UPDATE: It appears Secret Staff is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.
My Secret Staff is a virtual assistant and outsourcing company with offices in Chicago. The company was founded in 2009 has been growing at a healthy rate since then.
What sets Secret Staff apart from some of the other virtual assistant companies is they offer a number of more specialized tasks included in your monthly subscription.
Services
These higher-value tasks include search engine optimization (SEO), web development, social media marketing, accounting, and website maintenance. All of this is on top of the general business, administrative, and personal tasks your Secret Staff VA would be doing.
The benefit of this arrangement is you get specialized expertise in the area you need, for a low fixed cost. The downside is you may not have that one go-to dedicated resource, but instead a small team of virtual employees.
Plans and Pricing
My Secret Staff currently offers four levels of service, ranging from 10 hours a month at $135 ($13.50 an hour) to 80 hours a month at $695 (8.69 an hour). At the time of this writing, there is no full-time plan available.
These rates are a little higher than some of the competition, but that is to be expected given the more advanced tasks their virtual assistants perform. If you’re looking for straight virtual assistance without the extras, Secret Staff is probably not the best choice. But if you think you might have a need for some of their specialized work down the road, it could be a worthwhile investment.
Secret Staff Intro Video
I emailed My Secret Staff for additional information and have yet to receive a reply 6 days later. (I used the “Proposal in 48 Hours” form on their site.) I would consider that lack of response a big red flag against them.
I also tried their live-chat feature, but it was either un-staffed (didn’t say anything about being offline) or severely understaffed; I gave up after 15 minutes. A week later I tried their live chat again and was connected with Khay, who didn’t really impress me with professionalism. Here are some excerpts from our conversion:
secretstaff: This is Khay how may I help you?
you: Hi good afternoon Khay. I’m researching some different virtual assistant companies for a website project. Where are you located?
secretstaff: we have our office located in chicago IL
you: and your overseas location?
secretstaff: just that
secretstaff: we work virtually
you: ok interesting, everyone is just working from home then?
secretstaff: not really
secretstaff: some are working in the office
OK, not super informative or particularly helpful. I probably should have clarified the question.
you: do you know if secretstaff has an affiliate program for referring new customers?
secretstaff: I don’t know anything about th
secretstaff: that*
Which is understandable, except there was no offer to find out and let me know.
secretstaff: do you have plans of getting our services?
(Because you’re wasting my time.)
you: sent in a contact form last week but got no response
secretstaff: what for?
Does it matter? Geez.
I don’t expect to do business with My Secret Staff anytime soon. If anyone else has had experience with this company — positive or negative — please share it here.
I was really impressed with Secret Staff’s services. They were efficient, professional and very competitive, as far as pricing goes. They assisted me with my documents conversion onto PDF format and were completed ahead of schedule. I was able to communicate with my VA via basecamphq, which is a web basec portal. I was able to post my request, correspond with staff, download the completed files and track the time that was consumed. I definitely have “Secret Staff” on my last the next time my to-dos get overwhelming. I have already recommended a few of my friends. The entire team was a pleasure to work with.