At your beck and call – Home Delivery

At your beck and call
A local firm with local values that will redeliver your goods when you're ready for them – it sounds ideal, and Peter Rowlands hears from director Benedict Ely how it's done

Swan Mews, the home of Beck & Call's first base, is a million miles from what you'd think of as typical territory for a transport depot. Tucked in a quiet corner of west London's trendy Fulham, barely a couple of minutes' walk from Parsons Green tube station, it's everyone's ideal location for a start-up business: discreet yet elegant, with just a touch of the artisan chic about it.

In fact, however, both its modest size and its position represent key strengths for this year-old company, whose main purpose in life is to handle final delivery of goods to people's homes. As director and co-founder Benedict Ely points out: "In good traffic conditions, about two hundred and sixty thousand households are within a quarter of an hour's drive of us."

Often, of course, traffic conditions in this area are anything but good. However, that's when Beck & Call's secret weapons sweep into play – bright yellow Vespa motor scooters, and their Ape three-wheeler counterparts. Already they're a common sight around west London, and if expansion goes according to plan, they'll soon be seen much more widely.

Beck & Call burst on the scene in August last year, when the last-mile delivery problem was beginning to attract serious attention from those involved in e-tailing and home delivery. It was set up by Ely, previously a lawyer specialising in intellectual property rights, and Charles Doyle, a school friend who had become an accountant. "We wanted to go into business together," Ely says, "and after reviewing various ideas we kept coming back to the last-mile delivery issue."

Their proposition is gloriously simple. Participating consumers get their supplier to deliver to the Beck & Call depot instead of to their homes; then they are alerted when the goods arrive, and can arrange home delivery at any agreed time to suit them, from seven in the morning to eleven at night. The company is willing to offer delivery to the nearest quarter-hour either side of the agreed time.

So how does this differ from local delivery by a parcels carrier? "Carriers operate from large hubs," Ely says. "It's invariably difficult for them to deliver at a set time. And they don't confirm delivery in advance, so they don't know if the consumer will be at home. We do, so we have no failed deliveries to contend with."

Good business plan
Nevertheless, clearly there's a cost attached to the service. How does Beck & Call manage to provide it economically? "We've got a good business plan," Ely says simply, and he makes it clear that key elements here are location and scale.

In terms of location, the company is focusing on geographical areas where the population density and demographics are right. Those consumers who actually pay for the delivery themselves (see panel opposite) are currently charged £3.75, but Ely suggests that the delivery price is no real deterrent. The company is aiming its service at what he calls the CRTP generation (cash-rich, time-poor), and for them the convenience of a bespoke delivery will often outweigh cost considerations. "And we see home shopping moving steadily upmarket in future, where it will appeal increasingly to this type of consumer."

Clearly Fulham, with a catchment area that borders on other smart districts such as Chelsea and Putney, more than meets the specification, and Ely is confident that a number of other London locations are also suitable. Already depots are planned for Kensington, Victoria, Notting Hill, Battersea, Clapham and Wandsworth, and new funding to the tune of £300,000 should set the company well on the way to implementing this programme.

Modest scale is also fundamental. The initial depot at Parsons Green has just a handful of delivery drivers, and its storage space is quite modest; yet that seems to be the way the company likes it. "We have a profound belief in the value of customer service," Ely says. "It's so poor in the UK compared with the US and the Far East. People simply don't try hard enough."

He feels that an operation with the scope of Beck & Call can foster the extra commitment that is so often lacking in larger organisations. Indeed, the first depot to open after Fulham is expected to be slightly smaller, rather than larger, than the original.

"A lot comes down to knowing the local geography," Ely says, adding: "There's also great virtue in knowing exactly what's going on. For instance, if a customer rings in to ask which consignment has arrived, it's great to be able to say 'I'll just go and have a look'."

One definite requirement will be that everyone in a depot is capable of making deliveries, including the manager. Ely himself has been out delivering on many occasions. "People are so pleased to see you," he says. "It helps you get into the spirit of the service."

But will such team spirit prove scaleable as the company opens further depots, and confronts the inevitable problems of maintaining quality control over a dispersed network? Ely is confident that it can. "People need to believe in the business. We'll apply a system of targets and rewards. The Americans are very good at setting up procedures for this kind of thing, so there are plenty of models to follow."

Some functions will remain central, including the main database ("an extremely powerful tool," Ely says), but as far as possible each branch will be an autonomous unit.

One route towards expansion might be a franchised operation. This is not on the immediate agenda, although Ely agrees that it could be "very appropriate". But he adds: "The only issue is how easy it would be to keep up standards."

Selective expansion
Jumping eighteen months to two years down the track, other parts of the country are also seen as targets, although such expansion will always be selective. Ely admits there were initial thoughts of creating a nationwide solution from the start, "but we soon came to the conclusion that London presented a special problem area for home deliveries. There's plenty to do here first."

Looking broadly at the nationwide task of managing home deliveries, he inclines to the view that "you can't have a single solution everywhere." He admits, for instance, that the Beck & Call approach wouldn't work in rural areas. "A Bearbox-style solution might be more logical."

He reserves judgement about the prospects for a suburban service. "We'll see. It would probably work as long as there was sufficient housing density, and people were prepared to pay."

What about delivering into areas where it might be unsafe to go at certain times? "We wouldn't put staff at risk," Ely emphasises. He adds that no such instance has arisen so far. "If it became a problem, we might have to limit the service to certain postcodes."

The company tries to restrict consignments to what a single delivery driver can handle. That includes anything up to a case of wine ("we've done quite a lot of that"), but not currently household appliances. However, Ely admits: "We might get round to thinking about how to handle products like washing machines in due course."

Product insurance is of course provided as standard, although the company expects to be notified if it is handling something particularly valuable. Remarkably, there have been virtually no breakages since operations began. "We would have to deal with them on a case-by-case basis."

Having started off in business primarily targeting e-tailers, Beck & Call has focused increasingly on mail-order and telesales companies. "That's where the real growth is coming at the moment." However, Ely is confident that Web shopping will also continue to grow, "and multi-channel retailing will eventually be the way forward."

From its modest beginnings, Beck & Call looks remarkably well-placed to take advantage of that growth. It seems to have pitched its proposition broadly enough to weather the inevitable changes in the industry, and expand at a pace that suits market conditions. For a company born of the dotcom revolution, that in itself is quite an accomplishment.

Many facets to Beck & Call's proposition
From the consumer point of view there are various ways to take advantage of the Beck & Call service. At the simplest level, users can simply register with the site (there's no fee for this), and then nominate the Beck & Call depot as their delivery address when they buy something. They simply pay a £3.75 charge on the doorstep when Beck & Call delivers it. The only condition is that package labelling should include the consumer's name and a reference.

The supplier needn't be an e-tailer; it could also be a high-street retailer. Indeed, the company is now prepared to collect as well as deliver on behalf of local businesses – effectively becoming their delivery arm.

Beck & Call has also established arrangements with about 40 e-tailers (including big names such as Amazon), under which its site serves as a portal to theirs. Customers of those suppliers can nominate Beck & Call as their delivery point, and the e-tailer will cover the cost of the final delivery.

Third-party carriers can make their own arrangements with Beck & Call, which is ready to act as last-mile delivery agent for them. It has already won a contract with Business Express on this basis, and is happy to talk to others.

Retailers represent a further target market, and have the option of feeding all local deliveries through Beck & Call, or just those made through their Web sites.

A range of delivery service levels is offered to carriers and shippers, depending on the negotiated fee. They include the option of am or pm deliveries; two-hour time windows; and delivery to within plus or minus a quarter of an hour. Paying consumers automatically get this optimum service.

Beck & Call's contact centre aims to inform consumers as soon as a consignment is received at the depot. The first choice for communicating is SMS message, then email, and finally telephone; but the price is the same for all three.

On receipt of the alert, the consumer contacts the company and nominates a time slot, and the delivery is scheduled.

Because journey times are so short, there is currently no issue over fleet availability or overlapping delivery time windows. "Most customers are prepared to negotiate a time that's mutually convenient," Ely says. If volumes increased dramatically, though, an advanced scheduling capability would presumably become necessary.

Web site development, incidentally, was done by Fernhart New Media, the company behind the Dominos Pizza site.