Schumacher Cargo UK Ltd
Schumacher Cargo UK Ltd is a family run Freight Agency which specialises in the Importation and Exportation of Cars, boats, personal effects and related commodities. We have been formed for 4 years after I decided to start my own business after working for larger Freight Agencies for at least 25 years.
Due to securing a large contract in the very early stages of the company I could not cope with the volume of work on my own so I employed my daughter to help me.
Things had been going very well for a time but it was apparent that due to my experience and my daughter’s inexperience that day to day running of the office was suffering. This was partly due to my daughter not being fully conversant with shipping procedures and partly due to my inability to delegate jobs or let go of what I had been used to for such a long time. We were working together but not as a team.
At that point we were contacted by Mrs Darrington of Darrington Training who offered to visit us and assess our situation with the possibility of providing some in house training. Both of us discussed this and came to the following conclusions:
In the end I agreed to give it a try, if only for my daughter’s sake, and agreed to Mrs Darrington coming to visit us for a trial run. I would review my decision after that.
Mrs Darrington first came to visit my daughter and sat with her for about 3 hours going through various aspects of telephone etiquette, how to handle disgruntled customers, and sharing information and workload so as to make use of her time in a more productive way. Since then Mrs Darrington has visited my daughter on another couple of occasions to fine tune her training and I can honestly say that the change in my daughter has been astounding.
Mrs Darrington then came to see me. We went through exactly what I did, how I did it and why I did it the way I did. It became very clear very quickly that my main problem was that for many years I had effectively worked on my own, so was used to doing or having things done my way. The idea of someone else doing what I could do without any input or checking on my behalf was a concept that I would not allow. This obviously makes workload higher and stress levels in the office and me reach unacceptable levels.
After spending some time with me, again about 3 hours, Mrs Darrington managed to change the way I looked at delegating work and how I could allow someone else to carry out tasks without me feeling the need to be involved at all stages. She also helped me in organising things in such a way that I eventually got much more done in less time.
This evaluation of Darrington Training’s dealings with us is much abbreviated due to space available, but I can say in confidence that the training Mrs Darrington has given both my daughter and I has made an enormous difference to the way we work together and to how our general day to day office duties are dealt with. It has not only made the office atmosphere better but it has also enabled us to spend more time giving our clients the kind of service that they expect and given us more time to canvas more business. It has also enabled us to be able to have more free time and not be tied to the office doing work late into the night which should and could have been done during the normal working day.
If you are considering using Mrs Darrington of Darrington Training to look at training for you or your staff I could not recommend her highly enough and would be happy to give any references that you may require. I honestly thought that after 25 years in the Shipping/Freight business there was not much that anyone could do to change my way of doing things or make them better but Mrs Darrington has without doubt proved me very wrong.
Ian S Jeffreys
Director
Schumacher Cargo UK Ltd
Ian@schumachercargo.co.uk