Industry:
Professional services
Founded:
2018
HQ:
Manila, Philippines
Previous provider:
Skype
Athena is an agency that connects busy global executives with best-in-class Executive Assistants (EAs) in the Philippines. Athena’s main goal is to help leaders maximize their time — or, as Leica Chang, Director of Operations at Athena, sees it: to “make time matter.”
Athena’s entire operation is built around this goal. Executives who hire Athena EAs receive training to learn how to successfully delegate their work, and Athena EAs receive ongoing professional development to ensure they’re using the best processes, systems, and technology to scale their work.
OpenPhone integrations used:
The challenge
From managing schedules to planning events — Athena’s executive assistants (EAs) do a lot of heavy lifting for entrepreneurs and founders in the United States remotely from the Philippines. But there was one task that proved difficult early on for EAs; they couldn’t just pick up the phone in Manila to call restaurants, offices, and banks in the United States.
The Athena team initially adopted Skype. But this decision created an even greater challenge.
Calling the United States from the Philippines with Skype required credits, which Athena leadership had to purchase on their behalf. With no way to automate this process, EAs would often be stuck waiting for credits before making critical phone calls. This time-intensive process didn’t fit with Athena’s philosophy of maximizing time.
“At that point, we knew we were going to grow the business exponentially, so it was important for us to find a solution that was easy, quick, and that our EAs would appreciate,” says Athena’s Director of Operations Leica Chang.
Leica Chang
Director of Operations at Athena
The solution
OpenPhone emerged as a potential contender early in their search for a better solution. Several EAs had already adopted OpenPhone on their own and the results were promising.
With OpenPhone, EAs no longer had to worry about purchasing credits to call US numbers. And when they need extra credits to make international calls, Leica and other admins can see how many credits remain and purchase more in just a few clicks. For Athena’s EAs, this has been a huge time-saver — especially as clients increase their amount of international travel post-COVID.
But it’s not only the EAs that notice the difference since Athena switched to OpenPhone. “For our clients, too,” says Leica. “They get responses faster, and they get solutions faster.”
The impact
Athena’s EA services continue to expand with OpenPhone supporting their rapid growth from 100 EAs to over 800.
In fact, OpenPhone is a core part of Athena’s onboarding process — for both clients and new EAs. When a new EA is matched with a client, they’re assigned a phone number that matches the client’s area code and go through structured training. “We really saw the difference in EAs’ confidence and clients’ confidence when we started using OpenPhone,” says Leica, “I believe it's really a good investment, especially for teams across different locations.”
And as Athena continues to scale, OpenPhone’s 256-bit AES encryption allows them to keep their clients’ work and personal lives private. “At all times Athena can control that number,” says Leica. “It’s very important to us that whatever is communicated over text or calls is always kept private.”
Athena is an agency that connects busy global executives with best-in-class Executive Assistants (EAs) in the Philippines. Athena’s main goal is to help leaders maximize their time — or, as Leica Chang, Director of Operations at Athena, sees it: to “make time matter.”
Athena’s entire operation is built around this goal. Executives who hire Athena EAs receive training to learn how to successfully delegate their work, and Athena EAs receive ongoing professional development to ensure they’re using the best processes, systems, and technology to scale their work.
"OpenPhone brings so much value to our executive assistants and so much value to their clients."
Leica Chang
From managing schedules to planning events — Athena’s executive assistants (EAs) do a lot of heavy lifting for entrepreneurs and founders in the United States remotely from the Philippines. But there was one task that proved difficult early on for EAs; they couldn’t just pick up the phone in Manila to call restaurants, offices, and banks in the United States.
The Athena team initially adopted Skype. But this decision created an even greater challenge.
Calling the United States from the Philippines with Skype required credits, which Athena leadership had to purchase on their behalf. With no way to automate this process, EAs would often be stuck waiting for credits before making critical phone calls. This time-intensive process didn’t fit with Athena’s philosophy of maximizing time.
“At that point, we knew we were going to grow the business exponentially, so it was important for us to find a solution that was easy, quick, and that our EAs would appreciate,” says Athena’s Director of Operations Leica Chang.
Leica Chang
The Athena team initially adopted Skype as a solution. EAs’ Skype accounts required the purchase of credits so they could call anyone in the United States. They also often had to ask the leadership team for more credits. This process quickly became “very, very manual,” Leica says. The team needed to manage 100 EAs’ accounts, and often EAs were left waiting for credits right when they needed to carry out critical calls.
This time-intensive process didn’t fit with Athena’s philosophy of maximizing time. On top of that, when Leica surveyed their team of EAs, the existing communication system was one of the most frequently cited pain points.
“So we started looking for solutions,” Leica says. “At that point, we knew we were going to grow the business exponentially, so it was important for us to find a solution that was easy, quick, and [that] our EAs would appreciate.”
OpenPhone emerged as a potential contender early in their search for a better solution. Several EAs had already adopted OpenPhone on their own and the results were promising.
With OpenPhone, EAs no longer had to worry about purchasing credits to call US numbers. And when they need extra credits to make international calls, Leica and other admins can see how many credits remain and purchase more in just a few clicks. For Athena’s EAs, this has been a huge time-saver — especially as clients increase their amount of international travel post-COVID.
But it’s not only the EAs that notice the difference since Athena switched to OpenPhone. “For our clients, too,” says Leica. “They get responses faster, and they get solutions faster.”
Athena’s EA services continue to expand with OpenPhone supporting their rapid growth from 100 EAs to over 800.
In fact, OpenPhone is a core part of Athena’s onboarding process — for both clients and new EAs. When a new EA is matched with a client, they’re assigned a phone number that matches the client’s area code and go through structured training. “We really saw the difference in EAs’ confidence and clients’ confidence when we started using OpenPhone,” says Leica, “I believe it's really a good investment, especially for teams across different locations.”
And as Athena continues to scale, OpenPhone’s 256-bit AES encryption allows them to keep their clients’ work and personal lives private. “At all times Athena can control that number,” says Leica. “It’s very important to us that whatever is communicated over text or calls is always kept private.”
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