Author: Rey Arguelles

Christmas in the Philippines is never complete without sumptuous food. We are lucky to have rich culinary traditions that blend foreign influences with local flavors. 

The only problem with having such an extensive menu of festive meals is selecting the best ones to serve during a Christmas Party.

If you are having trouble preparing a feast for your Christmas Party this year, we are giving you our top picks for must-try recipes.

 

Even as alcohol sales are limited, there’s no stopping you from enjoying this crispy and savory treat that goes well with fresh atchara.

For  this dish, simply boil a pork leg in a large pot with enough water to fully submerge the leg. Let it boil for an hour and add salt, bay leaves and star anise. Once the leg becomes tender, remove it from the pot, dry it out with a paper towel, and deep fry the leg in oil that’s heated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Let the skin pop before serving the crispy pata on a large platter. All you need to do now is to enjoy — in moderation, that is.

 

Any Filipino celebration is never complete without this festive mainstay. 

There are many ways you can prepare embutido, but it’s best to start with the basics. First, you need to mix ground pork with bread crumbs, raw eggs, onions, carrots, bell peppers and other vegetables. To enhance the flavor of your embutido, mix in some raisins, salt, and tomato sauce. 

Layout this mixture on a sheet of aluminum foil. At this point, you can add sliced boiled eggs and hotdogs. Next, roll it into a log and fold the edges securely. Let it steam for about an hour before storing it in the refrigerator. 

Embutidos can be reheated and it’s always important to give it a dab of banana ketchup.

 

Popularly known as valenciana to Ilonggos, this fiesta essential is also great for the Holiday Season. 

The secret to preparing the best paella is the quality of saffron rice you are using and the amount of time you soak it in water. It’s best to wait at least three hours before you get started.

After sautéing garlic and onions, cook an assortment of seafood such as shrimps and clams for about three minutes. Make sure to add salt and black pepper. Add some tomato sauce and cook for another minute or until the juices blend with each other. 

Remove the seafood and add the rice to the sauce. Leave it simmering until the rice becomes tender. After that, place the seafood on top of the rice. This makes for truly Spanish-inspired feast for your Noche Buena this year.

 

What’s a Christmas feast without leche flan? This simple dessert is easy to make and can be modified in any way you wish. 

Start by beating egg yolks with condensed milk, fresh milk and vanilla extract. As you do this, you should have heated a leche flan mold over the stove.  

If the mold is hot enough, you can caramelize white sugar in it. Let  the liquified sugar settle on the flat side of the mold for about five minutes before pouring the egg and milk mixture. 

Cover the mold with aluminum foil and let it steam. After about 30 minutes, let the leche flan cool down and refrigerate it just in time for your holiday dinner!

 

Noodles symbolize a more prosperous life as they all say, so why not include this dish for a more  hopeful 2021?

Here’s what you need to do to prepare pancit malabon.  Simply cook a pack of pancit noodles as you normally would then set it aside.  

Next, sauté some garlic and onion and add boiled pork bits. Let the bits cook for three minutes before adding patis and pepper.  Add some shrimp stock and annatto water (basically istiwitis) to the mix and bring it to a boil. Let it cook for about three minutes.  

Place the noodles on a large platter or tray and pour the sauce all over. Finish the dish by topping it with chicharon, hard-boiled eggs, chives, and shrimp. 

 

What’s your menu for your Christmas Party this year? Let us know in the comments below. 

As the demand for your services or products grows, your business needs to keep up by recruiting more employees. 

However, the process can become costly as you spend time and resources gathering resumes, selecting the best candidates, and training them in assuming their roles. 

In order to get the most from hiring new employees, it’s important to optimize the costs of managing the entire process, from recruitment all the way to deployment. 

Here’s how:

One obvious way to cut down on recruitment expenses is to choose more promising candidates. For this, it’s important to prepare criteria specifying the qualities you need in a new recruit.

If you are looking for a web designer for your web development project, it pays to know whether there are candidates who have had actual experience creating mockups and layouts for companies in the same industry.

This way, you can divert your attention towards the most promising applicants who won’t take long to learn the ropes.   

 

Interviewing applicants is a crucial part of the recruitment process. It is where you determine competencies and gauge work attitudes that are not explicitly stated on a candidate’s resume or CV.

With that being said, you should be able to refine your list of interview questions and use that to seek out recruits who may require less time for onboarding or training.

Instead of focusing on an applicant’s strengths and weaknesses, you might as well learn how he or she will respond to difficult scenarios (for instance, an angry and impatient client). These should tell you a lot more about a person’s potential to become an asset within your organization. 

 

Hiring new employees isn’t something that only the recruitment team can handle on their own. When it comes to publishing hiring ads and seeking out quality talents, it should take the needs of each department into account and use these as a reference for hiring the right people.

If your marketing team needs help with social media management, it’s best to publish hiring notices that highlight such a competency.

By working closely with other teams within the organization, your recruitment team can run ads that attract the right applicants.

 

In case you need help with running a recruitment campaign, you can always reach out to an agency that’s capable of running recruitment ads, preparing training materials, and interviewing potential hires. This comes with a cost, but you get to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and ROI of your recruitment activities. 

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to be a major public health crisis, outsourcing your recruitment processes gives you more time to seek out growth opportunities while ensuring that your business is supplied by top-notch talents.  

 

If you need help with recruitment process outsourcing, OneVirtual Global Business Solutions has you covered. Schedule a consultation to get started. 

The Holidays wouldn’t be complete without partying. With the ensuing pandemic, however, safety remains a number one priority as gatherings for Christmas are discouraged this year.  

Still, we can’t let Covid-19 dampen the Holiday Spirit. Even with strict social distancing and stay-at-home rules in place, organizing fun Christmas parties is possible. Here are a few ideas to make this festive occasion just as memorable as previous years:

If you are hosting a Christmas get-together via Zoom, you can organize a contest that rewards participants with the best-decorated backgrounds. Before sending out the link, have them to spice up their home environment with lights and festive colors. They can also dress up to complete their desired theme. 

 

The Holidays are the perfect time to watch seasonal favorites, from Home Alone to Tim Burton’s a Nightmare Before Christmas. If these titles are a little too cliche for everyone’s taste, then consider Christmas-themed films like Die Hard or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Be sure to tell everyone to prepare their own Holiday drinks and munchies. 

The rules don’t say you can hold a Christmas Party in the evening, so try having it during lunchtime where you can distribute packed meals. Get creative by using custom lunch boxes that contain freebies and souvenirs. You can add a twist to it by making it a themed luncheon. For instance, you can tell everyone to arrive in Holiday-themed pajamas or wear unique hats.

 

People may have taken advantage of the lockdown period to find new hobbies. With that being said, consider holding a virtual talent show where participants can showcase the abilities they already have or were able to develop while they were working at home. You can send them discount vouchers or gift baskets as prizes. 

 

You can’t have a Christmas Party without games that reward you with awesome prizes. While playing Christmas-themed party games seems less fun online, you can still make this an exciting time for everyone through a virtual game of bingo. Using apps like Bingo Maker, you can easily set up a bingo game via Zoom or Skype to add some excitement to your Christmas Party.

What other fun and risk-free ideas for a Christmas Party do you have in mind? Feel free to share them with us so we can all have a great time! 

Satisfying your ecommerce customers isn’t enough. Your business should also focus on retaining them for the long run. 

Customer retention can be a complicated process, but getting the most value from your customer engagements can bring opportunities to your online store and your audience. 

And since it’s the Holiday Season, you might as well nurture first-time visitors this month into loyal customers in 2021. Here’s how to do it: 

 

Cross-selling is the practice of adding more products to a customer’s purchase. It involves convincing them to (for example) add more accessories to a dress they purchased at your shop. This comes as an add-on deal on top of a discount. 

Upselling, on the other hand, is the practice of convincing a customer that they should upgrade to a more expensive but higher quality item. Both these options can help satisfy customers and give added value to every transaction. 

 

A loyalty program serves both as an incentive and reward that encourages customer loyalty. For this, include such rewards as a free gift certificate, discounts on select items, and a free entry to a raffle or contest. 

 

A personalized customer experience can help make a customer feel special, thereby lengthening the amount of time your ecommerce store engages with your audience.

Personalizing customer experience includes engaging them through social media and using individual customer analytics so you can tailor your messages to their needs. For this, you can send out personalized emails through tools like MailChimp. 

 

Providing exceptional service remains the most important part of ensuring customer retention. After all, your brand is your best asset.

With that being said, always cater to the needs and concerns of your ecommerce’s customers whenever possible. You wouldn’t want them to lose faith in your brand and stop making any more purchases. 

 

Improving customer satisfaction and retention is a lot to manage. Luckily, you can always hire a team of virtual assistants who can manage your customer interactions, provide valuable experiences to your audience, and enhance your sales numbers.  

Get started with OneVirtual Global Business Solutions. Schedule a consultation today by clicking here!

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the spirit of giving remains alive this Holiday Season. After all, we all need a reason to smile and the best way to do that is through the age-old tradition of gift-giving.  

With only a few more days before Christmas, you might as well beat the crowds and shop for the perfect gift this early on. Apart from that, you also need to know what to give at a cost that fits your pocket. 

Luckily, OVS has got you covered. Here’s a list of the top five Christmas gift ideas at P700 or less!

 

If you know someone who is an avid coffee lover, then this coffee brewing kit from BrewsCo would be the ideal gift. It comes with a 350mL French press and 200g of Mount Apo Arabica grounds. The kit costs P699 plus the shipping fee — unless of course, you have an extra free shipping voucher lying around. All in all, it’s still a great deal if it means satisfying someone else’s daily caffeine fix.

 

Stationery and calligraphy enthusiasts will definitely appreciate it if you give them fountain pens this Christmas. While these luxury writing tools can cost as much as P20,000, you can look for entry-level fountain pens that cost less than P500. Consider the Platinum Prefounte fountain pen which retails for P495 at Scribe. With its transparent resin body and stainless steel nib, this pen is sure to trigger an obsession in the person receiving it!

 

While 2020 is going to be the year of canceled plans, we can only hope to fulfill these plans in 2021. People deserve a better year and it’s for this reason that giving out planners to your well-organized friends won’t go out of style. Let them say goodbye to 2020 by giving them a 2021 Daily Interact Certified Positive Planner, complete with motivational messages for a year filled with possibilities. 

 

For the plantitos and plantitas who have been growing their collections this year, help them nurture their newfound hobby by gifting them with rare succulents and cacti. You can easily find plant sellers anywhere, but if you don’t want to expose yourself outside, you can always try out online sellers like The Greenthumb Souvenirs. Though they offer ornamental plants that are intended to be given away as souvenirs, the store has a wide selection of succulents, cacti, and even rare plants starting from P350. 

 

A staple among work-from-home employees, stress relief rubs are affordable and easy to find. And with so many aromas to choose from starting at around P100 per 50g, you might as well buy an entire set for someone who really needs them. Our top pick for this would be Meiyi Creations Spa Essentials, which is available in four different scents: lavender, bubblegum, ginger, and herb. We suggest getting all four so your special partner gets the full spa experience. 

What are other great gift options that are supposed to be on this list? 

Whatever it is you want to give this Christmas, it’s important to keep safe while you shop for the best gift for capping the year!

 

This holiday season, it’s important that your e-commerce website provides the best experience for online shoppers. 

For this, you’ll want to have all the right tools for managing your e-commerce website and making sure that it does well in attracting, nurturing, and converting customers. 

With that being said, here’s a list of the best tools to give your e-commerce website a boost.

 

When it comes to promoting special Christmas offers through email, Mailchimp is by far the best platform for nurturing existing customers and convincing them to make repeat purchases on your e-commerce website. 

Along with built-in tools for emails and social ads, Mailchimp also comes with personalization tools for sending messages that are valuable to each unique audience. Not only that, the platform offers a free website builder to help create your e-commerce store. 

 

Do you wish to see what your audience is looking for? Crazy Egg might be what your website needs for that visualization.

With its HeatMap feature, Crazy Egg provides you detailed insights into how your audience interacts onsite. It does so by giving you a visualization of audience behaviors across various metrics, from the number of clicks to how far your customers scroll. These and a lot more make Crazy Egg a must-have tool for optimizing your e-commerce website. 

 

Returning customers are crucial to your business, which is why you need ProProfs Help Desk to help maintain high levels of satisfaction.

ProProfs comes equipped with the necessities to help your website manage customer interactions such as automated responses for dealing with commonly asked questions and an automated ticket assignment feature that can help streamline your workflows. 

 

Communication is important when it comes to connecting your business and its customers. 

For this, you may want to incorporate live chat into your e-commerce website so you can receive and respond to customers’ queries in real-time. With hundreds of live chat options available, you might want to start with Acquire.

This tool lets you engage customers across multiple devices and channels. In case they run into problems with the products they bought from you, customers can conveniently ask for help. It’s a win-win solution for your business and your audience!

 

While using these tools can help increase the efficiency of your e-commerce website, you still need to learn how to make the most of them.  

In case you need extra hands to make your e-commerce website stand out, you can always hire a team of virtual assistants to prepare your business for more sales and even better client interactions.

Get started with OneVirtual Global Business Solutions today! Click here to schedule a consultation.

Keeping your customers satisfied is one thing, but turning them into loyal clients should have a spot of its own in your long-term business strategy.  

Indeed, for your brand to remain successful and profitable, it has to maintain a solid client base made up of genuine supporters and advocates. According to Bain & Company, every 5% increase in customer retention is attributed to 25% more profits.  

Customer loyalty is an important resource that you should be able to generate on the side. That said, here are a few important tips for turning clients into loyal brand advocates.  

The relationship you have with your customers doesn’t stop at a sales close. You need to go the extra mile by keeping your clients engaged.

Upselling other products or services, asking for testimonials, and encouraging them to subscribe to your newsletter should increase customer lifetime value. More importantly, these post-sales activities can show clients you have a lot more to offer down the line.

Indeed, closing a deal is only half the battle. In order to achieve long-term success, continuous engagement is integral. 

The rewards you give to your customers do not have to be extravagant. It can be as simple as inviting them access to special events, including them in a loyalty program, or sending out personalized emails. 

Discounts are great for attracting repeat sales, but it’s often best to look towards better incentive schemes that add value to both your business and your clients. That said, you can come up with a referral program that rewards clients for every friend or family member they refer. 

It doesn’t always have to be professional between you and your customers. You need to be affectionate and attentive to their needs as well. 

You might want to send a return gift you haven’t heard from them for a while or check in on them through a special email. All this can help you stay relevant and encourage your customers to keep engaging your brand. 

For this, you can use behavioral analytics to evaluate the needs of your clients and develop the proper messages around these needs. That way, you will have better chances of turning casual customers into loyal patrons who wouldn’t hesitate to share or re-tweet whatever you post. 

Your regulars who have been with your business longer deserve the best possible treatment. You wouldn’t be in business anyway if it weren’t for their patronage, so give extra consideration to long-time clients who already have a close working relationship with you.

You are lucky to have a client base that has been with your brand since day one. Their loyalty strengthens your brand presence and generates new business in the form of referrals. You only need help with keeping these types of clients happy as they remain with you for a longer period.

Improving customer loyalty requires hard work. For this reason, it would be wise to consider outsourcing some of your brand-building and customer service tasks to the right professionals.

Virtual assistants can help you improve customer loyalty as they can handle a range of tasks along the lines of customer service and digital marketing. 

You can find these professionals in OneVirtual Global Business Solutions, the leading provider of virtual assistants in your industry. Schedule a consultation today.

Your business may be looking for an effective team to handle your customer service. So, when you are looking to outsource this part of your business operations, it’s important to identify the qualities that make for an effective customer service team. 

If you’re making the decision to outsource your CRM, finding the right team that you need for your business won’t be an easy thing to manage. Luckily, here are a few examples of the skills and qualities you need in a team that handles everything from customer complaints and inquiries to reservations and billing concerns:

 

Customer service is all about listening, understanding, and communicating with customers, each one having their own set of questions, concerns, and issues.

A good team knows how to engage with each individual on the phone. It should know how to properly listen and communicate directly with each customer and be attentive with what they have to say or complain about. 

Most importantly, communication is key if a team knows how to keep it relaxed, casual, and yet professional. You wouldn’t want your customers to talk with a robot, so aim to provide authentic customer service experiences that your audience will surely appreciate.

 

A good customer service team doesn’t just know how to communicate with their clients. It understands them as well.

Customer service can be a tough job since it requires having the right amount of patience. It also takes a great deal of skill to diffuse very tense scenarios with frustrated customers. In such scenarios, empathy and understanding go a long way, so be sure that your customer service team knows exactly what the person on the other line is expecting. 

That said, a good team knows how to use both patience and empathy to accommodate the daily barrages of complaints received in the business.

 

Effective communication or not, problems are bound to arise sooner or later.

A crucial quality to have as a customer service representative is the ability to confront problems in a quick and decisive manner. Hesitation and uncertainty only lead to more agitation on the part of the customer. 

The right team can handle any issue that’s rung up on the phone as well as provide helpful information and solutions to very specific problems. 

 

It is very important for a customer service representative to have more than adequate knowledge about your company and the products and services it offers. After all, you won’t be able to give sound advice or suggestions to customers if these are not anchored to the goods they bought. 

On that note, your agents should undergo extensive training where they can master every detail of the products and services you represent. 

 

An effective customer service team should know how to utilize certain CRM software to their fullest potential. From Zendesk to Kayako, being able to master such tools can help reduce resolution times and improve the overall efficiency of your customer service department.  

Professional customer service representatives are tech-savvy and don’t ask for a manager’s aid in order to get a single headset working according to company regulations. They also know how to optimize the tools provided to them to make for an effective calling session. And with their experience in handling hardware and software, they run into less “technical” difficulties along the way.

 

When seeking out an effective customer service team with the right tools, you may want to look for a company that offers contact center solutions that fit your business’s needs. 

OneVirtual Solutions already has a team of experienced CSRs who can work closely with you in nurturing valuable relations with your audience. Contact us today!

Agents and brokers spend time and resources understanding the needs of their clients and making sure that they are properly represented at the negotiating table. This would explain why customer service is such a crucial element in an industry that thrives on high-quality connections. 

The relationship you share with a homebuyer or home seller defines your success in this highly competitive field. In order to get ahead of your competitors, you will have to create positive experiences for your clients, maintain a loyal following, and attract more clients to your real estate business.

Effective customer service will be the key towards better growth, so it’s important that you apply the right strategies in customer service. 

Here are a few of these strategies to help you get started: 

 

Communication is the cornerstone of effective customer service. You will need to keep your lines open in case someone needs help with buying or selling a home. Your clients may want to ask for advice, so it’s important to make yourself readily available for inquiries. They would appreciate it if you could give them immediate responses.

In times when you’re unavailable, you wouldn’t want to direct your clients to your voicemail. Automated responses do less in helping your clients out especially when they urgently need advice. That said, you can hire a real estate virtual assistant to directly answer client inquiries, arrange appointments, and accept messages that are meant for you. This beats having your clients record a message and wait for you to call back. 

 

Clients want to know how you’re going to help them realize their goals. The best you can do is to understand their needs and expectations. It’s not enough to explain how real estate transactions work. You also have to empathize with your clients by asking them about their long-term plans and the issues that get in their way.

Empathy goes a long way in terms of building valuable relationships with your clients. Take the time to sit down and have an in-depth conversation with them. Make sure to listen to the issues they want to resolve and consider the present situations they find themselves in. Being able to empathize with your clients lets you personalize your services based on what they need to accomplish.

 

It’s important that you focus on keeping a client engaged even after a deal has been reached. For this, you can run an email marketing campaign to notify your clients about certain activities or events your real estate company is hosting. You may also opt for referral programs that encourage your clients to refer someone they know to your company.

Using social media, you can publish content that past clients will find useful. You may also write blog posts about the latest real estate news and home improvement tips to maintain a strong and valuable connection with your audience. This also helps you build enough credibility to attract new clients. 

With customer service that’s done right, you are able to discover new opportunities for growing your real estate business. In fact, your business can benefit considerably from the way you closely relate your businesses to the needs of your clients.

You only need someone who has the right amount of experience to help you reach out to your audience in the most effective way. With a real estate virtual assistant from OneVirtual Solutions, you are guaranteed the best possible results in customer service. 

Hire one today and give your client interactions a much-needed boost!