalVA

Where do we get our virtual assistants? This is a question that we need to address here in this post. First of all Virtual Assistance is not geographically bound. Anyone who would like to venture into this business could even do so even from their homes. But, here at myLoyalVA Services, we are not home-based. We have an off-site facility wherein our Loyal Virtual Assistance team are ever ready to serve our customers.The difference from a home-based VA Service and a Corporately structured VA service is quality control.

Nowadays, small to medium companies in almost all parts of Europe and the Americas have considered outsourcing jobs to a virtual site somewhere in another continent. It might either be in Central Asia and/or Southeast Asian Region. From tasks ranging to simple data entry, virtual assistance, customer service to the more complex credit and collection, telemarketing sales, internet web content writing, medical transcriptions and technical support, just to mention some few. There are underlying reasons why they are slowly doing so. Even bigger companies like Dell, Intel, Dish Network have outsourced their tasks in these areas.

First criteria that a company would probably look for to determine from where they are going to draw their BPO services from would be Language. The universal language that is being used in BPO’s is of course English. However, companies could probably find it a lot easier to understand the culture of influences of the countries that they are looking at. European companies specially those coming from Great Britain might find Central Asia a potent source of active pool for talents who could provide these services since most of the qualified countries specially India was colonized by Great Britain and it left its mark on its people there. Similarly, for companies coming from the United States and North America, they might find a qualified country in the Philippines which was a colony of the United States before. The marks that were left by the colonizers were deeply inculcated into the denizens of these countries that is why speaking English whether it would of American Accent or British Accent is not a problem.

Second thing to consider is education. Education aspect is critical since this would determine if the workers there could adapt to the company’s cultures and values. It is very important to note the pattern of that country’s educational system to be able to understand if the BPO workers would have the necessary capability and qualifications to meet the standards of the company that they are going to provide their services with. In these regions that I mentioned their educational system and curricula are patterned after their Western colonizers.

Third is again based on culture and habits. Would that country’s BPO workers be flexible enough to adapt to the changes in working schedules that they are going to provide their services with. This is a critical matter since the timezones between separate continents are almost or more than half day apart. The ability of the people in that country to adjust to their working schedules is a very important criteria for companies to look into.

Finally, the most important part. Would the BPO workers or businesses of that country accept the level of payment that they are going to get from their customers from America and Europe? Chances are they would and definitely this is also one of the major reasons why most American & European companies are diverting their companies’ task to virtual sites wherein BPOs could take care of the tasks that were used to be too easy but too many to handle at their ends. Paying virtual sites or BPO’s could enable medium scale to big companies to save more if not the most both in terms of profits, productivity and efficiency if and only if they would be able to establish from what country they are going to draw them from. Just like in Virtual Assistance or in other areas of Business Process Outsourcing, there have been numerous big companies who have drawn their outsourced help from these countries and nobody could deny that. The primary reason is cost. Cost that could mean a lot to their customers. Paying more for a standardized service is no longer reasonable.

Quality of jobs from their chosen countries are closely monitored and quality controlled. Just like what we have here at myLoyalVA Services. One should not conclude that a writer is also a Virtual Assistant. BPO business is unlike writing blogs wherein a writer could sometimes due to inevitable reasons, wasn’t able to proofread his works thoroughly and came up with an article that has some grammatical errors according to other writer’s standards. It is entirely different when it comes to Virtual Assistant business. Business is business and quality of work in Customer Service is of utmost importance. Writing is an expression and there are writers out there who lambasts errors from another fellow writer undermining the fact that in his own blogs there have been repetitive errors that he committed too. Petty errors same as he had pointed out that are not even worth mentioning unless of course there is a hidden agenda which we understand since he is a VA.

Virtual Assistance and Business Process Outsourcing is an open market. Customers get to chose the providers they like who could help them with their needs. Several factors would help these customers decide on who to select - price, quality of service, efficiency & speed in delivery to mention a few. I agree track record in this business is important but new players are always welcome in this field and this cycle of old and new players is perpetual. These new players might even outdo, outperform and even outmatch older players; similarly older players who are learned & with the necessary wisdom to welcome them might even keep their edge from others and remain the leader in this field. Access to new technology solutions are open to all and no single BPO or VA provider could say that they are the only best. But just the same, there should be fair, open and equally shared opportunities for everyone no matter where they are. Virtual Assistance is not geographically bound and customers know that.

Business jealousies or even insecurities are normal but it ain’t right to discredit a competitor with racist notes in public. This is a rule of thumb in business. When I was a Global Accounts Marketing Manager for a Global IT Company which started in the States in the 50s, I was fortunate to understand that rule. Their inventions and innovations have been revised & re-branded by partners & competitors all over the world. They knew they started the technology that they introduced to the world but they also understood that the market is a free for all field. We discussed about competition all the time. We talked about those new competitions, their strengths and their flaws but we only did it behind closed doors inside the board room. Outside we played fair and square. The market playing field is vast and no single player could handle them all.

Anyway, I just pointed this out since there is a old timer in this VA industry who we initially thought could be a role model - a leader whom we could probably extract wisdom from but had just recently broke our hearts. Unfortunately, he probably must have ran out of topics to write about and just picked on some errors that should have been professionally taken up. If I noticed an error from a fellow writer even from a competitor, I would professionally point that out to him in private rather than posting a blog about it unless of course there is an “obvious” agenda for not doing so. Is Virtual Assistance a racial issue now?

Nonetheless, we at myLoyalVA Services welcomes that. It means that we are gradually getting the exposures and are now being considered an active competition in this field. We are gaining our presence on the web and now becoming a brand in Virtual Assistance. Yes, we are Young and New. Above all, we are here to stay and we would strive hard to serve our customers to the best of our abilities. I would not dare say that we are the Best or would be the Best. All I could say at this point is that WE ARE A BETTER ALTERNATIVE IN VIRTUAL ASSISTANCE FOR MORE REASONS THAN ONE!