Greyhound Cars, London

Company Profile
Name	Greyhound Cars
Address	231 Streatham High Road   London SW16 6EN
Telephone	020 3388 3388
Website	www.greyhoundcars.co.uk
About	Established in 1976, we are proud to be known as one of South London's longest serving and favourite Mini Cab Companies. We don't want to bore you with the small detail...all we'd like to say is we're not like hundreds of other Mini Cab companies currently out there. At Greyhound Cars, Customer service and quality of both our drivers and the vehicles they arrive in are what matters most to us. We have a friendly team of people, highly experienced in taking bookings, despatching the driver to the right place, at the right time.

What's in a name? Greyhound Cars fits the bill!

This month we swing down to the Smoke, to pay a visit to one of south London’s longest established private hire firms - and indeed, one of the National Association’s longest standing members - Greyhound Cars of Streatham. Just for fun, we thought we’d check out some of the characteristics of the lithe and race-winning animal from which Greyhound Cars takes its name. Let’s see: calm and gentle... ability to run long distances... patient and kind... polite with people (and indeed with other dogs). Quite a few parallels there.. . Maybe that’s why Greyhound Cars has succeeded for a long time where others have fallen by the wayside.

"The cPAQ Taxi Despatch System from Cordic does just about everything but boil the kettle"

Realistically, this company owes its longetivity to several factors: strong emphasis on customer service is one of them, which is why Greyhound Cars boasts a Quality Control Manager, whose remit is to ensure that high standards the company have set are maintained. Another plus point about Greyhound is that they have always been in the forefront of trade developments in the capital, for example advising and lobbying during the lead-in time when the capital’s private hire industry was first coming under the licensing regime of the Public Carriage Office - and indeed, they were one of the first companies to apply for and receive their operator licence. During the buildup of London PHV licensing it was difficult recruiting drivers, so Greyhound Cars found a new and successful answer: they went into the exhibition business. They took a stand at four of the Polish Exhibition Job Fairs; at the first exhibition in Hammersmith over 5,000 people came through the  door in one day. It resulted in Greyhound Cars increasing their workforce by 20 per cent over the next two years.

Also, in July 2008 when London licensed private hire vehicles were allowed to display licensed operator information on their vehicle(s), Greyhound Cars was one of the first and most ardent proponents of this momentous boost to passenger safety - and one of the first south London cab companies to have the new signage displayed. Responding to requests from the industry (including Greyhound Cars), licensed operators can now display their name and contact details next to the vehicle registration plate. Apart from the advertising aspect, this of course acts as a safety feature, as passengers can check that the car that arrives is from the cab office they booked. As Alec Smith commented: “We want everyone in London to have a safe way to travel, whatever the time of day or night.”

The System
Of course, investment in the latest and most suitable technology for the business tops the list of priorities for any progressive private hire company. In the case of Greyhound Cars, the cPAQ Taxi Despatch System from Cordic does just about everything but boil the kettle. Having first opened their doors in 1972, Greyhound Cars’ management have seen tremendous changes in the industry generally, and specifically in the computerised booking and despatch systems available, and how they have developed over the years - none more dramatically than the innovations brought about by Cordic.

Greyhound utilises the full Cordic cPAQ system, but a couple of specific features worth highlighting are Cordic’s IVR with Voice Recognition, and their Mobile Booker. The IVR platform and voice recognition capability enables regular customers to book jobs and check the progress of their bookings without having to speak to an operator, or tying up valuable staff. When a regular caller’s number is recognised, they are offered an immediate repeat pickup, when they can then accept or choose from a range of other options. The Cordic IVR solution is highly configurable to meet the specific speech, prompt and response needs of the taxi or private hire company and offers 24/7 coverage; it can enable the automated handling of between 25 and 40 per cent of a taxi company’s workload. Greyhound Cars are benefiting from the IVR with Voice Recognition with bookings from supermarkets and hospitals where there are phones with no keypads. Something very much worth noting is that Cordic’s IVR with Voice Recognition is the first to enable automated bookings that comply with regulatory requirements set out by the Public Carriage Office because it ensures that the passenger name and destination are captured/ recorded during the booking process.

Mobile Office
As for Cordic’s unique Mobile Booker, quite simply it puts the booking office in the palm of your hand and lets you book jobs while out of the office, on location or from anywhere the passengers are located. The portable Mobile Booker is ideal for using at busy passenger areas such as stations, airports, sporting events, exhibition centres and nightclubs. Jobs can be booked as quickly and easily as if in the office. Readers will find even more hi-tech information in Cordic’s Point of Sale article in this issue of PHTM, and of course in person at this year’s Taxi and Private Hire Exhibition at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena. Certainly Greyhound Cars has more than benefited from their cPAQ system, which has enhanced their service not only for individual passengers but account work for small private companies large corporates and NHS Trusts.

Another of their popular features with both customers and drivers alike is the ‘callback’. By pressing a button on his XDA an automated telephone message is sent to the customer advising them that their car is outside. This feature is also available via texting. Customers can also utilise Greyhound’s Web Booker service, whereby they can book jobs directly from anywhere in the world; they can get an instant quotation, make a booking, and track the progress of their vehicle on a map, live in real time.

All these technical innovations, coupled with a dedicated 25-strong staff of despatchers and telephonists, and drivers of over 170 vehicles, result in the company taking some 11,000 bookings per week on average, all over southwest and southeast London. They cover the majority of the main supermarkets including Asda, J Sainsburys and Tesco, as well as both patients and staff on behalf of the NHS in the South Lodnon area. And of course their high standards are attracting accolades all over; Greyhound Cars has recently been nominated in the Best Customer Service category of Lambeth Business Awards. Greyhound Cars’ continuous investment in the latest state of the art systems has firmly imprinted Greyhound Cars as a leader in the London private hire scene - which is what continues to impress their loyal and satisfied clientele. So here’s to the next 37 years!

 

Profile from Private Hire & Taxi Monthly, May 2009 www.phtm.co.uk

Back to Customer Testimonials