‘The important thing for us in this case is that AA First, a very substantial business in a very competitive market place, sees our service as a way to add value to its own service, in order to remain one step ahead of the competition. That’s particularly gratifying for us.’ Monika Douglas
AA First is the latest company to sign-up for the Parcel Holders service. A privately owned family business, AA First is a division of Circon Ltd, which was established in 1993 to import and distribute ‘industrial coffee making equipment with nationwide distribution to Coffee and Vending Distributors.’ The company was known as AA Coffee Equipment in those days and it quickly established a dominant position in the UK Industrial Pour Over Coffee Equipment market.
In 2000, Water Coolers were added to the product range and the distributor network duly expanded. Here too, AA First established a prominent position as one of the major suppliers to the industry of POU and Bottled Water Coolers.
‘We have hundreds of customers all over the country and many of them have field – based service engineers’, Rachel Burgess, AA First Customer Services Manager told PV. ‘We’re convinced that this service will save each and every one of those customers a great deal of time and money. We’ve previously sent items out to customer’s customer’s premises and to private homes, which always leads to engineers waiting around twiddling their thumbs. This way, using the Parcel Suppliers network of Pick Up / Drop Off points, we cut out all that waiting and because the PUDOs are located close to the engineers, they save a lot of travel time and save money too on fuel. Its great for our customers.’
Rachel also acknowledged that the new arrangement will benefit AA First, too: ‘There’s no doubt about that’, she said. ‘One of the biggest nightmares in this job are parcels that end up in the wrong place, get lost or end up back at base marked ‘return to sender’. We can leave that behind for good now.’
Parcel Holders’ Operations Director Monika Douglas welcomed the new ‘recruit’ to the company’s growing stable of ‘major players’. ‘We’re delighted that AA First has joined us’, she said. ‘With so many companies set to benefit from this deal it’ll be difficult to quantify the savings we’ll be delivering! The important thing for us in this case is that a very substantial business, in a very competitive market place, sees our service as a way of adding value to its own service, in order to remain one step ahead of the competition. That’s particularly gratifying for us.’
