How we work...

So, after last weeks blog, I had a lot of requests asking me how we actually run things here at Browns Chauffeur Hire, so I thought I would use the blog to explain a bit more about our company.

The day to day running of Browns is pretty simple. We have a control room where our team work to supply and distribute all our cars to our clients. The control room consists of three day and two night controllers (If you hadn't noticed we are open 24hours a day). The three day staff work on a rota which sees them alternate who they work with. There is always two controllers working in the week, one controller working on nights and one controller on weekends. The controllers are the point of call for all our customers, when you ring our phone number or email us it goes straight through to our control team. They are a very helpful bunch!

I was asked how we actually take and distribute jobs on a day to day basis, so I will explain how it works. All the work for the day in question has been checked and confirmed on the day previous to the booking. When we take work over the phone, we write it onto a booking form (we find this less time consuming than putting it straight into our computer system). After the booking has been made over the phone, we input the job onto our specialised system. When allocating the work, the controller will then allocate the job on the computer system to the driver and car. This makes it easier for us to monitor. In the morning, when the day staff get to work, they separate all our jobs into two sections. Work that is near Heathrow Airport and work that is in Central London. The controller on duty then starts allocating the work to our drivers as and when it's needed (normally 1 hour in advance of the job). We do not allocate all our work for the day in one go as some Chauffeur Hires do. This allows us to be able to take on work on the day via phone or email. Our controller will always try to have drivers on stand by in London for these circumstances.

We have a fleet manager, who takes charge of the acquisition, maintenance and licensing of all our cars. We have two staff that work in our accounts department and one member in a marketing position. Then we have our two owners, who oversee everything and of course we have all our drivers. As a company, we all chip in and help out where we can. It is not an unusual sight to see everyone doing a bit of everything.

I hope that this answers the many questions that I received and that you all understand how we work here at Browns. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and I will try and answer as many as I can.

As to this week, I have been working on our website. It is going through a revamp and will be ready to go live very soon. It has many new features that we hope will help. Now, all that leaves me to say is I hope you all have a brilliant Bank Holiday weekend.

If you need anything, please remember Browns is here to help. We are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This includes the bank holidays.

Take care

George x

How technology has helped!

So, that was a stressful weekend for me to be working! I have worked some hard days in the Browns Chauffeur Hire control room but none have been as hard as the one just passed. Thank you Iceland! Here is my story...

6 months ago I started the Browns Chauffeur Hire newsletter (which you can sign up for on the right) and during this week of travel disruptions it has proved to be a massive success. Many of our clients that get this newsletter were kept updated with what was going on Re: Ash Cloud and where we had cars available. Our Twitter page (link also on the right) has proven to be a huge success this week too, it got us a huge amount of exposure worldwide, which is something that we have found hard to do in recent years.

This weekend just passed started quite calm for me. I came into work with just one driver going abroad, Milan to be exact. I was chuffed with this job, the furthest we have ever been. Was I in for a massive shock in the hours to come. Twitter was my first port of call, I logged on within minutes of being at work and found Duncan Bannatyne asking for help in getting home. We had already driven Mr. Bannatyne over here in the UK but this was a job that would take up many hours of my Saturday morning planning.

Mr. Bannatyne and family were 851 miles away from London and needed to get home. Through Twitter I started a conversation with him that evolved into many phone conversations with him and our affiliates in Paris. We came to the conclusion that our affiliate in Paris would do the first part of the transportation, from South of France to Calais and we would complete the final stage with our own driver. I was chuffed, I managed to organise this logistical nightmare all by 10am but this was just the start of what would be a weekend of Browns Chauffeur Hire in Europe.

By this time my followers on Twitter had increased dramatically because of the conversation with Duncan Bannatyne and I was being asked to advise people at regular intervals on how to get home. I was in the groove, using Twitter to get people to go to our website and then ring us for help.

At this stage, panic had set in with our Hotel clients too. I was getting bookings from London to all over Europe, Madrid being the furthest we travelled but I was asked to quote for a job going to Kuwait. Circumstances had changed from me getting a few jobs to Europe to a rescue mission, trying to get stranded people home. We did jobs to and from: Calais, Lyon, Lille, Paris, Nancy, Madrid, Milan, Barcelona and many other places. We were offering a car sharing scheme at Calais, so people could get on the ferries. My main objective now was to help the people that were stranded!

On Saturday, I started to mention news groups in my Tweets. Then at lunch time, we got a phone call from CNN, they wanted to do a live interview! Us, on live TV. "It will go out to over 500million people" said the lady on the phone. I quickly passed this onto my boss. This was just the start, as on Sunday night we did a live interview for Capital Radio. Browns Chauffeur Hire was now on the map!

So overall, this past weekend proved to me that the technology that I was using was actually benefiting the company. We gained exposure and received many jobs through Twitter and our newsletter. Long may that continue!

Today, the airports are returning back to normal and we only have two drivers left abroad. We did our best in getting the stranded home and I think that we proved that we are one of the best chauffeur hires in the world!

Well, that was my story about the weekend just passed.

I look forward to getting back to a weekly blog

Take care

George x

You have to love a long weekend...

Yesterday I found the best piece of news, researchers at Oxford University have suggested that playing Tetris at work can assist in the treatment of stress. This can only mean one thing for me, digging out my gameboy (from the early 90's) and bringing it to work!

"What do you mean I can't play my gameboy at work boss? Read this article"

I'm not too sure that it would work but if you want to read the article and then show it to your boss when you get caught, click here

So, being that it's a long weekend (Easter I'm told) I plan to spend most of my time in London. For me Easter means a huge lunch on Sunday with the family but the rest of the time trying to fill in my time off. Although, I have just seen the weather forecast for the weekend. It does not look good but I won't let a bit of wind a rain put me off (although, I look out my window at work now and the sun is shining).

So, this week, I've been working on rolling out a new service that we can now provide here at Browns. We now have the capability to send SMS text messages to our customers. We have toyed with the idea for a while now and finally we thought it was worth it. We imagine the best use for it is when you have chauffeur booked early in the morning and you don't want the driver to ring your doorbell when he arrives, waking up the household. Instead, we will send you a text message informing you that your driver is outside, what car he is in, it's colour, it's registration and the drivers mobile number.

We can also send you a text message for pre-booking requests. We get a lot of requests for driver and car details for security reasons on specific jobs. We can now send all this information through to you via this SMS service. One thing that I will not be using this service for is any promotional use, I know how annoyed I get when I receive a text from a business. So, I will keep all my giveaways and promotions on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

I can't write this without mentioning the BA strike. It still shocks me that they were losing £5million a day because of it but bad press is good press, right? Peter in our office was affected by the strike. He was due to be going to Phoenix on Saturday but BA cancelled his flight, the only flight he could get was one to Las Vegas. I bet he is really annoyed with that!

Well, I better leave it there. It's lunch time! I wish you all a lovely Easter weekend and see you (virtually) next week.

Don't eat too many Easter Eggs!

George x