What does a virtual assistant do? Tasks, examples and what to delegate first

A virtual assistant does the work that has to happen every day but does not have to be done by you. In practice that work falls into four families, and they map to four kinds of VA: admin (inbox, diary, travel, expenses, documents, suppliers), customer service (email, chat, calls, refunds, help content), lead generation (prospect research, outreach, CRM, call booking, nurturing) and e-commerce (listings, orders, stock, reviews, returns, suppliers). A general VA can cover the admin family and the lighter end of the others; the more the work depends on a platform and a process, the more you want an assistant hired for that family.

Two things are true of every kind. The VA works inside your accounts and your tools, not their own, so the work and the data stay yours. And the VA works to rules you set: what they may do alone, what they draft for your approval, and what always comes to you. Most of the difference between a VA who transforms your week and one who adds to it is whether those rules were written down.

This is the first family most businesses delegate, because the tasks already exist and are already being done by someone too senior for them. A virtual admin assistant typically owns six of them.

Inbox triage

Sorts your inbox, drafts replies for your review, archives noise and surfaces what needs your attention. Routine replies go out independently within limits you agree.

Calendar management

Books meetings, manages reschedules, blocks focus time and keeps your schedule clean across time zones, with prep information sent ahead of each meeting.

Travel booking

Books flights, hotels, transfers and accommodation, and prepares itineraries with confirmations, addresses and contact details ready before you leave.

Document & note prep

Formats documents, prepares meeting notes, drafts standard correspondence and maintains your filing system.

Expense tracking

Processes receipts, categorises spending, prepares monthly expense reports and syncs them with your accounting tool.

Supplier & vendor coordination

Liaises with suppliers, schedules service visits, manages quotes and handles routine vendor communication.

The second family is the front line: everything a customer sends you, on every channel. A customer service virtual assistant answers under your brand and escalates by rules you build together.

Email & ticket response

Replies to customer emails within your service standard, escalates anything outside their scope and keeps the ticket queue moving.

Live chat coverage

Staffs your live chat during your business hours, or extended hours where you need them, turning website visitors into qualified conversations.

Inbound call handling

Answers calls under your brand, takes messages, schedules callbacks and routes urgent issues to you immediately.

Refunds, returns & complaints

Processes refunds and exchanges to your standards, defuses complaints and escalates only when a decision is yours to make.

The third family is the top of the pipeline. A lead generation virtual assistant is measured on qualified conversations booked, not on activity.

Prospect research

Researches and qualifies leads against your ideal customer profile, sourced from LinkedIn, industry databases and your existing CRM.

Cold email outreach

Runs multi-step email sequences in your tools and your messaging, measured on replies rather than volume sent.

LinkedIn prospecting

Sends connection requests and follow-ups, and engages with prospects' content to warm them up before outreach.

CRM hygiene

Keeps the pipeline accurate: contact details updated, activities logged, deals moved between stages, duplicates removed.

Discovery call booking

Manages your booking link, qualifies interested prospects, sends prep materials and confirms attendance.

The fourth family is store operations across every channel you sell on. An e-commerce virtual assistant keeps the store running without you in it every hour.

Product listings

Creates, updates and optimises listings with titles, descriptions, images and attributes across Shopify, Amazon, eBay and your other marketplaces.

Order processing

Processes orders, tracks fulfilment, handles cancellations, updates shipping statuses and coordinates with couriers.

Inventory monitoring

Watches stock levels across SKUs and channels, triggers reorders before bestsellers run out and flags slow movers.

Reviews & messages

Responds to customer reviews and marketplace messages on Amazon, eBay and your store, protecting your seller rating.

Returns & exchanges

Processes returns, manages exchanges, handles refunds within your policy and identifies the patterns that reduce return rates.

A virtual assistant is not a substitute for every role you have not filled, and the hires that fail are usually the ones that expected one.

A VA does not set strategy. They run the inbox; they do not decide which customers you should be chasing. They run the outreach; they do not write the positioning it depends on. If you need someone to decide, you need a manager, a consultant or a co-founder.

A VA is not a specialist by default. Bookkeeping to a filing standard, legal drafting, design, software development and paid-media management are their own professions. Some assistants have a second skill and it is worth asking, but hire the profession when the work needs the profession, and let the VA do the coordination around it.

A VA does not carry authority they were never given. They will not approve a refund outside policy, commit you to a supplier's price or answer a prospect's question about your roadmap. That is a feature: the edge of their scope is where your judgement is meant to sit, and a good VA hands over at that edge with the context written up.

A VA is not an AI tool. There are useful automations for scheduling, transcription and drafting, and a good VA uses them. But the work described on this page needs a person who knows your business, follows your process and can be held to a standard.

The price depends on the model more than on the task. A UK-based assistant, employed or through a UK agency, costs what a UK salary costs plus the employment overheads and your management time. A freelancer's hourly rate looks lower until you add the hours you spend recruiting, briefing and covering gaps. A managed VA is employed, trained and supervised by the provider, works for your business alone, and is replaced by the provider if the fit is wrong.

A managed VA from Ant Assist starts at £5 per hour on the entry rate: the first 6 months on the Entry tier, 3 months on Mid, 1 month on Expert. After the promotion the rate depends on the service, from £5.50 per hour full time on the Entry tier for lead generation to £6.50 for e-commerce, with Mid and Expert tiers above for longer experience; part time runs at 80 hours a month, full time at 160. The rate includes the assistant's time, our office facilities in Cairo, and the supervision and management that keep quality up. Every VA is recruited, managed and supervised from our own in-house office, works your UK hours and is dedicated to one client. Most clients have their VA active within 5 to 7 working days of signing up.

The full comparison against a UK employee is in how much a virtual assistant costs in the UK, and the step-by-step process, from choosing the model to the first 30 days, is in how to hire a virtual assistant.

The one rule for what to delegate first: take last week's calendar and inbox, mark every item someone else could have done with the right access and a clear rule, and hand over the family with the most marks. Do not split a first hire across two families. One person doing two jobs badly is the commonest way a first VA hire fails, and one person doing one job well is how most long-term engagements begin.