Month: June 2014

Outsourcing may sound easier to set-up compared to offshore outsourcing, but really, both share the same patterns of success and failure. What’s important is that you must have a well thought out plan.

After all the tiring research and canvassing you’ve done on all the offshore outsourcing partners that pique your interest, there’s still one more thing to do before you can hire your first offshore employee; signing the contract.

The Agreement

Offshore outsourcing companies will present you their contract for review and approval. They might offer you two types of services; staff leasing or project-based. Choose one and if everything in it goes well with your plan, sign it! But if you’re striking a deal with an offshore freelancer, you must remember to deal only with the one who has the highest probability of delivering what you asked for. That’s why prior research and a bit of investigation are important.

Here are some of the common problems with offshore freelancers you might encounter.

1. No contract that binds him to his responsibilities;
2. Skill level on prospects’ online resume isn’t always what it seems;
3. The risk of data security – your offshore employee might not have the best protection system in place;
4. How you’re going to send him your payment if he doesn’t have a Paypal account; and
5. Not 100% committed to your project due to multiple clients – for some, it depends on how much you’re paying him.

Take note of the above if none of those ever crossed your mind before!

Getting Started

Now that you have an offshore employee, you can get started.

The most important part of getting your projects done right is communication. If you chose offshore staff leasing or project-based with a third party company, expect that communication will be smooth because they will be the ones to contact you regularly. But if you opted for the offshore freelancer; there’s Email, Skype, Yahoo! Messenger and even Facebook, use all tools available if those will get the job done correct and on time!

Assigning the Project. It will be very helpful if you list down all the projects for your offshore employee, sit down with him on a live chat or Skype video call so you can do a bit of demonstration yourself.

Daily Reports. It is also important that you require him to send you daily updates at the end of his shift, a summary of the progress will do. Get daily reports via DropBox or any other online tool you feel comfortable using.

Provide Positive Reinforcement. Every now and then problems will occur during the development of your project, you will get sad and angry, but do not hurdle the tension and frustration to your offshore employee. Instead, provide yourself with positive reinforcement. Your employee is also human, he gets hurt and the work he does for you might get affected if you pressure him too much. If the problem is too big to handle, take a break and discuss the solution with your offshore employee.

Be Always Available. Accidents happen and most of the time without a warning. So be sure you can easily be reached.

Payment for the Services. You can have your offshore employee work for you full-time or part-time, depends on how much is the work load. But when it comes to payment, I would suggest that you do not to pay in advance for offshore freelancers. You may pay in advance to third party outsourcing companies if you feel comfortable about it, they’re easier to locate and contact compared to a freelancer who has no physical address.

Over-all, offshore outsourcing is really a matter of choice, for most businesses today, it’s a matter of cutting down costs. You may find equally competent professionals in your own country, you may hire them or not, it truly depends on your decision. But if you do decide to outsource parts of your business, make sure you do it the right way. Take time in reading success stories of businesses that have outsourced to the country you’re interested in. While online, take down important notes and digest the tips provided to you by others, never pass the chance of learning more about offshore outsourcing even if you think you’ve already gone through all the nooks.

When it comes to outsourcing a Virtual Assistant (VA), most entrepreneurs think that a VA is only good to be a secretary, a receptionist, a typist or for booking their meetings.But there’s a lot more that a VA can do to help a business grow, a VA is a master of various administrative tasks!

Entrepreneurs often think that they are the key to their business’ success; therefore they must do everything, literally. So they overlook the potentials of their VAs.For others, a Virtual assistant is only good for dumping their excess paper works in the office or for taking unwanted calls or irate clients.

If you’re anentrepreneur looking to hire a Virtual Assistant of your own, here are 5 major roles you can assign to your outsourced Virtual Assistant so you can efficiently maximize their skills.

Role 1: General Virtual Assistant (GVA)

Email handling, reports generation, file organizing, data mining and booking an appointment with clients are just a few of what a VA is very good at. But did you know that your VA can also be your alter ego whenever you’re out of the office? Here are a few things you can hand over to your GVA.

• Voicemail, Email & Spam Management: Voicemail checking, filtering of emails, spam, setting reminders, responding to tickets, and answering customer service emails are tasks that your GVA can handle well.
• File Organization & Storage: Tired of waiting for your employees to email you important files?Forgot to upload your projects before leaving the office? There’s Google Docs and DropBox for your GVA! Both are free, easy to use and can be accessed anywhere with internet.
• Managing Your Blog: BlogSpot and WordPress are easy to learn, teach your GVA how to edit and post an article or a press release on your blog, reply on comments and manage subscriptions to your newsletter.So every time you are away, your blog is always updated.
• Database Management: Ask your GVA to coordinate with your programmer and for help in memorizing the sections of your database. Your GVA can easily handle most database management tasks if it’s automated.
• Finance Tasks: Bookkeeping, creation of invoices and vouchers are a few Finance tasks you can also assign to your GVA to lighten your load. All you need to do is provide a guide or tutorial to your GVA.

Role 2: SEO/Internet Marketer Virtual Assistant

A lot of old SEO techniques may no longer work today but a few important ones are still vital to the success of your business online. Hire a Virtual Assistant with basic knowledge of SEO and Internet Marketing techniques.You’ll be happy with the extra time you’ll be saving on these tedious tasks.

• Keyword Research & Analysis: An online tool like Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner Toolis easy to learn and navigate; your SEO/Internet Marketer VA can surely handle this one.
• Competitor Analysis: Too much on your plate to check the other side of the battlefield? To keep yourself updated on the latest marketing strategies your competitors do, have your VA do it for you.
• Web Traffic Reporting: Web analytics are automatically generated reports, tech your VA how to navigate through your web analytics, making a report out of it would be a piece of cake.
• Managing Your Social Media Accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ and many more. A VA can learn how to create and manage various social media accounts for you, you just have to teach your VA what to post, when to post it, and whether to reply to comments or not.
• Other SEO Techniques: There’s XML sitemap submission, social bookmarking, ad campaigns, forum participation and blog commenting you can add to your VAs SEO and Internet Marketing tasks.

Role 3: Content Writing Virtual Assistant

Here’s another role that can reward you additional time with your family or for other business work. Virtual Assistants are experts in communication! Because content is king, a couple of web articles and press releases a month is a big help. Here are a few more content writing tasks you can assign to your Content Writing VA:

• Guest posting/blogging
• Newsletter writing
• SEO content writing
• Proofreading
• Ad creation
• Gallery titles, captions and descriptions
• Business portfolio content

Role 4: Video Editing Virtual Assistant

YouTube is a hit! So you want to upload your own videos to market your brand? Direct uploading is easy, most internet users today can do it, but editing audio and video requires a bit more skill. Hire a Virtual Assistant with a background in audio & video editing to save you time in training. You can even throw him the tasks of managing the email inquiries and the comments section of your YouTube account.

• Basic audio & video editing
• Removing background noises
• Adding watermarks
• Adding intros & outros

Role 5: Sales Rep Virtual Assistant

Though not all outsourced Virtual Assistants are good with sales talk, there are still some sales tasks you can hand over to your VA.

• Follow-up on potential clients
• Maintain& update customer database
• Double check inventory
• Monitor price of products online
• Learn product details that can help the business

Now, I think you’re surprised of what more a VA can do for you and your business. These roles are meant to help you lighten your load and give you more time to focus and manage the more important parts of your business. Don’t be like the other entrepreneurs that stack up a ton of various tasks to their outsourced Virtual Assistant because they paid good money for him. Be smart, think twice and do your own research before your hire a Virtual assistant of your own.

Many would think that search engine optimization (SEO) is very difficult to learn and it’s a job that should be left to the professionals. On the contrary, SEO is easy to learn but it’s an extremely tedious task, that’s why a lot of online businesses today hire SEO specialists or link builders to do the tiring SEO tasks while business owners focuses more on converting sales.

In other cases, some online business owners who are just starting out, does not have the budget to hire their own SEO specialist or link builder so they end up doing it themselves.

If you want to start out in SEOing your website, you must first learn the three basics of search engine optimization.

1. Keywords Research – Because you just can’t use any words written in the dictionary, keyword research is the SEO way of picking out the right keywords according to your niche. There are lots of free online keywords suggestion tools online that you can use, like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Word Tracker to help you search for words and phrases related to your niche.

For example. You own a jewelry shop in Manhattan, New York and want to set up a website for it. You can target for specific keywords like new york jewelers, jewelry store new york, jewelers in manhattan ny, luxury watches manhattan, or diamond engagement rings nyc. Instead of targeting these keywords; online jewelry, diamond necklaces, white gold rings, free delivery, selling, or gold.

The main reason why Search Engine Optimizers go for specific keywords is to have quality traffic for their website. The higher the quality of visits, the higher the chance of sales conversion!

2. Meta Tags – Notice how websites in search results have titles and descriptions? Well, that’s the use of Meta Tags. Not only does it provide a custom webpage title and description for your website in search results, it also helps you target different types of keywords per page of your blog or website.

For example. Your online shoe shop has two categories; flats and heels. On your “Flats” page, you can target keywords like flat shoes, flat sandals, or flat leather boots; and on the “Heels” page you can target keywords like high heels, kitten heels or cone heels. That way, you can target more audience using related keywords applied on specific pages of your website without keyword stuffing.

3. Content Optimization – The best way to optimize your website’s content is to write unique and accurate information with just the right number of keywords mixed in it. Too many keywords and your website might get flagged as spammy, or worse, get deindexed by search engines.

Getting started in SEO is easy, just remember to follow search engine guidelines and use ethical search engine optimization techniques to boost your web traffic and keywords ranking.

Versant and Computer Based Tests are the easiest and widely used Call Center Interview materials today in the Philippines.

Versant

Versant, the spoken language test! It’s easy because all you have to do is read a specific sentence in a reading material that the interviewer asks you to read. The key part here is your verbal English.

Being able to speak in English isn’t enough to qualify you to be a Call Center Agent, you must keep in mind that there are other areas of your talent that the interviewer is examining while you speak; your diction, grammar and pronunciation.

Ever heard someone pronounce “forever” as “poreber,” or “perfect” as “ferpect”?

The exchanging of “p” and “f” or “v” and “b” is one of the most common pronunciation errors some Filipino call center agents do. Not being a 100% American is not a good excuse to tell your interviewer, so forget about it. Call centers in the Philippines pride themselves with fluent-speaking agents, some even speak with a British accent to perfection.

How about your “th” pronunciation, have you heard them lately? The English pronunciation of “the” is not “da,” you will have to place a bit of your tongue under you upper teeth to produce the correct sound, the mixture of “T” and “H”. Try speaking this sentence and see for yourself it sounded right: “Der are two virds trying to ply. Dey want to ply sout por da winter.”

Another thing, the “s.” Some people pronounce the “s” by placing their tongue under their upper teeth producing an “s” sound with an excess of wind blowing in between their teeth and tongue. While some people argue that is caused by extreme baby talk during their younger years, others claim that it’s due to their short tongue. These myths do not make a good excuse either. If you want to be a successful call center agent, you must work hard on your weaknesses.

Computer Based Tests

This test is usually given to Customer Service Representatives handling data entry tasks and Technical Support Representatives, whether for a chat-based account or email support. The computer based test is simply a web navigation and research exam. The examiner will test to see how familiar you are with basic web applications, website navigation and how fast you can research on a given topic. Call Center Agents usually have their cheat sheets, a piece of paper with call handling guides, FAQs and multiple answers to choose from. So when an impromptu question, topic and unexpectedly weird scenarios come their way, they must research online for the solution as quickly as possible so they can get back to their customers the soonest they can.

It’s actually easy to get yourself familiarized with basic web applications!

• Google is a search engine, so is Yahoo and Bing, they’re the three biggest search engines on the web.
• FB and Twitter are social networking sites, while YouTube is a podcasting site.
• WikiPedia and WikiTravel are wiki sites where you can easily search for the information or look up for descriptions or information.
• Instagram is a photo sharing site and Tumblr is a free blog!
• Firefox is a web browser, as well as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Opera.

Tip: Get yourself familiarized now with other areas of the web that you’re not sure of or web applications you haven’t tried yet. It will be easier for you to ace the computer based call center test!

Next part >> “Call Center Job Interview Key Points: Final Interview”. Continue reading?

The phone test that will weigh your call handling skills.

This job application test can be applied to all types of accounts in a call center. It’s upon the recruitment department if they will include it in all their open accounts. If a phone simulation test is part of the recruitment process of the call center position you’re applying for, it will be given to all applicants whether experienced or not.

Tip: While waiting in line for your phone simulation test, think of possible scenarios and questions that might be hurled at you during the simulation. Think of a good answer, two good answers if you can so you’ll have an option.

In a phone simulation, the interviewer will rate you based on your answers, the way you talk to costumers, how swiftly you answer unexpected questions and how you handle the pressure. In this test, your “uhms” and “ahhs” are also graded, so better think twice before you let an “uhm” or “ahh” slip through your lips.

Note: The “uhms” and “ahhs” are called Fillers. It’s not actually forbidden to say these words; you just have to limit the usage. Too much filler doesn’t make a good sentence, it dilutes the quality of the information you’re providing the customer, plus it’s really annoying for customers to here too much “uhms” and “ahhs.”

Sample Scenario for a Call Center Phone Simulation:
A customer calls to report a defective product he purchased, you will be told to listen to a 5 minute recorded call and provide assistance to the customer as a Customer Care Agent – The key point here is to provide the best solution to the customer, not just any solution you can think of.

Remember this one; a 2-minute call duration can’t out rank a 5-minute call duration if the customer handling done in the 5-minute call is way better than the 2-minute call. A quick turn over of calls is not always the best solution.

There are few call center companies in the Philippines that lets you listen to a 5-minute recorded call with multiple answers provided for you to choose from. All the answers are good solutions but you have to be able to select the best one to be able to qualify.

Next part >> “Call Center Job Interview Key Points: Versant and Computer Based Tests”. Continue reading?

The written test will determine your capabilities to handle the call center position you’re applying for. Take note that some written tests are about proper call handling, they may look easy to answer but the goal here to provide the BEST possible answer.

The most common written test in a call center job application is the Cognitive Test, a.k.a. the IQ Test. This consists of a bunch of questions that will weigh your mental process which allow you to perform basic day-today tasks.

Note: An IQ Tests is a way of determining how well your mind works in performing various tasks. It measures a person’s intelligence and determine in which category of intelligence a person belongs to. If you’ve only gone through Elementary grade, you’ll still have a chance to pass a call center job interview as long as you’re able to handle basic day-to-day tasks.

An IQ Test is generally given to any applicant; it’s not just in call center companies but in other companies as well. Passing your call center job interviews and written tests requires that your thinking should either be average or above average, anything below will not qualify you for the position you’re applying for.

Sample Questions in a General IQ Test:
1. (Analogy) What number best completes the analogy 8:4 as 10:__
– The answer is 5, because 4 is half of 8
2. (Classification) Which word does not belong? apple, marmalade, orange, cherry, grape
– The answer is marmalade, because it’s a preserve made from a fruit, a jelly-like sandwich filling.
3. (Logical) Book is to Reading as Fork is to:____________
– The answer is Eating.

A Cognitive Test in call center companies in the Philippines usually has time limits. While some companies give you one hour to complete your Cognitive Test, others will have you crunch in a 30-minute or less time limit because they want to examine how well your mind and behavior performs under pressure.

Tip: If you encounter a hard question on your Cognitive Test, skip it and move to the next one. You can always go back to that hard part after you’ve covered all the questions. Save time, answer more!

The tedious call center recruitment process where you wait in line for your next interview may wore you out and bore you tremendously, but you have to prepare yourself each time the interviewer calls your name because you’ll never know whether your next test is oral or written. Yawning in front of the interviewer is not a very enticing scene and may convey several meanings that the interviewer might find offensive.

Next part >> “Call Center Job Interview Key Points: Phone Simulation”. Continue reading?

Questions You Should Be Able To Answer the Right Way

The initial interview is always the hardest part to get through in a call center job application. The interviewer doesn’t only test your skills, they also test your behavior.

Among several call center companies in Metro Manila, there are those that have the same job interview strategies, initial interview questions, written tests and even the manner of presenting the exams; the one-on-one or a group interview first, account-specific exams, a phone simulation and then the final one-on-one interview with the manager or in front of a panel.

In a call center job application interview, there can be several answers to just one question and one single answer to several questions. So if you’re applying for a position in a call center company, you have to make sure you answer the interviewer the right way.

The Initial Interview

Though it’s boring for some and repetitive to others who have already applied to other call center companies, this part of the job interview is crucial in determining whether you’re skills are enough or not for the positions they are offering.

Considered as the most difficult part of a call center job interview, the initial interview basically tests your skills so the interviewer can determine in which account your skills will suit the best.

How to answer in an initial interview? 

Answer all of the questions with honesty, sell yourself (your skills), and answer in straight English. Honesty will be your best stepping stone when you enter the call center industry, because when you lie about yourself and your skills, your team leader or supervisor can easily detect that during training period and they will drop you out without remorse.

Note: Team Leaders, Supervisors and Managers are well trained in reading the behaviors of their staff as well as the applicants. So lying is not a very good idea.

Sample Questions on Initial Interviews:

1. Tell me something that’s not written in your resume.
2. Why did you leave your last position, or why are you leaving your current position?
3. Why should we hire you?
4. How do you see yourself 5 or 10 years from now?
5. How would your last boss and colleagues describe you?

Carefully study the sample questions above, these are just common job interview questions that many call center companies use today, but do not take them lightly. What the interviewer is looking for in your answers is your ability to speak in straight English, proper diction and grammar, your spontaneity, body language and the manner of how you answer each question.

Next part >> “Call Center Job Interview Key Points: Written Tests”. Continue reading?