Norse Commercial Services has expanded and upgraded its call centre, creating six new jobs at its Norwich head office.

The new facilities have been created to handle increased volumes of facilities management operations, brought about by the company's consistent growth over the last 12 months.

'We've seen over £30 million of new and renewed business over the last year,' said Sales Director Geoff Tucker, 'with a number of new multimillion pound joint ventures with local authorities around the country, and substantial new contracts with private sector and educational establishments. All this has created increased demand for the support services that are controlled via our call centre hub.'

The helpdesk is the communication hub for Norse's Facilities Management Division which operates at approaching 300 sites across the UK.

'The FM Division has always had a 24/7 function but with the growth of not only the FM Team but the organisation as a whole, there was a need to move to new, larger dedicated facilities at Fifers Lane, where there is room for further growth,' commented Emma McMurdock, FM Business Manager at Norse. 'There has been a substantial investment, with new offices, operations facilities and meeting rooms being created, all of which will help maintain a highly efficient service to our clients' sites.'

The centre which currently employs 10 call operators, has also invested in the latest computer telephony technology to log and monitor work requests.

'As the company continues to grow, and call volume also increases as more service divisions start to use the centre, there will inevitably be further job opportunities in the future,' McMurdock said.

As well as receiving and coordinating tasks such building maintenance issues, security issues including alarm activations, cleaning requirements, staffing calling in unwell, and management of the company's lone worker system, it also manages all the associated administration.

The centre even got a call recently regarding the whale that was stranded on Gorleston beach, as Norse is often a first point of contact for local authorities looking to escalate environmental or human welfare problems under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.

The new building work was carried out by the Norse in-house teams of FM Service Engineers who installed the electrics, air conditioning and data cabling, with local contractors building the internal structure.

For more information on the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce and their business to business exhibition, visit www.edp24.co.uk/business/norfolk-chamber-of-commerce or www.norfolkchamber.co.uk.