Mihran Berejikian: From One To Ten Virtual Assistants: An E-Commerce Success Story

Excerpt

Providing e-commerce virtual assistants has helped businesses THRIVE this year. From 1 to 10 virtual assistants in a matter of WEEKS, learn how Belami Ecommerce Solutions has scaled its operations with MyOutDesk Virtual Assistants MyOutDesk CEO Daniel Ramsey sits down with President of Belami, Inc. Mihran Berejikian.

Tell a little bit about how MyOutDesk fueled your e-commerce company with talent?

“It’s done so in a couple of ways. First, we were able to meet the unprecedented demand surge that we had due to the pandemic. Which of course has been terrible for the country and the world. But, has definitely been good for e-commerce home retailers. The demand surge created an environment where we needed to bring a lot of bodies in immediately and MyOutDesk provided that. We have great people who ramped incredibly quickly, actually, one of the great benefits that we didn’t expect to occur is—not only did they ramped up quickly…”

Virtual assistants were able to the job that the local people were able to do …   AND they actually raised the bar!

“Because on average, at least for the jobs that we were hiring, they were more mature, more experienced, more grateful, and more committed to what they do. We can now expect to get the same from our other employees, and its given us a really good benchmark as to what we should be expecting from other employees. So now we’re able to meet the day-to-day demand for what we hired them for. Plus it gave us a great big benchmark to compare to and it raised the bar across the board.”

What positions do you think are appropriate for an eCommerce company to hire in the virtual assistant world?

“For us, it’s entry-level accounting, accounts receivable, accounts payable, etc. Also some amount of reconciliation work that is repetitive but still requires some level of accounting skills. On the customer service side is chat management. So virtual assistants are answering chats from customers, fielding basic questions about availability, order status, as they mature we think we’ll actually be able to let them ask product-related questions. And then, Virtual Assistants are also doing order management. We live in a dropship world, so order management for us means we get the order from the customer, we transfer it to the manufacturer, and we have to work with the manufacture to make sure that they’re shipping it on time, and they’re notifying us.”

“So there’s a whole host of activities that occurs all the way across the funnel from when a customer places an order to when it arrives. For the percentage of times when it arrives and there are issues, there’s a whole other set of workflows that needs to occur to solve those issues.”

One of the things that are unique about your eCommerce business, is that you went from 1 virtual assistant to 10 virtual assistants very quickly! What surprised you about the hiring process?

1. How easily the hiring process went.
2. How quick and smooth the interviewing went.
3. And, the overall success rate of the candidates was pretty darn close to 100%!

What would you tell an e-commerce leader in your space who has never considered using virtual assistants?

We shied away from it for many years due to fear of culture. Given the current environment with everyone working remotely, that concern is no longer there. So this is really the right time to try it, implement it, and think about blending it back with the culture.

What e-Commerce Virtual Assistants do for eCommerce Businesses:

• Dropshipping & supplier coordination
• Amazon seller services
• Product research for Amazon
• seller growth analytics
• Amazon & eBay listing placement coordination
• inventory placement
• seller compliance
• Amazon & eBay advertising
• fba revenue calculations
• liaison to dropshipping suppliers
• handling inquiries from the resolution center
• managing seller hub
• Shopify administration
• Google shopping coordination

Here’s how e-commerce virtual assistants support e-commerce merchants:

1. Listing Coordination & Documentation: product and inventory support, reports, and billing
2. CRM Management: Updating records, verification, claim submissions, billing, and much more.
3. Email & Phone Answering: Answering administrative phone calls, customer support, answering emails, managing your calendar.
4. Research & Administrative Support: Any type of research on the web, maintain spreadsheets & any other information or secretarial tasks, coordinating with other staff or getting any other work done or organized at your workplace.
5. Marketing Management: Coordinating your social media pages with updates, CPC & PPC coordination, news or article sharing, setting up email campaigns, creating marketing materials (flyers, brochures, etc).

MyOutDesk has been in the industry for over a decade, helping all types of businesses grow. We have providing e-commerce virtual assistant services for years, becoming one of the top virtual assistant providers available. After serving more than [mod_total_clients] clients and employing over 4000 professionals, we have seen firsthand how this investment supports business growth. Because of this experience, MyOutDesk, currently caters to other industries as well such as professional services, mortgage, and insurance to name a few.