How we calculate our hourly fee
It's not easy to build a sturdy and sustainable business. That's true whether your business is in manufacturing, retail, food, finance, or any other industry.
It's certainly not easy to build a sturdy and sustainable business in the Virtual Assistant market. The platform is relatively new and the user-base is active, but it takes time to grow.
However, we don’t expect miracles. Sure, we have some good people working with us, but one thing encourages growth: realistic fees.
Here are five reasons why:
Reason #1. Stable development is expensive
We only hire staff in the United Kingdom. We don't send work overseas. The result is that the salary we pay our staff is higher than some of our overseas competitors pay. Each time we make contact with a potential client it costs us around £15. Each individual consultation request can cost us £100 or more.
Attentive service requires careful observation and management. Our team needs to pay careful and individual attention, to everything they do. We are constantly encouraging them to work as efficiently as possible, and to meet the needs of our third-party services.
Reason #2. Realistic fees ultimately mean lower prices
If you pay £30/ hour for a one hour consultation, we're probably not making very much money as a company. We only start to grow and make a profit once a client has been with us for more than 1 year.
The alternative to this one-off hourly fee would be an upfront cost. We don’t charge upfront costs.
Reason #3. Realistic fees allow us to hire better VAs
VA-UK is an emerging company. Looking ahead, we want to make VA-UK even better. We want to:
* Give you more extensive services with improved features.
* Improve and add app and mobile services for our clients.
* Answer 100% of your support questions within 2 hours of receiving them.
But, to make that happen, VA-UK needs to hire better VAs, developers and a bigger support team. To hire extra staff, costs money.
Reason #4. Realistic fees allow us to support secure free cloud-based applications
Here at VA-UK, almost all of the products we use with our clients like our cloud-based (SaaS) facilities, Office 365, MS Office Suite (Office Web Apps) along with SharePoint Server, Exchange Server and Lync Server, Flow, Calendly etc. are free to our customers and we provide full support for them.
Reason #5. Not all companies are secure
Fewer than 10% of over 1600 Virtual Assistant service providers in the UK adhere to key legislation. VA-UK is fully compliant with GDPR and is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office to ensure our data protection is in accordance with the law.
Again this kind of security costs money.
Why should I pay higher fees when there are cheaper alternatives out there?
Of course the choice of whom you choose is entirely up to you. But we think we’re pretty special. VA-UK adheres to the guidelines set out by the Society of Virtual Assistants and the UK Association of Virtual Assistants. We also keep your data safe and we have professional indemnity insurance with Hiscox Insurance to cover all tasks.
From the moment we start talking with you to the moment we deliver, costs will always be transparent. You will be in complete control of your budget and know exactly what you are paying for and we also promise to always treat you fairly.
Your thoughts?
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Please feel welcome to give us your thoughts by contacting us.