Web support has boomed as Covid forces people to change career. But it can cost thousands, for little in return
When the pandemic hit, self-employed customer care consultant Madeleine Fisher* saw her income evaporate. “My business predominantly works in the leisure, hospitality and non-essential retail sectors and they all closed, or they didn’t have any budget for customer care. I went into panic mode,” she says.
As a limited company boss she had no government support to fall back on. The business owner decided to use almost a third of the £4,500 she had applied for under the government’s bounce-back loan scheme (set up to enable smaller businesses to access finance more quickly during the pandemic) – to pay for a coaching package with a “design influencer”.
