123Employee is one of the largest outsourcing firms in the world, with more than 350 virtual assistants working with clients all around the globe.
The company started its operations in 2006 with just ten employees, but has seen tremendous growth following a simple mission of helping small to medium sized businesses get more done at affordable rates.
They now operate 3 different outsourcing centers in the Philippines.
Table of Contents
About 123Employee
The physical offices of 123Employee.com are located in the Philippines, and they have American managers on-site. This VA firm offers hard-working Filipinos the opportunity to use their outstanding skills, while enabling American businesses to increase their productivity at minimal costs.
In contrast to many virtual assistant companies who seem to try and remain anonymous, I really like how 123Employee features real VAs in their real offices. While there’s still a little bit of stock photography lurking around, it’s clear the workers and founder Daven Michaels like to have fun too:
Services
The virtual assistants from 123Employee offer professional help with:
• Customer Support/Service
• Research / Datamining
• Database admin
• Telemarketing
• Video Marketing
• Article Marketing
• Social networking
• Facebook fan pages
• Personal assistance
How it Works
Businesses provide their job descriptions and 123Employee matches them with candidates having relevant education, skill level, and experience and then allow the businesses to interview and select the best candidate. This is a great advantage over other firms that simply assign you a VA based on whoever is available.
You are in control of your VA’s working hours to match your time zone if necessary.
123Employee Intro Video
Plans and Pricing
If you sign up for 123Employee, you’ll get a dedicated virtual employee, with all the office infrastructure and support you’d expect at no additional cost.
123Employee.com offers 3 different Small Business VA plans, ranging from 10 hours a week to 40 hours a week:
- Silver – 10 hours a week, $497 per month ($12.43/hr)
- Gold – 20 hours a week, $797 per month ($9.96/hr)
- Platinum – 40 hours a week, $1287 per month ($8.04/hr)
The mid-level Gold plan is the most popular offering, and is the equivalent of adding a half-time employee. All plans require pre-payment via credit card after you hire your virtual assistant.
These rates are competitive but perhaps a little on the higher end to support the management layer and added infrastructure investments.
One downside to 123Employee is the one-time admin fee of $199 per employee, which covers everything the employee will use (chair, desk, phone line, computer, etc.). Many other VA companies have the same overhead expenses, but few charge this fee.
At press time, there’s an offer for 30 hours of free virtual assistant service plus an audio version of Michaels’ Outsource This! book.
Beyond the set-up fee and recurring monthly charges, there are no hidden fees or long-term contracts. You can cancel anytime.
If you selected “Enterprise” on their homepage, the story is a bit different. You’ll find a site that’s more call center-focused where you’ll have to contact them to get a pricing quote.
123Employee Alternatives
The trend among VA companies in the Philippines is to hire home office-based staff, so 123 is a strong entry if you prefer an assistant working from a dedicated office environment. (VA Staffer would be another to consider.)
If you’re comfortable with a home-based VA, you might check out Chris Ducker’s Virtual Staff Finder, a virtual headhunting service, or John Jonas’ OnlineJobs.ph, a virtual job board.
And if you’re not married to the Philippines, Uassist.ME out of El Salvador might be worth a look as well. Their 20-hour a week plan is similarly priced.
Your Turn
Have you worked with 123Employee.com? We’d love to hear about your experience in the reviews below.
I’ve been a client of 123Employee’s for nearly 8 years now. I have 2 agents, Martel and Leo. They are literally like family to me. They have become experts in my business over the years. I do pay them performance bonuses which has really locked them in. I love them, they are the best.
Tried them for a month at the 40 hour level. I’m a sales person and my assignment was to verify leads from an Excel database. This meant calling a number, asking for a specific department/person, and verifying a name and email address. Then document the contact by either updating or verifying the data. Pretty simple you would think.
The VA loaded the FAX numbers into their Predictive Dialing system and then reported to me that she was only getting static…go figure.
There little attempt made to listen to the companies answering message and select a department, little to no attempt to dig for any information.
When a contact was made, there were some language/culture issues. The VA was not on time with scheduled conference calls. Her “Project Manager” who was supposed to contact me only contacted me twice (once at the beginning and again when I terminated).
In a 30 day period with a live database of over 700 companies, she was only able to connect with 30 contacts. I find the service to be huge waste of money.
I purchased Social Sonic as well. I haven’t from the webinar with Daven and Bill McIntosh. I have been pretty busy so I haven’t had much time to play with it, but for the brief time I was using it, it kicked me out a TON of leads. Also I found the staff to be super sweet and caring. Just my two cents. Thanks.
I sat through a 1.5 hour webinar that introduced Social Sonic lead gen software, bought the product knowing I was going to get some VA time with the product. Their next step was to call me to introduce me to the products.
The next day, I get a call from someone claiming to be a 123Employee account manager at 6:00 a.m. They could not even figure out what time zone I lived in! That was enough to turn me off to the whole program and I will be telling Cam Dunlop about my experience as well since it was his group that got me on the webinar in the first place. What a waste!
I believe that I am actually one 123Employee’s first clients. I signed up almost a decade ago! I have several agents and my experiences have been mostly great. There was definitely some transitioning and at the end of the day it is a people business, so occasionally mistakes are made, but honestly, I don’t know what I would to without my team at 123. I highly suggest using them. They are awesome.
I attended 123Employees learning event. Amazing presentations…Daven…Beejal and Casey were exceptional,inspiring and gave so much knowledge i felt i could rule the world!!!
We are launching a new eLearning platform. 123Employee is doing all of the data scraping and compiling our initial database. They have been totally on it. Very professional outfit. I give them my highest praise.
HI Ernesto,
Would be great to hear what they did for you regarding this project. Please let me know if you are open to chatting? Thanks
Curtis Gilbert
Cfgilbert@outlook.com
949-836-9052
I’m in Long Beach, CA
I’m the founder and operator of GPS Business Group where we make businesses more profitable faster.
And I’ve got to tell you I’ve been working with Daven Michaels and 123 Employee for a long time now, but I’ve got to tell you a story. Last week I had a client who had a last minute administrative project and we were going to put one of their resources on it, but we determined it was going to be not very cost effective to do this one resource.
So I called 123 Employee about it, got somebody on the job zip zap, it was amazing, I’m stunned over the response we got it was impeccable results, the attention to detail was just outrageous.
Once again I just can’t recommend 123 Employee enough great service, great attitude, great ethic and if you need their services don’t hesitate.
I signed up and actually attended a 123Employee event, in Los Angeles, beyond Marketing Live. Amazing presentations…Daven…Beejal and Casey were exceptional,inspiring and gave so much knowledge i felt i could rule the world!!!
I’m in Dubai. Saw Daven Michaels speak here a couple of years ago. I bought his program and did nothing lol. I finally got around to setting up my service and honestly I have to say it has been a great experience! LJ asked me to send a review so I did. 123 Employee is awesome. I highly recommend them. Thanks.
When I signed up for 123, I was (like a lot of entrepreneurs) going through some serious overwhelm in my business — too many different ideas and fires to put out.
Today my VA helps me conquer my task list and whatever I send her I’m confident it will get done and get done right. She handles my marketing, facebook research, social media like Pinterest and Instagram, and posts articles to my blog.
Working with 123Employee has been a weight off my shoulders, highly recommended. Daven will take care of you.
I really enjoy working with 123Employee. Why? Because they make me money!
I have a full time assistant in the Philippines who works the same hours as me. (My work day is generally noon to 9pm.) But the most important and impressive thing my assistant has done for me, after I trained him, is that he is now comes up with money-making ideas on his own.
My business is pretty complicated, and a lot of things have to be in perfect order to keep the machine spinning. My VA has never made a mistake — except when I gave him the wrong information — oops! But on his own, I’ve found him super diligent, detail-oriented, and self-motivated.
The funny thing is, I was very skeptical of 123 at first. I’d tried other virtual assistants from India, China, and even the Philippines as well, but we struggled to arrive at a good working relationship. They’d be working from home and it was an endless string of disasters and excuses, often related to power outages and Internet outages.
With 123Employee, your VA works in a real office, with generators, air conditioning, and lights and you know everyday that everything is going be working. Yes, you pay a little more for that infrastructure than you would with a home-based worker, but for me it’s well worth it.
So again, I’m a “do it yourself” kind of person — typical bull-headed entrepreneur, right? — and I never thought I would want one or need an assistant, but I’ve been able to 2-5x my output because of my 123Employee assistant. Highly, highly recommended.
I work with speakers, trainers, authors all over the world and I help them get on the stages. I’m producing events and I travel a ton. I’m a single mom with three kids and have a very very busy life. I decided to go ahead and use an employee from Daven Michaels with 123Employee and what we’ve done with that time has given me back my life and has made me able to spend time with my kids. I can focus on my clients, while just having her do a little bit of things like research for an event, getting links out of my affiliate account, getting things posted, creating a Twitter profile for me that I never had time to even bother with. She got it done in less than two hours and it’s just been a really great seamless experience working with 123Employee. If you have the opportunity, I suggest you work with them too.
This is so lame.I have been a client of 123Employee for nearly 5 years.
I have 3 agents that I hired after seeing Daven Michaels speak at an event in Orlando. Over the years of course we have had a few issues as this is a people business and people will make mistakes, BUT the staff at 123Employee ALWAYS make it right. Honestly this is one of the best companies I have ever dealt with and I love all the content Daven and his team sends. I give them a big thumbs up.
Thanks everyone at 123 Employee.You rock.
This past weekend of May 15-17, 2015, I attended a conference called “Internet Prophets LIVE”, hosted by Steve Olsher. The conference was great, and there we met Daven, owner and founder of 123employee.
He did a phenomenal presentation, and got 20+ people to stand-up and purchase his “New Wealth & Freedom System”, which included various things which he claimed has a value of $8000+, which included “3 Months of service at 123employee” [WITHOUT listing or specifying what “Each month” refers to in terms of work hours.
The great conference price would be offered for $997! Yet, for all those who “Took action” directly at the conference, he offered a total of “8 months of free service”. GREAT! right?
I was very exited, got up, purchased the “marketing program” that was worth $8K+ for $997 and even got 8 months of service (or so I thought). Yet, I’m a guy who likes to read the fine-print (or at least ask about it). So I approached the lady taking our written form orders and asked “How many work hours from the virtual assistant” will we get per month? 40 hours per week, or 40 hours per month? She replied “40/month”, which my brain calculated to about 10 hours/ week. Right?
I left very happy, and thought I made a GREAT investment!
2 Days later Daven’s personal assistant named LJ who lives in the Philippines, calls me over the phone and welcome’s me to their “family”, and tells me that we get 3 months included of VA for free…At this point, I’m like what? 3 months, the guy offered 8 months. LJ was very nice, but was clearly NOT informed by her boss about this great offer she made. She had to verify it… later it was verified.
SO, what’s so BAD? Well, the reality is that each month didn’t include 40 hours per month, but instead just 10/month (which isn’t really much). So instead of getting 320 hours which I had though I got (40 hours/month x 8 months), I had really purchased just 80 hours…
Then, LJ promised to “book a call” with their USA offices at a specific time and date which I chose, and she agreed to. When the time came, no one called me to follow up with me, and communication with the company was a disaster…
I’m sure they’re doing something good, as they have customer, money coming in and a team with new offices in Las Vegas, Nevada…
I certainly didn’t feel that I was well taken care of, and instead was “one more client” they added to their list… This doesn’t work for me…
I also requested to use my 80 hours as I needed (not limited to 10/month), and they said we can’t do that either… Too much inflexibility..
I wish them the best, but I certainly cancelled this “GREAT OFFER”, which didn’t seem so great to me in the end…
I signednup for 123 employee in November 2014 and I have never heard from anyone as promised. I have had some promotional emails etc. i have tried to contact them by emial on several occasions and I get no reply. i tried to get a refund before the 30 day guarantee expired and I have still not had any reply. This is a scam!
I just use there service of VA. and I found 123employee is really awesome and very supportive. I just paid for a year and having already used up for few months. All Agents of 123employee are good and very quick in support and work with a response.
I am really happy with there service. I would recommend others to have it. Communication is very nice with service too! 🙂
I would really love to use them for until i need for a long time.
Thank you 123employee. Best VA provider ever.
We’ve had a team at 123employee for several years now. Our people are engaged in customer service, call dispositioning etc. We’ve actually been quite happy with their productivity. Just renewed for another year.
I’m a travel agent. I’ve used 123 off and on for several years. We use them for back office work, data entry and marketing projects. I’m very pleased with their skill sets and their high level of customer service. 🙂
I’m a previous employee of 123employee for two years. And to be honest, every time the client to do an interview. We the senior agent do it with some script, using different zsuedo name,fake ideas that the 123employee though us. Actually, David Michael doesn’t have any company here in the Philippines, the 123employee that he said, he own is the SixElevenGlobalServices building. He is merely renting space on the building, and ones there are some clients wanted to visit the site, we the agent and the other agent from different account, have been instructed by the sixelevenglobal management not to wear any uniform or I.D which include the sixeleven logo. Then the Sign board been replace. Please, try visiting this particular page (https://www.facebook.com/SixElevenConfession?hc_location=stream) although most of the complain of the page are vernacular, but you can see how there agent complain about the 123employee. And here’s some of the costumer also who complain about the 123employee (http://www.pissedconsumer.com/reviews-by-company/123employee.html). 123employee is a SCAM! the client’s paid about 1000 dollar every month if they want a full time subscription but the agent only earn, almost 3 dollars per day.
123employee is a SCAM!
LoL you don’t even know the spelling of the owners name. hahaha Question, is 123 employee still in business?
My experience with 123employee.com has been an overwhelmingly positive one. I have been using the service, which provides Virtual Assistants, for almost seven years and have been fortunate enough to have full time hires who have helped me in a multitude of ways. I have been able to assign the everyday tasks that take up so much time to someone else, giving me more time and energy for other things.
My current assistant has been with me for three years. Not only did he arrive early, but he left an hour late in order to help me on this particularly busy day. To show my appreciation for this and for his many other acts of courtesy and professionalism, I regularly send a small bonus of $20 (which is a large amount of money when transferred to his PH currency). 123employee, of course, gives every cent to my assistant.
One of the great aspects of 123employee is the fact that they provide my assistant with a suitable workspace. They have given him a computer, internet access, IT administration, a telephone, and a desk. He has decorated his cubicle with maps of the areas in California where I do business, so he is familiar with my location and my needs.
Below are some of the tasks that my assistant handles for me:
• He handles billing. He copies all of my spoken notes into Evernote, and then he enters them into Quickbooks. He then adds up the billable hours, with precision may I add, and selects the proper customer and appropriate trip charges. If the customer has a payment on file with us, he processes the payment and applies it to the invoice.
• He does paperwork, such as filling out forms like rebates, tax forms, and applications. He sends them to my printer wirelessly once I approve the forms.
• He makes phone calls to vendors, competitors for market research, technical support, and phone companies, and he always follows up on everything.
• He does online research and even checks stock prices.
• He pays invoices, such as credit cards, phone bills, vendor bills, etc.
• He handles return merchandise by contacting Dell to receive credit for a part we don’t need.
• He handles the mailing labels necessary to send the part back.
• He makes office purchases like toner, headsets.
I could expand exponentially upon the value of my assistant. He is that great. I highly recommend hiring a 123employee assistant of your own. If you do, it’s a good idea to put together a list of all of the duties you would like your hire to cover. That way, appropriate candidates can be sent your way for interviews.
Best of luck! I hope my experience is enough to help you make an informed decision.
I have not used this company, but I can tell you from friends I have in the Philippines that the owner and staff run rough shod over the staff. If they want to leave they are not paid and are forced to sign new contracts to keep then working.
They use the same VA for more than one client at a time and are totally uncaring in there duty to the client. They pay the staff approx $250 a month so no wonder the work you get from them is substandard.
This company is an embarrassment to the networking industry and if you are using them, then you are supporting a company that treats its staff as slaves.
I would be very careful who you use for your business.
Since I started to use 123Employee, I never heard reasons from a VA about personal problems and such. I am getting a lot of personal problems from freelance VAs, reasons why they never responded immediately etc. My business is much safer since they work in an office.
I once used 123Employee for a special telemarketing project, I was given a chance to interview some telemarketers and I had a hard time deciding which one to hire because all candidates were superb. I wanted to hire all of them but just needed to hire 1. The VA I got (Jen) was the best and I am planning to hire her again with my upcoming projects.
123Employee has quick customer service. I mistakenly ordered Daven’s book twice last March and when I called in to reverse the second order, they took action immediately without hassle. Great service.
We’ve had our 123 VA for years now. We absolutely love her and couldn’t live without her.
Lol. 123Employee is merely a scam. As far as the what I have know their CEO Daven Michaels tells lie to all the clients and for the upcoming clients. Daven Michaels never owns a company nor the 123Employee agents in the Philippines. He is just a marketer, he markets the 123Employee all over the globe as if it is owned by him.
here’s what the real situation of a client when they will subscribed to 123Employee.
Clients are classified into categories. These are the normal clients who paid the normal packages, Affiliated clients which are from the affiliates of 123 such as the jack bosch, Anthony morrison (fast cash commission), The Lyttle sisters and many more from their referrals partners, The VIP clients which are some clients from Daven Michaels’s personal coaching, The old and loyal clients and the big named companies. So when a client orders a package they will set an appointment then tackles about what are the clients concerns and wants for a VA to handle a specific tasks. Automatically the HR of 123Employee sited a project manager who can deal with it. (A project manager of 123employee are the senior employees who knows more than enough compare to an ordinary agent). So what the HR would tell to a client is :”The project manager is good and can deal to whatever the clients needs” afterwards the HR will pass the phone or set another appointment for the client to talk to the Project Manager. As if it is now set the client and the Project manager will now tackle what are the client’s need to be worked for. afterwards the Project manager will get an agent/VA to handle the client’s tasks. Then the tasks are now performed daily until the client surrenders in the services.
This is now the worst thing that happens in 123Employee. The Clients never know the real backgrounds of the VA’s because it is fake. The Information given are fake. example: The VA is in 3 years or more that has been working in the company, some educational backgrounds are not real, SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE are all lies. Infact 123Employee never had a special training on their VA/AGENTS. 80% of their agents are new. Agents can handle clients even their status are just trainees with a daily compensation of 100PHP or $2 per day. All answer and suggestions will depend on their senior agent or PM’s which has more experience than the new Agents. Somehow their End Day Report are fake and edited.
Their pricing is to high but they can’t give enough compensation to their Employees who worked for them.
Salary calculation:
normal agents:
$7 dollars per 8 hours shift – can be deducted if have some lates.
10 percent night difference since the employees are working 12midnight till 9Am Philippine time.
additional $25 if complete attendance without 3 lates for the whole month cycle.
SO approximately $200 per month salary if you get the $25 incentives. However their are some deductions made such as some insurance. then the payout time is divided every 2weeks so a normal will only get less than $100 every 15 days. How cruel it is.
Those are just SOME of the info’s I have from them.
So all I can say to them is THEY ARE DISGUSTING.
Ebony is way off base, she don’t know what she is talking about. She’s saying things she knows nothing about. I know this company and have been doing business with them for years and this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
I have had excellent service and it seems you have some personal bone to pick which isn’t helpful here. I am building up a team of 10 outsourced employees and the best thing about 123Employee is that they have ongoing training, project managers on staff, and they take care of any issues by replacing anyone who is not working out well. All I have to do is give them a heads up, and they are replaced quickly so we can continue our business. They are fair and professional and I would recommend them to anyone looking for a VA or with other marketing related services.
Chris I agree with Ebony. I was one of the V.A from 123employee and we are forced to tell lies to our clients. Here are some things you don’t know about 123Employee
1. They force V.A’s to change their names so that the clients could not track the V.A personally. They even force VA to create FAKE Social Media accounts for clients.
2.When clients sends Bonus to the VA they will surely get almost half of the amount. Even the Project manager will get their part.
3.There’s no proper training for the VA – they even hire people who don’t know what social media is.
4.123 Employee don’t own any building or office in the Philippines. It’s a media play. They are telling clients that they own 2-3 campuses for 123 which is not true. The true and existing office is owned by Ilagan FAmily which is the Sixeleven Global Services.
5.During client visit in the Phippines they force agent’s not to wear any Sixeleven stuff such as Sixeleven ID’s , Uniform they even remove the banner outside the building and change it to 123Employee.
I agree with Ebony, Why wont you come to visit their office and ask few people how much their VA earn? and even ask the local government who owns their so called 123 company building. . was it really Daven Michaels or Daven is just a client of Sixelenven Global Services and he’s just using their VA as it he owns them? Daven is just a Marketer. .without Sixeleven hes nothing. . he owns nothing.
I was assured they would do a good job as recommended by Jack Bosch. The 1 month experience was a total loss, waste of time. The VA assigned to me gave me a lot of bogus info, and another employee admitted he was derelict in even reporting for duty at times. I consider both Jack Bosch and 123employee people with whom you do not want to have any relationship. Horrible, both.