Quite often a travel agent or a PA will use the Internet to book a chauffeur-driven car for an executive who is travelling on business. Most of the time, the only thing they have to rely on is the presentation of the chauffeur companies' web site. It can be a daunting task and it can be very easy to find someone who looks acceptable enough and then proceed with the booking.
A good question to ask however is whether the chauffeur provider can send more than one car if necessary or if they can send a fleet of cars maybe – this is just a hypothetical question and the booker will never need such a request but what it does is gauge if other drivers will work with the company. This is a pretty good indication of their capacity and how well established the company is in their local market. It is probably best to ask this question by phone too and measure the response. A slight hesitation can reveal a lot.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter what car you drive, how early you arrive or how smooth you are over speed bumps. As a chauffeur, you must be able to read people and be attentive to their needs. It is something that is often overlooked by someone hiring a chauffeur service and something that is never valued if you never need to travel yourself. Believe it or not, drivers are not all the same and a good driver can be of enormous value. Just think of the young executive on the way to the meeting and wondering how they will break the ice. What if their chauffeur has valuable local knowledge, knows the £20m customer sponsors a sports team that just got promoted and knows exactly when to drop it in to a brief conversation?
