Local business recruits to support companies working smarter

Wiltshire businesswoman Claire Brewerton is recruiting and adding to her team as more business owners look to work smarter this Spring.

Lockdown and the pandemic, and the need to work from home, has meant that Claire’s company, The Virtual Business Centre, has grown as more companies seek to outsource their telephone answering, telemarketing and other admin tasks. 

Claire said: “We’ve gone on a recruitment drive over the last few months to deal with the demand for our remote services. We were a team of 25 and now we’re recruiting another five people to expand the team. Given the stresses and strains placed on many businesses at this time, we’re truly grateful to be in this position.”

The Virtual Business Centre is 22 years old this year and has always offered remote services to other businesses – however in the pandemic the need for that has risen. This month the team have logged their three millionth message for clients.

“Coupled with business owners having to work smarter with staff working from home, there have also been the e-commerce businesses we already working with who are seeing a growth in orders. Also some companies have given up physical offices completely, ” Claire said.

One client, a film production company in London, gave up its office, ensured staff worked from home and then outsourced to Claire and her team to provide a virtual reception.

“The owner has now decided not to return to a physical office. It makes sense for their business that everyone works from home and customers have just one point of contact via a central number that is diverted to our team and we transfer the caller through to the appropriate member of staff ,” Claire said.

Another company Aqueos has seen orders grow for their safe and sustainable pet products by 100 per cent. 

Aqueos founder Tracy Richards said: “Claire supported me by ensuring she had enough capacity to deal with more orders and calls. While I realise for many other business owners this has been a terrible time, it’s been an amazing year for our business.”

Claire has run her The Virtual Business Centre with her husband and co-founder Marc since 1999. Her team provides services including telephone answering, intelligent telemarketing, outsourced customer service department, live chat, marketing via text service and email inbox management. They offer cover seven days a week from 8am to 11pm at night, Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm at weekends and only close over the Easter weekend & Christmas. 

Their clients also include high end shoe manufacturer Eves & Gray London; Herbs on the Hill offering herb-based natural skin care products and locally supporting business owners including Chris Goodchild of Supportwise IT Services Ltd.  To find out more visit https://www.virtualbusinesscentre.com