What Is a Virtual Assistant Receptionist?

Virtual Assistant Receptionists are independent contractors who help businesses by managing phone correspondence and handling various administrative tasks remotely.

While their responsibilities vary based on the organization that hires them, Virtual Assistant Receptionists can be in charge of taking, making, and forwarding phone calls, setting up a business’s voicemail, responding to emails, forwarding messages to team members, handling customer support, arranging meetings, scheduling appointments, booking trips and reservations, and transcribing audio correspondence. 

As you can engage Virtual Assistants on an hourly basis and only when needed, the cost of hiring them is considerably lower than having a full-time employee. You pay only for the amount of work they do, and you don’t have to invest in their training as they are usually highly experienced and knowledgeable in what they do and can start working on the tasks right away.

Other reasons to hire a Virtual Assistant include: 

• More time to dedicate to business-critical tasks—Having a Virtual Assistant handle tedious and time-consuming tasks can help you focus on the core responsibilities of operating a business, such as managing staff, creating long-term business plans, planning your budget, and meeting with stakeholders 

• Access to an international talent pool—Hiring in-house employees means being limited by a candidate’s location, which drastically limits your options. Virtual Assistants work remotely, which means that you can hire top talents from all across the globe 

What Does a Virtual Assistant Receptionist Do? 

The responsibilities of a Virtual Assistant Receptionist may vary depending on the company. In general, they perform the following tasks: 

• Phone and email correspondence and customer support—Communicating with existing and potential clients and answering their queries is of extreme importance for every business, but this can be time-consuming. A Virtual Assistant can receive, make, and redirect calls as needed, respond and forward emails and messages, and respond to clients’ questions in your stead, so you don’t have to spend hours on the phone, allowing you to focus on more important tasks
• Calendar management—You can have a VA manage your schedule, set up meetings and appointments, book restaurant reservations, accommodation, and flights, and deal with many other administrative tasks on your behalf. This can increase your productivity since they can optimize your schedule and make sure you’re not wasting any time 
• Bookkeeping and invoicing—Accounting can take up to 8–12 hours each month, and you will spend more time on this once the number of clients and revenue increase. Having a Virtual Assistant track your financial transactions, handle invoicing and billing, and take care of payroll and taxes instead of you can be super helpful

How Much Does It Cost To Hire a Virtual Assistant Receptionist?

The cost of hiring a Virtual Assistant Receptionist depends on a number of factors, namely:

• Types of services a candidate offers
• Their qualifications and experience
• Industry-specific knowledge
• Geographic location/regional cost of living

As you can imagine, salaries of Virtual Assistants vary drastically. According to ZipRecruiter, the average salary of a Virtual Assistant Receptionist is $28,794 per year, with the rate of $14 per hour. 

Hiring a Virtual Assistant is a much more cost-effective solution compared to hiring a full-time employee for the same job. You don’t have to cover the benefits and payroll taxes associated with a full-time employee’s salary. Another advantage is that you don’t need to provide office space, equipment, and supplies, allowing you to save more money. 

Expert Tips on Hiring a Virtual Assistant Receptionist 

Although hiring remotely can be convenient, it can also be very challenging since you’ll receive a lot of applicants to choose from since you have access to a global talent pool. We have compiled a few tips that might help you find the right Virtual Assistant Receptionist for your business: 

1. Write a highly specific job description—Spelling out the exact responsibilities and requirements of the role you’re hiring for will help interested applicants assess whether they qualify for the job. This means that unqualified candidates will be less likely to apply, so you’ll receive fewer irrelevant applications and the first phase of the recruitment should be quicker
2. Test your applicants—Assessing candidates based on their portfolios or resumes alone is not a good way to assess their skills. People often spruce up their portfolios, so you may end up hiring someone who’s unfit for the job. If you have to micromanage a VA and QA everything they do, you’ll spend just as much time as you would if you had done the job yourself from the get-go. Always test candidates before extending an offer
3. Don’t rush your decision—Since you’re going to entrust your Virtual Assistant with various important tasks and sensitive company information, you need to pick a qualified and reliable candidate. It’s important that your Virtual Assistant can work well with minimum supervision 
4. Automate your hiring process—Evaluating numerous applicants manually can be extremely time-consuming. Spare yourself the headache by setting up an automated hiring funnel. Speed up your hiring process and reduce hiring costs by 50% with Workello

Hire a Reliable Virtual Assistant Receptionist, Faster

You can think of Workello as the perfect virtual hiring assistant. Our fully automated hiring funnel is the product of countless hours, over $100,000, and dozens of iterations. With Workello, you can automate testing, scheduling, and email correspondence with candidates so you can focus on scaling your business and maximizing revenue.

Here’s how Workello makes hiring a Virtual Assistant Receptionist a breeze:

1. Signup for a free Workello account and launch your automated, pre-configured hiring funnel in less than 3 minutes 
2. Post your job ads across LinkedIn, Monster, Facebook, Indeed, and all your other hiring channels and link to your Workello-hosted application form
3. See all your candidates in a single, unified Workello dashboard, regardless of which hiring channel they applied from
4. Reject, test, interview, and send offers to Virtual Assistant Receptionists with a single click
5. Filter out unqualified candidates with Workello’s built-in testing feature
6. Trigger automated emails and move candidates through your hiring funnel simply by changing their status from a drop-down menu
7. Minimize transactional questions by enabling candidates to see a live status page that tells them exactly which stage of your hiring funnel they are in

Don’t waste hundreds of hours looking for a perfect Virtual Assistant Receptionist that’s supposed to save you valuable time. Set up a fully automated hiring funnel with Workello, cut your hiring costs by 50%, and start accepting ideal candidates today!

Signup now and review 5 Virtual Assistant Receptionist tests for free.