Wiltshire Farm Foods home delivery service improves efficiency and customer service with a little help from Competitive Tracking Ltd
Fleet management technology provided by Competitive Tracking Ltd is streamlining a frozen food home delivery company’s operation and is at the core of its increased productivity, efficiency and customer service.
WFF (Leeds) Ltd, based in Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, offers ready made frozen meal home delivery services to a large area around Leeds. Brian Jepson, Managing Director has been investigating ways to both increase the company’s efficiency, (more drops per day, per van) while also increasing the service levels that his business provides to the local community.
“The implementation of the vehicle tracking system has transformed our business’ operation to such a degree, I don’t know how we managed our business without it” remarked Brian Jepson, Managing Director
Competitive Tracking delivers improved business efficiency using vehicle tracking technology
It has already paid for itself by improving efficiency, boosting productivity and cutting costs; in hindsight I wonder how we ever managed without it” – Brian Jepson MD Wiltshire Farm Foods (Leeds) Ltd
In a bid to maintain and improve quality standards for WFF’s customers, and in order to monitor the efficiency of the home delivery fleet, Competitive Tracking have fitted their WFF’s vehicles with their state of the art tracking units. This equipment registers every vehicle’s ignition on and off, together with timed updates at 1 minute intervals. Exception alerts can be generated if certain preset rules are not adhered to together with updates on harsh acceleration, harsh braking nad when a vehicle changes direction. Key details such as; real time updates of when the vehicle stops – where and for how long – have given WFF vital, real time and management information, which has been used to maximise the amount of daily deliveries they can make in a day.
“The system has given us the means to make more deliveries in any one day and as such has allowed the business to grow without the need to invest in another vehicle and driver” commented Brian. “By implementing this technology these extra deliveries have increased our bottom line profit” he added.
WWF (Leeds) Ltd Increase Customer Service Levels and provide vital information when communicating with customers
One of the main problems for WFF (Leeds) Ltd was the amount of calls they were getting from their customers asking where a delivery was. The number of deliveries on a particular day depends on the number of customer orders received (not everybody orders every week) – as a result, a customers delivery time can change slightly week on week. Telephone calls from customers increased asking where their delivery was and asking if they had been forgotten, even if the van was only 10 minutes later than usual. A call was then made to the driver by
the office staff to make sure the customer hadn’t been accidently missed and an estimated time of arrival requested. The office staff would then phone the customer to reassure them that the delivery was being made and advise of the expected time. This was very time consuming, it locked up phone lines, potentially stopping orders from getting through, increased the labour force required to operate and took up operators’ time answering queries, rather than selling more products.
Once the Competitive Tracking system was fitted, the operators could check where the vehicle was and which customer had been delivered to last and customers and customer numbers are shown on the system from that, WFF can see where the enquiring customer’s delivery is on the run and advise of a delivery time. This has saved valuable time, phone calls, and costs, leaving the customer in no doubt of WFF’s efficiency.
Brian Jepson commented “Being able to give factual information on delivery times to our customers has allowed us to be more proactive in gaining more orders from each customer, as well as getting new customers through recommendations”.
Cutting business costs
In addition to bolstering the company’s efficiency and customer service levels, the system has provided information which has allowed massive savings to be made throughout the business, as well as staffing levels being reduced, both in the office and out on the road. The system has given WFF sight of the stops that are made by the drivers during the day, ensuring that the drivers are having their correct and legal breaks the system also provides WFF with a time sheet report for each of the staff.
Other reports on the system provide details of vehicle mileage and speeds, allowing WFF to produce accurate MPG reports. Stationary vehicle alerts provide WFF with alarms if the vehicle has been stationary for longer than the permitted time, ensuring their legal duty of care to loan workers is adhered to whilst unauthorised movement alerts inform WFF of vehicle movements outside the set rules. (These alerts can be received by email or text and during out of office times).
