As businesses continue to navigate the new normal, Midlands based international removal company, Burke Bros Moving Group step up to keep the wheels turning and continue providing their renowned moving and storage services with safety as the priority during the Coronavirus pandemic. Gary Burke, Managing Director, reflects on how lockdown has affected the 40 year old family business and how they’re bouncing back stronger than ever:
The market for moving
“The closing of the housing market had created a bottleneck effect for many people who were at some point in the moving process. Once the housing market opened up, and house moves were allowed to take place, we found that our enquiries for private moves soon picked up and in fact our volume of enquiries for June is over and above what we have seen for June during the last two years. We were able to phase our removal crews from furlough back into work, going from two teams to all teams being fully operational. All of our workforce have now returned to work.
Our international shipping department are also experiencing shipping volumes returning to pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, our commercial moving department and corporate moving team are quieter, as we anticipate that the pandemic will alter working arrangements for some companies and cause redundancies for some. Our years of experience, but also our ability to respond to external changes, implement new working practices and innovate, will help us to keep providing the first class service our brand is well known for.
Safe working practices
We are long standing members of the British Association of Removers and have benefited from their guidance and documentation published to members, endorsed by other professional organisations and associations in the property moving industry, providing clear guidance on risk mitigation procedures for removal companies and their clients.
No room for complacency
Part of our safe working practices involves us issuing external communication to our customers in advance of home (or office) visits, when required, as well as instructions to clients on moving day. We refuse to be complacent and the safety and wellbeing of our customers, their families and our employees is more important than ever. We will only execute removals where full covid19 compliance is in place. It’s really important that our customers work with us and follow all of the instructions that we issue to ensure it’s safe for them and safe for us. On the rare occasion that a customer has enquired about our services but hasn’t been willing to work with us, we’ve had to explain that we aren’t able to move them. We won’t compromise their safety or that of our staff and have, of course, found that the over-whelming majority of our customers have fully supported us in this and really adhered to everything that we have asked of them.
Virtual moving
We have adopted the technology for virtual surveys, alongside still offering physical property visits before lockdown came into force, whereby our surveyors can supply customers with a quotation after viewing the volume of goods to be moved via a video. This type of innovation has become very useful to us at the present time. We’ve found that some customers embrace this type of technology, and others are not so keen. We can help customers through every step if they aren’t that tech savvy and also still offer home (or office) visits to the property with full adherence to Covid19 protocol.
Agile and flexible
The current situation remains dynamic and we are constantly evaluating and monitoring any potential knock on effects to our services and we are mitigating via alternative plans where necessary, but are confident in our contingency planning to keep our staff, customers and suppliers healthy and safe.”
