Virtual Assistance as a Leading Home-based Business

Virtual Assistance is now leading as the most in demand hottest home-based businesses, as published in some articles in BCentral. Com, MSN.com. Virtual Assistance is a new administrative profession. Professionals are called Virtual Assistants or VAs. VAs are small are small-scale business owners who provide administrative and personal support while working in long-term collaborative relationships with only a handful of terrific clients. Using phone, fax and email, VAs support their clients without having to ever step foot inside the clients' offices. It's a fabulous way of working, and opens new doors for administrative professionals.

Virtual assistance becomes the hottest home-based business since it is easy to start and the start-up costs are low, and Virtual Assistants (VAs) provide a much needed and valued services that are easy to know. But before one could start this kind of business, there are two things need to be considered: first, assess yourself if you really have the abilities and qualifications of a VA; and second, examine yourself first before you take another step forward if you can handle the tasks of Virtual Assistants. All could have their own business, but not all are meant for it. And to understand more about this new trend in business.

Working with a virtual assistant is fun and convenient. Philippines call center has unique virtual assistant which can help you in your daily work. It doesn’t just reduce your work load, but also lessen your worries thinking of tasks being done. VH virtual assistants are skilled and capable of doing tasks on time. You wouldn’t be bothered by your deadlines and the quality of work because you are assured that our virtual assistants are there to provide you excellence. No matter where you are, if you’re out of the country or having a vacation trip, our virtual assistant will be there to work for you. With the use of your phone or the Internet, you can instruct your virtual assistant what you want them to do. You can readdress complicated and arduous errands to your virtual assistant to save time and do other tasks to meet deadlines. This would also allow you to spend valuable time with your family and friends. Virtual assistants are flexible and organized. They have complete control of their work and manages time effectively so that they can do several projects instantly. Their initiative and brilliant ideas allow them to do multi-tasking and provide high quality work for their clients.

Offshoring and Outsourcing Jobs in Developing Countries

Offshoring and outsourcing in services from call centres to accountancy and medicine have created good jobs in terms of pay and working hours in developing countries. But the International Labour Organization (ILO) study found that improved work practices in the outsourcing industry could reduce excessive rates of staff turnover. The study gives the lie to claims that outsourcing of such work has created "cyber-coolies" or "electronic sweatshops", said Jon Messenger, an ILO researcher and main editor of the study. He said that the jobs being created in offshore business services in developing countries are reasonably good quality jobs by local standards in terms of wages and working conditions.

Wages are below those for similar jobs in rich countries is one of the main motives for companies to outsource operations but average pay in the sector in India is nearly double that in other areas of the formal economy. In the Philippines they were typically 53 percent higher. The study found that average weekly hours were 46-47 hours in India and 45 in the Philippines, whereas one fifth of workers in developing countries work more than 50 hours a week. But negative factors such as frequent night work to handle customers' different time zones, and demanding targets enforced by electronic monitoring resulting in a low level of worker autonomy, led to extremely high levels of staff turnover. Sometimes the turnover rate in the typically young and well-educated workforce could exceed 100 percent a year, and rates of 30-40 percent are not unusual. A few key changes in policies and practices could actually make these good jobs even better while simultaneously helping to reduce staff turnover which would benefit businesses. These could include steps to improve health and safety for night workers, such as regular check-ups, and more flexibility for workers to organise their time and to meet targets.

Governments would want the industries to develop and innovate to move up the value chain rather than simply replicating imported processes. They would also want to retain skilled workers at home rather than encouraging them to emigrate. The industry is highly influenced by language skills, with India and the Philippines serving English-speaking countries, Argentina serving Spain and Mexico building up operations to serve Spanish-speakers in the United States. Africa is relatively underdeveloped although Nigeria's computer-literate population gives it potential.

Maximizing VoIP Benefits in the Call Center

Almost half of the call centers in Asia will use voice over Internet Protocol systems by the end of next year, according to new research. A report from the Yankee Group says that despite VoIP adoption lagging behind earlier predictions, the call center market is embracing the technology. Forty-seven percent of call centers are expected to roll out VoIP by 2007, compared with just 17 percent in 2005. The key reasons for using the new technology are to manage multiple call center sites cheaply and flexibly, and to be able to place agents anywhere, including at home. The largest call centers--those with more than 500 seats--will see the greatest increase in VoIP adoption from now until the end of 2007, the analyst firm predicts. Though VoIP for the enterprise has been much hyped in recent years, Yankee Group said adoption has not met its predictions.

The new VoIP platforms offer appealing features, such as a quick connect function. This feature helps to reduce abandon rates by connecting the call with the agent prior to connecting with the customer, thus eliminating the lengthy pauses associated with dialer-generated calls that many customers associate with incoming sales calls. Another function that many VoIP switches support is automatic recording, so a company can capture 100 percent of its calls. Companies can also automate many of their internal processes, and use the customer intelligence captured to refine and enhance its customer service and sales initiatives. Contact center agents can be trained via best practice interactions, which are captured and later organized via the VoIP recording component. As a result, improvements in contact center service quality and front line supervisor productivity become more possible.

The potential benefits that unified communications offers include improved productivity and lower operating costs. Employees will be able to respond to messages instantly regardless of where they originate; businesses will be able to cut their communications cost because they will rely on fewer components. Unified communications meshes well with the growing variety of user inputting devices. While there has a great deal of progress with using VoIP in the call center, there are still a few barriers to adoption. Many companies do not have the infrastructure to support the new devices. In many cases, CRM hardware is a long-term investment, one spanning several years, so companies may have to wait months or even years before being able to re-examine their infrastructure. Yet, those shortcomings are viewed as short-term issues. Many companies are now using VoIP to enhance their CRM deployment and many more will be joining them during the new year.

CRMs Part on Call Center Success

Customer Relationship Management being the customer centered strategy of the decade and finding its roots in customer satisfaction and customer focus, has started to play a very prominent role in the call center sector. Call centers are finding that implementing this strategy brings them vast benefits. For example the high potential that call center CRM software has in collecting vital customer data and storing it. This data is entirely essential to the call center and is utilized in its day to day activities. It helps them possess a clearer view of the customer being handled and enables them to give the right answers to customer queries, problems etc. Knowing the customer, his preferences, his purchase history etc all contribute significantly to the better handling of the customer. Call center CRM software benefits the call center through its provision and storage of valuable customer data, increased automation, visible reduction in call center costs and its potential to boost customer service levels thereby increasing productivity and ensuring customer satisfaction. It enables customer databases to be kept up to date at all times.

Philippines call centers is providing integrated CRM solution sets that are cost-effective, highly customizable, and functionally rich, specifically geared to the needs of Philippine enterprises, with complete sensible CRM software. These solution sets are what the majority of Philippine businesses look for and are based on a market research done by FPI's mother company, for the Asia-Pacific region. It is predicted that we are at an innovation trough that we the industry will slowly but surely climb out of in the next few months. This is because of the emergence of some really innovative products. Furthermore, the VoIP space is seeing a tremendous amount of growth right now, and many traditional contact center vendors are IP-enabling their solutions. In doing so, they are creating many new features and increased functionality levels.

Key competency on Philippines call centers relies on its capability in providing end-to-end service, combining its CRM business knowledge, its unequalled technical expertise, and a range of flexible and readily installable products. Its various CRM software products extend the functionality where it is required. The resulting program is a thin-client and as such, can be used anywhere Internet access resides. Users can use BEA Weblogic Portal or a Java interface, among others. This can really help with vitalizing call centers and allowing them to be more easily offshored or 'at-homed,' to coin a new phrase. Offshoring is a touchy subject, but the reality is that most contact centers are looking at the potential of offshore locations to reduce costs, and Jacada helps make this possible. The company is currently targeting centers that are 100 seats or more in size and the system payback can be a matter of months, depending on a company's situation. Contact centers have been around for ages, but there are still many areas for us to improve.