Clear Desk is a US-based virtual assistant company that provides virtual assistants to entrepreneurs and small to medium-sized businesses all over the world.
The company is headquartered in California, US. Their assistants work remotely from locations based all over the world.
Try their 7-day money back guarantee – they guarantee you will love your Virtual Assistant!
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About ClearDesk
The company started operations about 4 years ago. ClearDesk is headquartered in San Diego, CA and it’s CEO is Jeff Amon.
Prior to founding ClearDesk, Jeff and his partners operated large businesses with high operational costs in the US. Those businesses came to a close as margins thinned and employee costs continued to rise.
It was only when they started a new company and outsourced a large portion of their operations overseas that they realized how much money they could save.
After several years of outsourcing to staff in countries like India, the Philippines, and Colombia, they decided to start ClearDesk.
Their mission is to share the business model they used to grow their businesses and help other business owners save on employee costs and overheads.
*Please note that this video was accurate at time of filming. ClearDesk has updated information since filming.
How ClearDesk Works
To get started working with ClearDesk you need to reach out and leave your contact details. A member of their team will ‘contact you within minutes’ – that’s pretty fast!
After a call to discuss your requirements, ClearDesk will find the best-suited assistant for you based on your business’ needs.
You will have a point of contact at ClearDesk’s offices in California should you need them. Otherwise, you can communicate directly with your virtual assistant and have them start working on your tasks.
ClearDesk allows you to use your own communication tools if you wish. Otherwise, they support Slack, video calls, and phone calls as ways of communication.
ClearDesk specializes in:
- Customer Service
- Sales/SDR
- Exec Assistants
- Ecommerce management (shopify, big commerce, amazon, etc)
- Legal Assistants
- Real estate and mortgage
- Marketing & Social Media
- Bookkeeping
ClearDesk Services
ClearDesk’s virtual assistants can take on the general day-to-day business tasks most business owners are looking to outsource.
To give you an idea, they group their services into the following categories:
- Admin Support
- Customer Support
- Project Management
- Social Media Management
- Sales & Lead Generation
- Virtual Executive Assistant
ClearDesk also says they have assistants with experience working with start-ups, realtors, and sales organizations. It’s worth booking a call with their team to discuss your business and what you’re looking for in an assistant.
ClearDesk is happy to offer Virtual Assistant services in English, Spanish and French – in any time zone that you need them to work in – Great flexibility!
ClearDesk Plans and Pricing
Clear Desk currently has multiple pricing plans, and the option to create a custom plan to suit your requirements.
This positions Clear Desk at a lower price point than what you’d expect to pay for a US-based assistant, while higher than a competitive overseas rate.
ClearDesk’s pricing plans at the time of publishing was:
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Full Time Assistant = $2,500 per month for 180 hrs per month ($13.88/hr)
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- 6 month commitment = 10% discount, $2,250 per month ($12.50/hr)
- 12 month commitment = 22% discount, $1,950 per month ($10.83/hr)
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- Specialized Assistant – (engineering, software development, Facebook Media Management) = $3,500 – $4,500 per month for 180 hours/month (8 hours/day)
Try their 7-day money back guarantee – they guarantee you will love your Virtual Assistant!
There are no other charges and no fixed contracts. You can pay for additional hours at a rate of $20/hr on all plans.
It’s worth noting that you can’t roll unused hours over at the end of the month. They do say their assistants are flexible in regard to business hours though, but that’s something you need to discuss upfront.
ClearDesk Guarantee
ClearDesk ensures that you are provided with the best VA for your needs and have a guarantee that your VA will have the following requirements:
- Education: Min 4 year college graduate
- Work Experience: Min 2 years of work experience
- Thoroughly vetted: background check, employment verifications, skill assessments, and a DISC personality test
- Managed, trained and job prepped by ClearDesk
- All talent compensation and benefits are handled by ClearDesk
- Satisfaction is guaranteed or ClearDesk will replace the candidate for free
ClearDesk Alternatives
ClearDesk’s hourly rates place them somewhere in between US and overseas rates. If you want to work with a US-based assistant, you can expect to pay $24/hr upwards working with companies like Online VA Team, Time ETC, Boldly, and Prialto.
If you are specifically looking for a VA that is bilingual (Spanish/English), check out Virtual Latinos.
If you want to outsource overseas, we recommend checking out OnlineJobs.ph and OkayRelax. Their hourly rates are a lot more competitive ranging between $3-$12.
Your Turn
Have you worked with ClearDesk? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.
Thanks for sharing informative blog.
By the end of our first week we had already reached out to Jeff to increase our VA’s hours with us, as she’s become an essential part of our team in just a matter of days. Clear Desk did a fantastic job matching us with a VA who had the technical expertise, platform experience, and self-starter attitude to hit the ground running. The impact she’s having on helping me work more efficiently is a benefit not just to me personally, but is allowing me to spend more time away from the inbox, working on actually growing our business and mentoring our team.
From our first exploratory call with the Clear Desk team, to our kickoff call with our chosen VA, to the daily communication and reports, we’ve seen utmost professionalism, attention to detail and a real dedication to helping us with our business needs. We look forward to building a long-term relationship with Clear Desk.
David Ward, CEO, Meticulosity
I really want to thank the clearDesk team as you have really helped take some of the stress off of my workload! I have been doing it all by myself for so long now that I didn’t realize that it was actually costing me money- not saving me! I was hesitant to sign on thinking the virtual assistant would just add to my workload because I would have to manage them, but the ClearDesk system makes things easy and my assistant was really “plug and play” just like you promised! I have regular check-ins and receive regular activity reports with him and It couldn’t have gone smoother! I would say that I am actually able to have time to close more business too- I can’t thank you enough!
Everything Jeff is telling you is true. I know it’s hard to believe with the prices he’s giving it to you at but it is true the assistance are well-qualified and do everything you need them to do. I have had my assistance for about four months now I am very happy with her. She is even going from part-time to full-time here very soon. Thank you for your time and have a great day.
I’ve been working with Jeff and ClearDesk for my businesses since May of this year and I must say that they’re very dedicated to assisting clients like us in building a formidable, reliable and professional team. For example, I opened a few new businesses at the beginning of the 2nd Quarter and had it not been for Jeff and his patient team, I can’t even say we’d be able to effectively operate during a pandemic, genuinely.
Jeff has personally become one of our business partners and a personal friend of mine. He answers calls and emails as soon as possible for any questions that may arise and NEVER complains! Especially because I’m on Eastern time in Miami 🙂
All in all, I genuinely wanted to take the time to write an honest referral because I know the risk we take on as entrepreneurs. To not have to worry about the process of employing others and having a trusted company do it who also has your best interests in mind gives me a peace of mind that I cannot describe.
I’m sending you positive energy on this journey and hope you choose Jeff and ClearDesk! 🙂
I can tell you, hands down, using Clear desk is the best decision I have made in a very long time! I am extremely pleased with the performance, dependability, experience & professionalism of my VA. Clear Desk did an amazing job vetting both her and my Social Media engineer. You will not be disappointed! Also, I have to personally mention Jeff Amon who is an absolute pleasure to work with! It’s nice to have someone accountable if needed for the performance of their employees.
ClearDesk has been a super easy solution for hiring a few VAs for our real estate brokerage. We have trained them to help prepare purchase contracts, leases, follow up with clients, and even help with maintenance and property management requests. We discovered if we were open minded about not having this person in our office and if we invested in training, we could truly save a lot of money and scale our business in a much better way! Would highly recommend ClearDesk!
I have regular check-ins and receive regular activity reports with him and It couldn’t have gone smoother
Clear Desk did a fantastic job matching us with a VA who had the technical expertise, platform experience, and self-starter attitude to hit the ground running.
ClearDesk keeps things running smoothly. It’s so relieving knowing I can take days off work know my VA will keep things running smoothly while I’m gone
I love that my VA with ClearDesk is a self-starter and takes care of things before I even knew they were on my plate!
Whether you need 1 person or 20 people, outsourcing is the best way to do it and we love ClearDesk.
What we liked the best is how easy it was to get started. There were no setup fees and it was easy to get started. ClearDesk is flexible and committed!
ClearDesk has been a super easy solution for hiring a few VAs for our customer service team. Would highly recommend them.
Well qualified and they do everything. I know it’s hard to believe with the prices he’s giving it to you at but it is true!
Clear desk is the best decision I have made in a very long time!
My virtual assistant is worth his weight in gold! When I finally realized that I needed help; I did lots of research on how to get help and I kept coming up with hire a VA. I started to do research on how to hire a VA and I realized how counterproductive it was to my attempt to save myself time and to be able to focus on my business. In our initial meeting I told Jeff what my immediate, future business needs, and plans were, and he took care of the rest! After one meeting, I was able to skip straight to the interview process and my VA started that day! One thing that I really liked was the assurance that if things did not work out Th Clear Desk would find me another VA; hence I was not going to be faced with trying to “make do” with a VA I was not really happy with just because I did not have time to redo the hiring process.
Lynne
Lizzy Tech Consulting
Formidable, Reliable and Professional
Trusted company that has your best interests in mind
Yes, I have been using a VA through Cleardesk for almost 4 months now and I love her (Maria)! Our company currently has 12 team members and are continuing to grow, so having Maria by my side has been crucial to my success as we’ve been growing. I’m the Director of Project Management at our company and juggle anywhere from 20-35 website projects at any time, so Maria helps me with a multitude of things…email cleanup and labeling, PM tool notification review and consolidation, meeting notes, general research requests that I don’t have time for, managing and cleaning up my project tasks, meeting scheduling, etc. She’s also really great at reminding me of things.. which sounds weird, but it’s super helpful. Randomly at all hours of the day or night, I’ll send her a message like “remind me to do this task everyday until I tell you it’s done” and she will see the message when she gets online the next day and then she’ll start adding it into her “good morning” message laying out my day as well as her daily summary of what she accomplished until I tell her she can stop reminding me of it. It’s a small thing, but it’s been SUPER helpful. Much more effective than writing it down somewhere and then inevitably losing that note 🙂
I’ve been working exclusively with Maria since we started and since she’s doing great. I haven’t needed to ask for anyone new and she hasn’t asked to be removed at all, so turnover has been 0 at this point. It’s obvious to me that Maria’s goal is to grow with me and learn to do more and more rather than to just do her work and sign off each day. Right now, she’s with me 60 hours per month which breaks down to about 3 hours per day, so she’s online for 3 hour chunks with me anywhere between 9am-3pm CST depending on the day. Usually, if I know I’m going to be in meetings all morning that don’t require her presence and if I don’t have any independent projects she can work on in the meantime, we’ll pre-plan to shift her hours back a bit and she’ll start later in the day or I’ll tell her she can work whatever hours she wants if I know I’m only going to need her for tasks that don’t require her to be online at the same time as me. We’re both pretty flexible and my schedule requires that, so we might be a bit unique in that sense. However, when we started, she was working strictly 9am-12pm CST until we decided to be more flexible with timing for both our benefit.
The one main thing I was told beforehand by several people – and I’m glad I listened – was really deciding what I needed a VA for before Jeff started looking for the right person for me. We decided on a list of items she can do every day and some items she’ll do less frequently but still regularly. However, sometimes those things can be pretty quick for her, so we continue to come up with our parking lot list of items she can work on when she’s done with her daily tasks and doesn’t have other random items being thrown at her by me :). This prevents her from constantly asking me what she should be doing, which would be really stressful. She’ll let me know when she’s done with her daily stuff that she’s here if I need anything else, but then she just works on her parking lot items. For instance, there have been times where I don’t have anything for her to do because her basic daily list of tasks were done within the first hour. So, having a backup list of “if you have nothing to do and I’m unreachable, default to working on one of these things: a, b, c, d, e, etc.” Asking your VA to do research for you on software or tools to make you more efficient and then presenting you with a list of recommendations is a good one to have on that backup list.
If you’re like me, there might be things that you think you can’t give up doing yourself. However, you might be able to find a happy medium allowing some work to shift off your plate while still letting you feel like you’re in control of it. For instance, my job is pretty flexible with start and end times each day and much of that depends on if I have client meetings. Therefore, having Maria help schedule my client meetings was something that we realized was actually confusing me because I would wake up and realize I had a client meeting earlier in the day than I thought and I would almost miss meetings because I didn’t think to look at my calendar thinking I knew what my meeting schedule looked like out of memory. But, rather than taking that back and doing those myself again, she now adds any new meetings and/or meetings-in-the-process-of-being-scheduled to her daily recap so I don’t miss anything.
Also, one random thing I’ve found helpful is that she’ll sometimes just sit on a Zoom call with me her whole shift if I feel like I’m struggling to be productive that day. I have ADHD, so some days I just need an accountability buddy to keep me going. Simply having her sit on a call with me while she does her work and I do mine gives me reason to stay at my computer and work rather than doing laundry or watching Netflix if I’m struggling to stay motivated.. I HAVE to stay at my computer and work because she’s ‘there’ with me. Even if we’re not talking much at all. That was a unique thing I’ve found immeasurably helpful.
Overall, I’ve had a great experience with Maria and highly recommend Cleardesk to anyone! I’ve already referred a couple of our partners and clients to them and at least one has already begun working with a VA and is loving it!
I know this was a lot, but hopefully this helps and you’re more than welcome to reach out with any other questions!