CALL-A-CAB WEATHERS THE
Originally a fishing village and later developed into a large Victorian beach resort, Eastbourne is one of the most popular places to visit in England for those seeking a seaside
getaway. Its elegant three-mile-long seafront promenade extends along wide pebble beaches, and a marvellous holiday atmosphere permeates the spectacular mid-19th- centur Grande Parade.
Tourist attractions abound, including Beachy Head, the famous Victorian built Pier, the Towner Art Gallery, the Miniature Railway Adventure Park and many other places of interest – all of which require transport for their patrons. Just such a transport provider has been predominant in the area over the past 12 or so years: Call-a-Cab Sussex Ltd.
Hard graft and versatility have been prime ingredients of the business plan of two brothers, Julian and Daniel Ledger, to enable them to ride out the dark patches of the current pandemic – which as you can imagine has resulted in fewer tourists about - with Call-a-Cab.
PHTM chatted to Daniel Ledger about the firm’s beginnings, progress and future aspirations. Daniel told us: “We started in August 2008 with five cars and currently have 100 cars, 90 private hire and 10 hackney owner/drivers. We cover Eastbourne and the surrounding local areas, and we also use the Cordic National Gateway Soft Merger scheme, so if a driver drops at Heathrow, for example, they can get overspill work from other companies and work in London.
The CNG also helps in those situations whereby a customer has forgotten to book their taxi from the airport after their holiday, which has happened a few times. We are able to get
a car to the customer very quickly no matter which airport they are at. It is this sort of innovation that local operators like us find invaluable in today’s competitive market.
“Account work is around 30 per cent - predominantly local authority work, although in the summer months we have a large overseas student population and we provide the trans- fers from airports/London etc for the student organisations.
PROGRESS PERSONIFIED
“When we started we were using block and board and the drivers had radios in their cars, but after six months we invested in the Cordic despatch system including Web Booker, IVR and apps, and a Avaya phone system provided by Vale. We took credit cards from day one of having Cordic installed and card payments account for 35 per cent of our bookings.
“I have used other booking and despatch systems and have found Cordic to be the most comprehensive and easiest to use, and their helpline is fantastic. Luckily we went onto the Cordic Cloud earlier this year and coupled with the help from Vale Communications we now have some operators working from home.
“We have 12 office staff, a mixture of full-time and part-time, and we use the IVR system all the time which takes a lot of work. We were initially sceptical of using the IVR for various reasons but it works very well with a very low rate of ‘no-jobs’. We also use the IVR to advertise our booking app, and to warn of longer waits as peak times.
“We have around 15 E Class Mercedes and therefore pro- vide an executive service, although we are now seeing our usual executive customer using standard cars for their jour- neys. We also have wheelchair accessible vehicles (E7, Ford Tourneo, VW Kudos) which are a mixture of private hire and hackney; we have 17 multi-seaters (6 – 8 passengers) and the rest is split into saloons and estate cars and hybrids. We use the Cordic fare meter (hackney vehicles have phys- ical meters).
DIVERSITY RULES OK
“Our company offers regular or chauffeured taxi services for special events and weddings; we find this service to be very popular in our area.
“We used to have lots of freephones but we prefer for customers to book on our apps, whether they are the in- house Cordic app or CabGuru which are much more efficient for both the customer and ourselves.
“We use Facebook and find it to be the most cost effective way of engaging with our customers/potential customers.
40 DECEMBER 2020
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