Ventrica expands contact centre to 330 seats to meet rising demand for its outsourced customer management services

New designer ‘Penthouse’ suite to support new jobs creation and fast business growth

Southend, UK, 1st November 2016- Outsourced customer contact centre Ventrica based in Southend-on-Sea is continuing its impressive growth with the opening of its new contact centre ‘penthouse’ suite. This expansion and a second site planned in 2017 will create 200 new jobs. The extension is due to an increased demand for its omni-channel customer services and forms part of the companys ambitious growth plans.

The new roof-top wing takes the business skywards, providing the customer management specialist with a total of 19,000 sq. ft. of designer contact centre space with stunning views over the Thames estuary. The whole centre has 330 seats and will house a workforce of up to 480 full and part-time staff across a 24/7 period, up from 280 currently. An additional site at another location is also part of the companys future strategy over the next 12-18 months, and will ultimately add a further 300 seats to the operation.

Dino Forte, Managing Director and founder of Ventrica commented, ‘We have attracted a number of new high profile B2C and B2B brands this year who are part of a wider trend of organisations that are looking to outsource non-core services. The investment in our new penthouse suite is to meet both the increased demand from existing clients but also to accommodate our future expansion. The whole area of customer experience and sales is becoming more complex and companies now recognise that using a specialist third party makes perfect sense, as they often do not have the expertise, capacity or infrastructure in-house. At Ventrica we focus mainly on customer management and have invested heavily in both our people and environment so we can attract and retain the right calibre of talent to provide exceptional customer service and sales management across multiple channels, time-zones and languages.’

Detailed design

Dino added, ‘Our vision for the whole centre is to create amazing spaces that change peoples thoughts. Everythings about the staff. We want everyone to be proud to work here and feel inspired to surpass the expectations of both our clients and their customers.’

The new light and airy penthouse suite boasts the same attention to detail as the rest of the centre including common themes such as the striking red and grey colour ways. A stunning feature staircase adorned by long pendant lights provides the centrepiece of the design which is complemented by open-plan seating and break-out areas including quiet zones where people can read books or listen to music, a kitchen and cafe style dining area and balconies that overlook Southends coastline.

Digitisation and globalisation of Customer Lifecycle Management

According to Dino, the nature of customer service is changing and organisations need to keep up with the effects of digitisation, “Whether your customers are communicating on twitter, web chat or more traditional voice channels, you need to be aware of what’s important to them and to have the resources and knowledge to respond on whatever medium is appropriate. Earlier this year we set up our ‘digital’ division that extends our customer services offering to encapsulate all social channels including support for review moderation and digital marketing services.

At the same time, not only are customers communicating in different ways there are also massive opportunities to provide around the clock services to take advantage of international markets. At the moment we are supporting many clients with native-language customer experience speakers in German, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch, and we expect Cantonese, Mandarin and Japanese to become more popular over the next year or so.

Investment in virtualised technology

As well as investing in a new space, Ventrica continues to take advantage of the latest IT, having recently upgraded its server base, hardware and virtualised technology that gives a unified view of the customer journey. The company is also planning to deploy new recruitment software that enables candidates to take a virtual tour of the centre and undertake improved e-learning and development.

Ventrica has been shortlisted twice in this years prestigious ECCCSA (European Contact Centre & Customer Service Awards 2016) in the categories of ‘Medium Contact Centre of the Year’ and ‘Best Outsourcing Partnership’. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London that is taking place on the 21st November.