Have you ever used a Virtual Assistant? (a real person)

I'm really interested in investing in one for my side business because right now I do a lot of the CRM and business development which I don't really need to be involved in. That said, I would probably more likely hire someone I've already worked with or get a recommendation from someone I trust.

I'd love to use a VA, but not sure what work I do that is best to offload to a VA. A new product that solves this by looking at my work, and figures out when I could use a VA, for what, and match me to a VA would be pretty rad!

I've personally some experiences with few virtual assistants and it's been mostly positive. They saved me a ton of hours in repetitive work that I could use in things that couldn't be outsourced. I remember specially one who was outstanding, incredibly quick and precise. That said, a couple of others were slacking a bit, but in retrospective I think it's because I was not clear enough with the goals and the procedure I wanted them to follow.

I've worked as a freelance virtual assistant and with other virtual assistants before, does that count? From feedback I've received from clients, they found virtual assistants to be useful as we would take the weight off a bit so they wouldn't waste time working on simple but repetitive tasks and could focus on bigger aspects of running a startup or business. We would help with customer service, admin tasks, data entry, lead generation, scheduling appointments, etc.