Leading Route Cars as a business kicked off in the summer of 2009, with our first driver and first booking coming shortly thereafter. The telephone lines were in, a mockup website designed by yours truly and an Excel sheet at the ready and LRC was open for business.
For the majority of the next 14 months, I was answering the telephone 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. There was a week gap in early 2010 where two people replaced me while I went on holiday with the family to Sharm El Sheikh, and when I took on a controller to cover the evening shifts for a few months. My sister, Sapna, also sat on the phones at the Park Royal office to allow Cruti, Arav and I to take an anniversary holiday last year in Zurich. Cruti also took calls and dispatched drivers if I was putting Arav to sleep or otherwise engaged. But for the most part, I was on the phones for pretty much all my waking hours.
While driving around, to and from the office, to a wedding, to the supermarket, the phones were on divert allowing me to be on call from anywhere. Remote access to my office PC meant I could access my spreadsheet (later a proper booking & dispatch software system) from anywhere with an Internet connection.
Most family & friends were getting pretty used to creating a little makeshift office for me whenever we went round to visit. During Christmas Day 2009, there was a family gathering as there normally is at my uncle’s house. That entire afternoon/evening, I hardly came out of their little side-office as it is one of the busiest days of the year and I was almost constantly on the phone.
So it was a welcome relief when in October 2010, my outsourcing program began and controllers took over the operation off-shore. It is now eight months since that monumental day (for Cruti and I at least), and although the close to 24/7 pressure of being on-call has eased somewhat, there has been numerous challenges that have come and gone, and new ones come to light.
Most recently, my primary two controllers decided that this job wasn’t for them. It seemed like they thought they had us (Leading Route Cars and the outsourced team) over a barrel – little do they know thats not the way I work. They called my supervisor to tell him this a short few hours before one of their shifts was due to begin. This meant my supervisor had to cancel any plans he may have had that evening to take charge on the phones.
For the next few days, he had no option but to do 18-hour shifts whilst trying to resolve the staffing issue at the same time. Fortunate was on his side as a previous employee expressed an interest in returning to the job and he could take his evenings back six days later.
During these days, I was also lending a hand being back on the phones despite having outsourced this aspect. An interesting turn of events after so long off the phones. Thats what happens when its your own business. Sometimes there’s simply no choice but to roll up your sleeves and muck in!
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