THE WAY I SEE IT A VIEW OF THE TRADE FROM A LONG-STANDING OPERATOR
Regular PHTM readers will recognise the above header as normally used for featuring licensing officers round the country to air their views. This time we thought it might be a good idea to chat to one of the most prominent transport providers in the South East, 247 Trans- port Solutions in Hastings, to get their take on the way the industry has changed and how they’ve been able to adapt to those changes – very much to their advantage.
Many thanks to 247’s Business Develop- ment Manager, Stew Smith, for being in the firing line of our questions and providing a series of succinct, detailed and entertaining responses.
How long has 247 been going? 247 has been in existence since 2004 in Hastings but the name 247 was born around 2012 as a development of the com- pany and expansion into other towns. The present-day company is the culmination of many small companies having been bought out and thus becoming the biggest in the area. We are passionate about being the best and making sure our logo is seen on every street in the area. Yes, it’s a little bit “Easy Jet” but it works!
What are the benefits of your own maintenance garage/facility? Time and effort spent using Main Dealers for servicing and maintenance was far too time consuming and meant vehicles were off the road for long periods. A natural pro- gression was to house our own garage property where vehicles could be serviced and maintained in a timely fashion. Owing to our current fleet size of 230, many of which are Toyota hybrids, we have man- aged to secure very good replacement part rates which in turn we can pass onto our driver fleet.
Our garage now has five bays with full time staff and offers all servicing and mainte- nance to our fleet, which includes a free fleet vehicle to work in whilst your car is undertaking maintenance. We also make use of our garage to install CCTV into all our vehicles on secure systems, which we are in the process of upgrading to 4G to make access/checks and downloads seam- less for the driver. The presence of CCTV in our vehicles offers security to drivers and customers alike, and we have seen driver
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abuse and attacks almost cease since this equipment has been installed.
How has modern technology affected 247 overall? Technology is massive; we are now three years into a switch to Cordic and have seen a significant growth in technology based bookings. Our app now books in excess of 8,000 jobs per week and grows steadily each week. The call centres are still busy with around 30,000 calls per week, and an additional 7,000 calls are handled by our IVR solution. Our local competition has attempted to keep pace with our progression and we are mindful of them always, but our aim is to stay that one step ahead.
It would be almost impossible to revert back to an old “pen and paper” system with the volume of work we undertake. That said, we have been forced to use the old ways on a couple of occasions for part of the operations when the likes of O2 go down. We are working towards a resilient system whereby we have failovers in place for all aspects of the connectivity, and we hope to have this in place later this year.
Does your company make use of social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.? Our social media following is good; we want better but are happy with what we do currently. Facebook is our main platform which has in excess of 7,000 followers and we use strategic advertising campaigns to get in front of the right people. Social media is important to companies nowadays but it comes with risks of negative com- ments through failures. Local groups are persistent with abusive posts towards local companies, especially when it comes to driving. There are too many keyboard par- asites with little to do but post about local identifiable companies on social media so
it’s useful to have responses to the stan- dard posts that arise on these sites.
Have “ride hailing” companies impacted on your business? Not currently, but we must all be mindful of their presence. Our towns are very focused on “buying local” so we remind our cus- tomers of this through social media and supporting local events and charities.
Any cross-border issues? Cross-border is an issue in some towns but we make use of it effectively in neighbour- ing boroughs where licensing is not so “welcoming”. We ensure that what we do is within the law and that we make best use of this to suit us as a company.
Have there been any Clean Air poposals? There are currently no consultations or movements towards this in our district.
Does your company have any electric or hybrid vehicles? Yes, we have around 160 Toyota hybrids. The remainder of the fleet is made up of start/stop Mercedes 8-seaters with very few standard diesels. As a company we embrace our drivers who make the effort to buy a hybrid and as such only buy hybrids ourselves. We have already placed an order of five new Toyota Corolla hybrids for as soon as they are available in the UK. We offer in-house packages to drivers as a way to get them owning their own vehicles; this is a must for us as we feel drivers take more pride in their work if they own their vehicle.
And finally… We are fortunate that both directors are passionate about being the best and are willing to invest in the company as a whole, creating a good working environment for our staff along with delivering the best ser- vice to our customer base. To that tune we are currently building a purpose built office block which will house our new training facility for staff, existing drivers and our new driver academy.
2019 is bringing new challenges for us all as an industry in particular [starting with] our friends in London and their relentless fights with Uber and TfL and their operating costs.
Regardless of any of this, one thing is for sure: “you gotta love this industry”…
MARCH 2019
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