End of year figures
We currently have the Auditors in
Brunswick House because as you are
aware, our year finished at the end of
August. I have been reliably informed
that everything is going well and they
should be finished by the time you read
this report.
It now appears that our turnover as of the end of August has
increased by a massive 15% over the
previous year, a really quite phenomenal
achievement. The 15% turnover
increase represents in excess of £5.5m
extra work that has been put into the
back of your cabs and I am sure you will
all be delighted with that!
Even more encouraging - if that’s possible - for the first month of
the current financial year (September),
our turnover increased by a further 9%
on the previous year! So that means that
there was a 15% increase in work for the
whole year and we have started this year
with an additional 9% increase on top! I
am very hopeful that we can maintain
this current trend, however, our
resources will be severely stretched
during the coming few months.
I really appreciate the fact that conditions out there are
extremely difficult, but in reality our
clients still expect the same standard
of service that they enjoy for the rest
of the year. I hope my suspicions are
proven to be incorrect, but unless we
maintain service levels up until
Christmas, then we could see some
casualties from our account base in the
New Year.
I have written to every single account client explaining how busy
we are and what we are doing in an
endeavour to maintain service levels and
in addition, what the client can do to
help the situation so that we are in a
position to provide them with a taxi.
One of the steps we have taken is to
refuse to open any new accounts until
the New Year, allowing us to concentrate
solely on servicing our current client
base. It really is quite extraordinary
that we work so hard in an endeavour to
gain more work and accounts for
Dial-a-Cab members, only to
|
then start refusing to
open new ones.
Just last week, I had to refuse to open an account for a
prospective client – one we had been
‘courting’ for more than a year! The
account was so large that it would have
gone directly into our top three
accounts - and that is big. However, the
problem is that you would have been
swamped and we would not have been able
to provide them with a complete service.
It would also, of course, have impinged
on our current client base.
I’m currently spending a lot of time talking and visiting our top
clients to try and placate them about
late vehicles etc, fortunately our
reputation is excellent and they know
that whatever we tell them is the truth,
because over the years we’ve built a
reputation that whatever we do, we do
with a ‘straight bat.’ But I don’t know
for how long we can placate our
customers. So the moral of the story is
– and yes, you knew I would get there
eventually – if you can do just that
little bit extra, it would help us
enormously in an attempt to secure our
account base. If you are offered a trip
and it is within ‘striking distance’
please accept it immediately; not only
will it help to improve our service to
clients, but also mean there will be
less traffic flowing through our system.
We have done everything we can think of
to maintain service levels, some of you
must also play your part in order that
the phenomenal success we currently
enjoy continues into the future. There
are plenty of companies out there that
would be only too willing to take the
work from us…
DaC’s new building
We have started to use our new building
almost immediately after |
taking possession by training
prospective new call takers. We have
taken on an additional 44 recently to
help cope with the expected increase in
work. It is also planned to move some of
our second floor out of Brunswick House
in mid-November, so that we might extend
the Call Centre to that floor in
addition to what we have at present on
our fourth floor. This will help
accommodate the new call takers, who
will then be able to take the additional
work that should be coming through the
system from our existing client base.
I wrote earlier that we were hopeful work would commence on the new
building in early October, that date has
now been put back until the end of the
month as we still have some ongoing
negotiations with the contractors,
however, I am still hopeful there will
not be much - if any - ‘slippage’ on our
original time frame.
Standards and
Regulations…
I informed you a few months ago about
the imminent retirement of Roy Ellis,
Principal officer at the PCO. He
recently visited Brunswick House with
Mary Dowdye - the new head of Standards
and Regulations - to introduce her to
Dial-a-Cab.
She was here for around two hours and we had a good ‘chat’. I tried
to get across the part that Dial-a-Cab
plays within our industry and also gave
her a tour of the building, explaining
all about our various systems and
procedures. Mary (yes, she said I could
call her that) was, I believe, suitably
impressed.
Anyway, I would like to welcome Mary, - who was formerly with TfL -
to our industry and to wish her every
success in her new role. I am sure she
will be successful as I noticed that she
has the ability to listen. Ok, it’s
probably true - some will undoubtedly
say that she had little alternative
whilst in my company! But it was still a
pleasure to meet her…
Brian Rice
Chairman
Dial-a-Cab |
