TRAILBLAZERS IN MERSEYSIDE BRITANNIA TAXIS:
This month we take a look at a transport provider which is one of the leading taxi com- panies in the North West with an expanding fleet of hundreds of cars and a reputation for delivering a first-rate service. Britannia Taxis will be celebrating its 30th year of trading in 2016.
To give you an idea of Britannia’s phenomenal rate of growth in that time, they started out in 1986 with four cars, and did 95 jobs in the first week. Today they have over 400 vehicles, and average between 42,000 and 45,000 jobs a week. Around 15 per cent of their volume is account work, covering three local councils and corporate accounts plus the NHS. The area they cover is a “very large footprint” from Warrington into Liverpool city centre, and also including Widnes, St Helens and Knowsley.
and a housekeeper. Jimmy made a point of
wanting us to “thank them all for their dedica- tion to the business”.
As for the training side, the company recently started an in-house training academy to fur- ther develop current drivers’ skills to meet with new council requirements, and to aid new driv- ers to gain their VRQ/NVQ qualification to become a taxi driver. The company has also brought in all their staff to complete an in-house purpose built Customer Service qualification
across different boroughs, and with the latest
Phantom phone system to complement it. “With the support of our dedicated project manager Neil Jackson and the rest of the Autocab team, the system upgrades have been a great success, with an increase of drivers since the upgrades.”
Features? Stand back and watch: IVR (which runs at 40 per cent of Britannia’s bookings at peak times); their own Premier App; ABOP (advises customer of their vehicle’s location and ETA); text back and ring back; Customer to Driver direct calls, customizable zones and super zones; office-controlled tariffs, easy to change with instant uploads to drivers’ PDAs; receipt emailing direct to customers from booking screen, full accounts package. Anything miss- ing? We doubt it…
Their first office was above a shop in Liverpool Road, Huyton; they had various offices through- out Prescot and Knowsley, and then moved into their current, larger office in 2007. They’re in the process of putting up purpose-built new prem- ises and, if things go to plan, will be ready to move in next summer – not a bad way to cele- brate their thirty years of hard graft and success.
Part of the company’s expansion has been through acquisitions of other firms: they bought their first small firm in St Helens six years ago; then they purchased several other small firms, further expanding into the Newton-le-Willows area on the border of Warrington.
This is a family-run business, headed by broth- ers-in-law Mick Ripley and Jimmy Aden. They ran the company during the early years with around 40-50 cars; then in 1993 went comput- erised with GPC’s Autocab system; that is when things really took off and the fleet increased rapidly, as you can see.
RECENT UPGRADES
Having a large and ever-growing customer base, Britannia Taxis not only rely on the Auto- cab system but also the premium support service that comes with it in order to guarantee a reliable service for their passengers. They recently upgraded their Autocab Ghost system to a Cloud Hybrid system, operating multi-fleet
10
With a fleet of this size and a demanding cus- tomer base, it is essential that Britannia Taxis have support that they can depend on. Auto- cab offers just that, giving Britannia and hundreds of other companies like them sup- port which covers all key components and aspects of a successful taxi company.
As Jimmy says: ‘‘Autocab have always been there for us. With technical support in place,
we feel reassured and confident, if anything does go wrong, we know it will be dealt with immediately, with hardly any disruption.”
GREAT STAFF SUPPORT
No company profile would be complete – or justifiable – without giving a huge thumbs-up to all the people who man the pumps, as it were: in the case of Britannia Taxis we’re talking
about 40 full and part time “dedicated opera- tors, without whom the business would not grow”. They also have six full time shift super- visors, at least one on every shift and two when busy, plus seven assistant shift supervisors.
The telephones are covered by 30 full and part time staff; also back office staff are available to answer calls at peak times. These include the accounts manager and accounts personnel; sales and marketing manager; training manag- er; transport manager; two mechanics, an apprentice administrator, maintenance staff
Michael Ripley Jr gives away a TV for a charity fundrais- er for Claire House in memory Emmalyn Hope Baily
Oh yes, and if all this activity is not enough to keep them busy, Britannia is very active within the community: they are pleased to support many of their local football and rugby teams in Knowsley, St Helens and Warrington, along with many charity events and competitions.
You know what we say to celebrate: here’s to the next 30 years!
BRITANNIA TAXIS Address: Telephone: Website:
Year firm started: No. of vehicles: Types of vehicle:
Licensing Authority: Cost of –
Licence fees Standard fares Booking system: Phone system:
Brookbridge Garage, Liverpool Rd, Prescot L34 1NL
0151 289 2000 and 01744 20022
britanniataxis.co.uk 1986 420
PH and HC: saloon, estate, MPV/WAVs
Knowsley and St Helens
Awaiting fees for 3-yr badges and 5-yr operator licence
£2/start; £2.50/1st m, £1.60/m thereafter
Autocab Ghost Cloud Hybrid
Autocab Phantom OCTOBER 2015
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