A CUSTOMER service business is set to grow with 200 new jobs available.

Ventrica, off Tylers Avenue, Southend is expanding to meet the growing demand for its services.

The new staff will be recruited in the next three months.

The company will increase its workforce from 450 to 650 by the end of September.

The firm provides customer service management across a wide range of channels from phone and web chat to social media.

Ventrica is looking to fill a wide range of positions such as recruitment managers, training officers, resource planners, team managers, service delivery managers, evening advisors and customer service advisors.

Managing director of Ventrica, Dino Forte, said the company has had a phenomenal year with the opening of a second site together with winning a number of awards.

He said: “We believe it has been our people, environment and technical expertise that has been the deciding factor on why international brands have chosen Ventrica to represent them.

“Much of the work we are now doing on behalf of new and existing customers involves working with them to deliver technical enhancements designed to encourage greater levels of self-serve and improved customer experiences – ultimately it’s all about making it easy for the customer in order to maximise satisfaction and generate brand followers and advocates.

“Some of these initiatives include the implementation of intelligent knowledge management systems that utilise machine learning and natural language processing.”

The systems help recognise customer behaviours and identify quickly the types of questions they are likely to need the answer to.

The artificial intelligence predictions are used to inform companies.

The jobs will be offered and advertised to people around Southend and south Essex.

Mr Forte said one of the secrets to the company’s success was using virtual assistants for initial enquiries.

He said: “We have the ability to ‘front-end’ solutions with virtual assistants to deal with more simplistic enquiries before being passed through to a live customer service advisor.”

The business also has a site in Maitland House, Warrior Square, Southend.

The jobs will be advertised soon.