What Does a Virtual Assistant Do? How VAs Help Businesses

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Picture this: you're staring at your to-do list, which keeps growing and growing. You're feeling overwhelmed and stressed. Even if you could muster the energy to tackle the tasks, many of them are boring and repetitive, and you'd rather not do them at all. Sound familiar? If so, you're not alone. Many business owners and entrepreneurs share this sentiment. Fortunately, there's a solution to this common problem: virtual assistants. In this blog, we'll explore the answer to the question, "What does a virtual assistant do?" and benefits of hiring a virtual assistant for your business. At VA Bear, we help business owners just like you hire and manage virtual assistants to make their lives easier. The insights in this article will help you understand what a virtual assistant does, how VAs help businesses, and whether hiring one is right for you.

What is a Virtual Assistant? What Do They Do?

A virtual assistant (VA) is a remote professional who supports your business without working on-site. Often hired as independent contractors, VAs are a cost-effective way to handle essential tasks:

No benefits

Office space

Equipment required

Depending on your needs, VAs can take on:

Admin tasks: calendar management, email handling, travel bookings

Customer support: managing inquiries and support tickets

Creative work: social media posts, blog formatting, basic design

Technical support: CRM updates, data entry, light automation

Project assistance: research, vendor coordination, tracking deadlines

Generalist vs. Specialist: Which Type of VA Does Your Business Need?

You can hire a generalist for a mix of duties or a specialist with deep expertise in areas like marketing, ops, or design. Either way, a VA frees you to focus on growth, not the day-to-day grind.

Businesses can save up to 78% in operating costs by hiring virtual assistants instead of full-time staff. Whether you need occasional support or a full-time remote partner, a VA gives you the flexibility to scale, without the overhead.

Why Hire a Virtual Assistant

How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Virtual Assistant

What Does a Virtual Assistant Do? How VAs Help Businesses

If you've ever wished you could clone yourself just to get through your task list, a Virtual Assistant (VA) might be the next best thing. VAs are remote professionals who take on the kind of daily responsibilities that quietly eat away at your time, so you can focus on growing your business, not just running it.

But what exactly do virtual assistants do? The short answer: a lot. The longer answer is that they adapt to meet your business’s specific needs, whether that’s:

Inbox zero

Social media engagement

Running the back-end of your e-commerce store

Everyday Tasks You Can Hand Off

The most common starting point for a VA relationship is administrative support. These are the repetitive, necessary tasks that keep things running but don’t require your attention.

Here’s what that typically includes:

Inbox Management:

Sorting
Responding
Flagging priority emails

Calendar Coordination:

Scheduling meetings
Sending reminders
Handling last-minute changes

Customer Service:

Responding to client queries
Managing support tickets
Even live chat

These basic tasks can be surprisingly time-consuming. Handing them off to a capable VA gives you the space to focus on more strategic, higher-value work.

Specialized Support That Scales With You

Many VAs go beyond general admin and offer specialized skills that add even more value to your business.

This can include:

Ecommerce Support:

Managing product listings
Processing orders
Tracking shipments
Handling returns

Social Media Assistance:

Scheduling posts
Responding to comments
Sourcing content
Basic graphic creation

Light Marketing Tasks:

Updating your website
Managing email campaigns
Creating basic reports

Research & Lead Generation:

Finding potential partners
Researching trends
Gathering competitor insights.

If you’re running a lean operation, a VA with niche experience can be your one-person support team.

Flexible, Custom Support

One of the most significant advantages of working with a virtual assistant is their adaptability. No two businesses need exactly the same kind of help, and an outstanding VA will shape their work around you. You might start off asking them to handle customer emails, and gradually expand their role to include project coordination or content support.

Some VAs even become long-term, strategic partners, quietly anticipating your needs before you say a word. Whether you need 10 hours a month or 40 hours a week, virtual assistants can scale their involvement to match your current workload and future growth.

How VA Bear Simplifies Scaling Your Remote Support Team

Stop juggling multiple platforms and spreadsheets to hire and manage your virtual assistant team. VA Bear is the all-in-one solution that lets you find, hire, manage, and pay top virtual assistants from a single dashboard. VA Bear comes with built-in time tracking, task management, and integrated payroll. Say goodbye to unreliable freelancers and operational bottlenecks as you build a dependable support team that scales with your business.

Transform how you work with virtual assistants through our streamlined platform featuring job boards, CRM tools, and real-time productivity monitoring. Get started today and experience the difference of having everything you need in one place.

Business Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant

Time Savings: Get Some of Your Precious Time Back

Running a small business is no easy task. If you’re like most entrepreneurs, your day-to-day schedule is packed with more tasks than you can wrap your head around. Instead of stretching yourself thin handling non-strategic tasks, you can delegate those to your virtual assistant. This will give you more time to concentrate on achieving larger business goals.

Consider hiring a virtual assistant from another time zone. Some entrepreneurs use this tactic to increase their business’s operating hours beyond the nominal eight hours in their personal time zone. You’ll have more coverage when it comes to client communications and other time-sensitive tasks.

Improved Turnaround of Time-Consuming Tasks

Is there a particular task you put off doing every day? It could be anything from responding to customers’ emails to filling out forms. While tasks like these are important for business tracking and keeping customers satisfied, they may not always require your attention and may be better suited for delegation to an assistant.

Instead of spending your day doing defined repetitive tasks that take too long, pass them on to a virtual assistant and dedicate your time to the big-picture issues that help your business grow.

Reduced Costs for Staffing and Operations

Hiring a full-time, in-person assistant can be costly, not just in salary, but also in benefits, paid leave, office space, equipment, and training. In contrast, virtual assistants work as independent contractors. You only pay for the hours worked or tasks completed, with no overhead for benefits or infrastructure.

Since they work remotely, you can hire talent from anywhere in the world, giving you access to a broader skill pool. Most virtual assistants (VAs) come pre-trained and ready to go, reducing onboarding time and costs. Platforms like VA Bear make it fast and easy to find qualified virtual assistants who can hit the ground running.

Increased Scale of Operations

When you’re growing a business from scratch, predicting what you’ll need in the next month or quarter can be difficult. Hiring full-time employees and renting physical workspaces where they can congregate is a big investment that may not be viable for all companies.

Hiring a virtual assistant is a safe alternative that gives you all the benefits of having an extra resource without the corresponding financial burden. You can add or remove virtual assistants from your team as needed and scale up or down with less stress.

Expanded Reach

Having a strong online presence is no longer optional; it's essential. With more customers shopping digitally, online sales are projected to account for 24% of all global retail sales by 2026. To stay competitive, your brand must actively expand its digital footprint. A consistent digital marketing strategy is key to reaching new audiences, building brand awareness, and driving conversions.

If you’re not ready to build a whole in-house marketing team, consider hiring a virtual assistant with digital marketing expertise. They can help manage your online presence, run campaigns, and track engagement. A skilled VA can also handle lead management to convert interest into action, like:

Sorting inquiries from website forms

Email campaigns

Social ads

Following up efficiently

Improved Customer Service

Delivering excellent customer service is essential for any brand. It not only builds long-term relationships but also drives revenue. Around 73% of business leaders report a direct correlation between customer service and overall business performance.

Using Virtual Assistants to Deliver Proactive, Personalized Customer Support

Virtual assistants can play a key role in enhancing your customer experience. They can monitor your email inbox and social media channels, ensuring timely responses to inquiries.

Beyond reactive support, VAs can help create a more proactive customer service strategy, for example, by notifying customers when a product is back in stock or sharing personalized promotions based on past interests. These thoughtful touchpoints make customers feel valued and significantly boost loyalty to your brand.

Renewed Focus on Core Business Areas

When you’re just starting, it’s natural to handle everything yourself. But as your business grows, doing it all becomes unsustainable. The key is knowing which tasks require your direct oversight and which can be delegated.

Strategic decisions should stay on your plate, as they demand a deep understanding of your brand’s vision, like:

Shaping your business model

Setting budgets

Driving product development

Meanwhile, routine administrative tasks such as note-taking, scheduling meetings, and generating invoices can be easily handled by a virtual assistant. Delegating these tasks frees up your time for high-impact work that genuinely moves the business forward.

Improved Work-Life Balance

The stress of founding, growing, and managing a business can be enough to take a toll on anyone’s mental and physical health. You may find that if you continue to micro-manage all tasks, separating your professional life from your personal life will become difficult. For a lot of people, this can mean it’s harder to give your loved ones the attention they deserve.

Hire a competent virtual personal assistant who can take the more minor tasks off your hands and let you take some much-needed time off from work. This allows you to maintain accountability with the confidence that your virtual assistant will complete your job. Maintaining your health and peace of mind is essential for finding long-term success.

Increased Productivity

When you hire a virtual assistant with specialized skills, you can often complete tasks far quicker than if you tried to learn and do it myself. Your team’s productivity should go up, and the burden on existing staff members should be reduced. Hiring remote assistants to join your team can also be more productive than getting more in-person staff.

Since they work from home, virtual assistants don’t need to waste time commuting or making small talk with colleagues. They’re often paid for only the work they complete. This can make them more focused and productive than full-time employees drawing fixed salaries.

Enhanced Emotional Well-Being

We know your business is like your baby. However, sometimes you need to take a break to focus on your emotional well-being. As an entrepreneur, you carry the responsibility of the firm’s success on your shoulders, which can be exhausting in the long run. You might feel compelled to care for every single thing that goes wrong, whether it's a defective product or a customer’s order getting delayed.

But if you try to focus on everything, you can find yourself getting burned out. When you hire a virtual assistant, you get a trusted individual who can share some of these responsibilities with you, making my daily schedule less overwhelming.

What Makes a Good Virtual Assistant

What to Delegate to a Virtual Assistant

How to Find and Hire the Right Virtual Assistant

Consider Your Needs: Who Will Be Your Virtual Assistant?

Take a comprehensive look at your day-to-day operations and obligations that you would like to delegate to your virtual assistant. Because their scope can be so wide, your requirements can allow for single or combined tasks.

Your delegation needs could include anything from customer support, data administration, and social media marketing to accounting and various administrative functions.

Determine Your Budget: What Can You Afford?

Before diving into the recruitment process, it’s absolutely paramount to define an administrative support budget. The rates for virtual assistants can fluctuate depending on various factors, including experience, skill set, and availability.

Factor in your business aspirations and the potential value that a skilled and talented virtual assistant can bring to your business. Establish a budget that perfectly balances your financial capability with the certainty of tapping into the next level of growth of your business.

Identify Full Job Details: What Does a Virtual Assistant Do?

Provide specific information about the proficiency requirements when it comes to software tools, applications, or platforms that your virtual assistant will have to navigate day to day on the job. Share insights about your business and the industry you operate in, as well as information on competitors in your area.

This step is crucial in enabling potential candidates to grasp your business requirements and fully understand their job description. This is among the most essential methods virtual assistant agencies employ to guarantee that you will be connected with a qualified candidate who is best suited for the position.

Review Candidates: Narrowing Down Your Options

Once you’ve received a batch of candidate profiles, it’s time to start the review process. If you find that the profiles don’t quite match your expectations, feel free to provide your agency with feedback, and they will continue the search.

An indicator of a potentially strong fit could be if a virtual assistant has previous experience working with a client similar to your business, either within the same industry or on similar tasks. A virtual assistant with a proven track record in handling analogous responsibilities is best suited to meet your standards and fulfill your needs.

Conduct Interviews: Finding Your Perfect Match

To make the most of the interview process, prepare a thoughtful set of questions that delve into various aspects of their qualifications and suitability. Begin by addressing their:

Technical skills

Work ethic

Previous experience

Personality

These core inquiries provide insight into the interviewee’s foundational capabilities.

Make the Decision: Choosing Your Virtual Assistant

By this point in the process, you will have gathered a substantial amount of information about the candidates and gained a comprehensive understanding of their availability and compatibility with your business. It's time to make your decision and choose which VA is best for you!

Sign the Contract: Protecting Your Business and the Virtual Assistant

A well-written, thorough contract is significant when hiring a virtual assistant for several key reasons. A contract establishes clear expectations and boundaries for both parties involved, while also providing them with legal protection.

This ensures that both you and your virtual assistant have a mutual understanding of your roles, responsibilities, and scope of work, reducing the likelihood of misunderstandings and disputes.

Hire and Manage Virtual Assistants All in One Place with VA Bear

Stop juggling multiple platforms and spreadsheets to manage your virtual assistant team. VA Bear is the all-in-one solution that lets you find, hire, manage, and pay top virtual assistants from a single dashboard. VA Bear comes with built-in time tracking, task management, and integrated payroll. Say goodbye to unreliable freelancers and operational bottlenecks as you build a dependable support team that scales with your business.

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What is a Virtual Assistant? What Do They Do?

Generalist vs. Specialist: Which Type of VA Does Your Business Need?