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LongerDays.com is a virtual assistant company that is entirely US-based; they operate out of Muskegon, Michigan. Longer Days was founded in 2007, with the idea they could build a more valuable service than the overseas outsourcing companies who were all trying to compete on price. Now, Longer Days is the largest virtual assistant company in the US and serves busy professionals and entrepreneurs around the country.
Of course, the cost of doing business in the US is higher than it is in India, so the rates Longer Days charges are significantly higher than their overseas competition. In fact, the Longer Days virtual assistant plans start at $35 an hour, three times more than some other firms. But do they get 3x the work done?
The Longer Days business model is based on the “you get what you pay for” mantra. They believe they can provide a superior service with American workers who are college-educated native English speakers. In addition, the Longer Days virtual assistants work as a team, so you get the benefit of an entire office’s worth of expertise and specialization, rather than being assigned one dedicated assistant.
Longer Days Review
Because of the higher cost, Longer Days VAs do much more than just administrative tasks. Instead, they are trained in the latest software applications to accomplish just about anything you need done, much like an in-house employee. These additional value-added services include graphic design, website content writing, online marketing, lead generation, and more.
A Longer Days virtual assistant is not for everyone. They aim to provide a premium service for clients with premium standards. As a Better Business Bureau accredited business, they are held accountable for delivering on their promises.
If you’ve tried another virtual assistant company but weren’t happy with the results, maybe you can give Longer Days a shot. They offer a 7-day free trial to sample their services, and you can cancel any time without obligation. You might find it’s a worthwhile investment to free up some of your time and lose the headache of working with someone halfway around the world.
For those with experience working with LongerDays.com, please share it below.
I had a 6 month backlog of work I could not get anyone else to do, and didn’t have time to do myself. In one month LongerDays handled it all in a very professional, timely, detail-oriented, responsive way.
LongerDays has allowed me to put myself back in my sales role for more hours….which is what I need to be doing to grow the company. I really feel like the LongerDays team is holding together the parts of the business that I need help with. It’s great, I’m thrilled with what they’re accomplishing.
After long deliberation, I decided not to renew my LongerDays services. The decision was not reflective of the quality of services I received, but rather it was indicative of my confidence in LongerDays being able to handle the complexity of current and future requests that I would need done. I was appreciative of their effort level, since it without a doubt helped lay the foundation for what I will do with my business.
If I am looking for a more sustainable solution in the future, LongerDays will be on my short list of places to search.
We have come to depend on LongerDays as an integral part of our virtual team — they’re a perfect match for our 6-person virtual company. We’ve been working with Longer Days since 2009, and they have been providing vital support on day-to-day tasks as well as on larger projects requiring deeper involvement and multiple skill sets. It’s obvious they really care about customer service. Prejects are delivered quickly with great attention to detail and outsanding communication.
Let me say in the most gracious way possible, that LongerDays is saving my ass and I am very appreciative.
I have found LongerDays to be not only incredibly professional and attentive, but also possessing a high work standard, work ethic, and all with a good dose of human kindness. They work with you, work for you, and help you get on to the bigger picture thinking. I’ve been pleased with their output, have learned from them, and plan to continue to use their services indefinitely as needed.
So far, I really enjoying working with LongerDays. They are friendly but effective. I like how I can assign a task to my team lead Mike and know I won’t have to worry about it. I’ve found this especially useful for recurring tasks!
I’m very happy with him, but when the work is delegated to his other team members it seems the quality and thoroughness of following instructions suffer a bit.
Great work so far. All of the bottlenecks and issues have been on our end. We may be the only ones who have experienced this but a more versatile IT infrastructure may help Longerdays interface with larger companies.
I’m happy with the performance of the LongerDays team. I’m relatively new to the service but so far they’ve done great work and understand instructions without a lot of micromanaging.
I’ve found LongerDays to be an invaluable addition to my team. They respond quickly to my requests and handle tasks with a careful attention to detail. I’m happy to recommend their service to any small business looking for professional and friendly support in the US.
My main point of contact at Longer Days is Lou, and I’ve found him to be both pleasant to work with and extremely efficient. I’m looking for opportunities to expand the relationship to support additional business growth and development. One area in particular I could use some help with is marketing. I’d love to get their help in attracting more Facebook fans and using a stronger social media presence to generate more prospects and sales.
The only problem that has come up so far was a blog post that had some strange coding in it. One of my readers notified me about it. Not a huge deal but kind of embarrassing – it would be great to have some checks in place to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m not super-technical so not sure what the cause was and I understand it’s probably impossible to avoid these issues completely.
Overall though I’m extremely pleased with Longer Days and looking forward to continuing to work with them.
I think the strength of Longer Days is in their flexibility and communication. For me, I was swamped and living abroad, and could really only engage via Skype and email – and it was no problem at all. I was also able to take advantage of their website, which is very self-serve.
The team was super and followed my directions to the ‘T’, I just didn’t have enough work to justify the monthly expense on an ongoing basis. Still, I continue to recommend the service with enthusiasm to anyone who needs the help, and will definitely be back again as the need arises.
Mike O. is fantastic. My only suggestion would be to have some backup in place for the occasional time he’s on another line. That, and I’d like to see them add a bookkeeping service because I hate accounting. But for the work they do for me, I’m very pleased. Thanks!
I’ll echo the reviewer above: Mike is great and seems to be on top of everything.
I’m a newbie when it comes to outsourcing so I’d like to see a more consultative approach or learn about some best practices from within LongerDays. I’m happy with the results but I can’t help but feeling there would be a better way to leverage all their cumulative experience. Maybe it’s just me.
Overall I’m very satisfied and plan to continue with LongerDays. My work is really complex so I didn’t expect it to go totally smoothly. Indeed there were some glitches, but Joe worked hard and stayed after hours to make it right, which I think speak volumes and was tremendously appreciated.
As a long time client, I feel like the communication and customer service could be better – not that they’re bad, but maybe I’d just like to feel the love like when I was a new client.
The Longer Days team is competent and fast-working. When I’m on a tight deadline they are able to jump right in and get done what’s needed.
I love working with Lou! He’s awesome. Only thing I’d like to see is I wish they would do more webinars or video animation. Other than that, great service!
DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!! I have found LongerDays very non-beneficial and a major waste of time and money. Especially their VA Tari Follett!! Whatever you do, make sure you do not get assigned to her!!! She will promise you things that she can not deliver and will bill you for hours unworked and not communicate with you at all of the “supposed” hours worked! Additionally, don’t provide them with your credit/debit card info because they will bill you whenever they desire without reason or notice! Moreover, after billing you for additional hours unworked, she will send you work that is incorrect and will blatantly show that she literally only spent 20mins on it right before sending it to you! Save your money and go with someone else. Matter of fact, you are probably better off figuring out the problem yourself!!!
Trust me, please don’t waste your money!
I could not disagree more with Dwayne’s comments re: Tari Follett. She was brand new to Longer Days when we started with her and it has been a happy relationship ever since. Tari has stayed late on a Friday night to complete work for us that was time sensitive (even when I asked at the last minute!). We have some complicated billing issues in InfusionSoft and Tari has been able to figure out the best solution for us. Best of all, when I ask her to do something, IT GETS DONE! Period. I think she’s great – with WordPress and website issues, autoresponders, copy — we will be with her a long long time. Thanks, Longer Days!
Forgot to include a star rating…
I just read the above review from Dwayne W. and have a completely different experience of Longer Days and Tari Follett. I have been working with Tari as my lead for the last 6 months. I think she is GREAT, very responsive and proactive in taking initiative. (For example, she took the initiative to create a one sheet brochure because she thought it would be beneficial and she was right on.) She totally understands our company which is a start up called the Conscious Leadership Connection http://www.CLConnection.com. We have calls at the beginning of the week where we coordinate on priorities for the week and she delivers. Longer Days is a GREAT value to us. So feel free to contact me if you have any other questions about my experience. [email protected].
I have had Tari Follett as my team lead and point person for about 8 months. She has been excellent. She is smart, organized, friendly and extremely professional. I love working with her.
I’ve been working with LongerDays.com since November of 2010 and am absolutely thrilled with their service. I love having one company that I can work with to handle my customer support, website updates, Infusionsoft work, email broadcasts, fixing technical glitches, graphic design, travel arrangements and even writing content. I work through Mike Olsen and he pulls in lots more resources on the LongerDays team to take care of my site and my business.
I know that if I delegate something to them it will get done in a timely manner and with high quality. Recently I was incredibly impressed by their web team figuring out a bug that my website visitors had with Internet Explorer. This problem had been there for a while and I had tried to get three other people to fix it. LongerDays took the initiative, figured out the problem and fixed it. My customer satisfaction has gone up and my return rate has gone down because of the great quality work that these guys do for me.
I highly recommend LongerDays. It’s great to have a team supporting me in the U.S. with great communication and technical skills. Working with them is like having a team of incredibly talented and highly skilled people at your beck and call.
Woops! Forgot to put the stars on my last review. Here they are!