This week in Virtual Head Office…a business address for an online retailer
Not all of our clients take up multiple services, some will use just one or two. This week I’ve decided to talk about one of these clients, an online retailer that we provide a business address service for.
We’ve worked with this busy home based business owner for about two and a half years and have got to know him pretty well over this time. As is often the case it’s getting to know our clients personally that often makes our work all the more rewarding as we get to find out what a difference our service means to them.
The first time we met the business owner, he arrived at our office seeming rather troubled, the night before his garage had been burgled and some of his stock had been stolen. He explained that he had been looking at taking up a business address for some time as he was aware that having his home address on his website, as all websites are legally obliged to do, was a bit of a security risk. Although his home address was not where he stored the majority of his stock he was worried that the outside world would perceive his stock to be held there and he felt that this put him at risk. The burglary, unfortunately had been the catalyst for him making the move to actually finding a virtual office to work with.
So what do we do for him? Quite simply, we provide a mail handling service, which means we let him use the address of our building as his business address. He can use this address on his website, on his business cards, his headed paper, his marketing material, wherever he wants to use it. The address is a realistic one as we are in a multi-occupancy building with lots of small businesses based within it. It’s also a lovely Georgian building on a very nice street.
We receive his post for him and as he lives locally to us, he chooses to come in and collect the post rather than have us forward it on to him. His post can be anything from usual correspondence to items that have been purchased via his website being returned. We receive it all here, store it securely and then let him know he has items to collect and then wait for him to call in. In the meantime, he carries on working from home, enjoying the benefits of being near to his young family, having no commute and in general having a good work life balance
We always enjoy seeing our clients face to face when they come in to collect post from their business address and especially nice to see the smile that is always on his face these days.
