As part of our new series of “Best practices examples of technology”, this month we will be highlighting a Newmarket, Ontario based company which has embraced the use of various types of network, telecommunications, and contact centre technologies. In doing so they have seen the competitive benefits for their company and more importantly their customers.
A&B Courier (www.abcourier.com) is a Newmarket based family owned courier company that has been in the transportation business in one form or another for over twenty one years. The company originally started as a taxi business until the two brothers bought the courier division. They believed by offering strong customer service and utilizing technology they would grow and succeed.
In researching their competitors, they found that the large courier and transportation companies had developed in house systems, but the trade off was the lack of human personal touch. Small firms had the personal touch, but not the technology automation and reporting/analytics sophistication that the two brothers desired.
Business Goals and Technology Wish List
They felt that they could use technology to help them be a paperless organization, be environmentally responsible, and provide their staff a positive working environment where technology would serve them and their customers.
The brothers researched various dispatch and transportation systems to try to find something ‘off the shelf’ that would fit their needs. This was not possible in that they wanted to control and manage invoice, collections, dispatch, customer relationship, etc. etc. The ‘off the shelf’ packages seemed to only provide automation for a few of the functions that they wanted to automate. The solutions they found did not integrate with the standard name brand call centre/voice phone systems or contact centre solutions.
What did they do to automate their business?
The brothers first gathered information about the business processes and what they wanted to automate. They took a solution based on the courier business and worked with a custom developer to add on the features and functionalities they required.
One of the brothers even personally learned how to do application and system pre-testing prior to releasing to production as they felt it was critical to their business to understand the system capabilities in order to minimize their customer impact and to maximize the benefits of the product.
They had input into the requirements from different skilled resources within the company from the receptionist, accounting through to the drivers. They wanted to ensure that the technology would ‘fit’ within their company and culture and felt that staff input was critical to the long term solution. Some of their ‘technology savvy’ customers even volunteered to be part of pre-release testing.
Some of the functionality they now have:
Customers can fill in dispatch pickup via web forms (with common information pre-populated)
Or…they can call a live agent to help them fill out pickup
The drivers have mobile data units to keep in touch throughout the process and allow them to be re-routed for next call to improve route planning.
The system automatically does the route planning based on current pick up loads and adjusts status for drivers, dispatch and customers.
The customer can track the delivery of the order and be notified automatically via email when the parcel has been picked up, delivered, and even who signed for it, all done in real time.
Invoices are automatically created and delivered via email, fax, and routed to printers for sending out (per customer choice).
Advantages and benefits
Their customers can work with A&B Courier the way they want and keep in touch and know what is going on with their packages.
The internal accounting, sales, dispatch and management staff all have the information they need, when they want it.
The A&B staff gets to focus on using the information rather than creating and managing the information.
Their applications are hosted at a high availability server site allowing them to not have to manage and worry about maintaining a data centre environment with the associated pitfalls, challenges and cost. Their redundant site provides them with peace of mind, security and redundancy if and when required.
They continue to analyze how they run their business with continuous improvement and customization as they continue to evolve. Like many other family owned businesses, they hire based on personality and ‘fit’, promote from within and encourage life long learning and growth.
They are investigating the need for internal IT resources due to a variety of factors and will consider the various factors this major decision would entail.
They will be investigating the ability to integrate customer voice recognition with signature capture and customer mobility solutions to continue to strive to reduce the amount of paper they have to manage and store in the future.
Advice to other organizations
Encourage and reward innovative thinking and embrace technology; they can make a huge, positive difference for your company and your clients!
Note from Editor: We chose to work with A&B Courier as our corporate courier because of their use of technology, using the media of our choice, combined with their great people who provide superior customer service and lastly because they are price competitive.
We wish more companies were like them to work with, disregarding size! You can learn about A&B Courier by contacting Dean Smalley at 905-853-4444 ext 248 or dean@abcourie
If you would like to know more about FOX Groups’ research and studies on telework, network investments and environmental impacts, contact Roberta Fox at 905.473.3369 x 1001 or [email protected].
