he key issue in Radio Taxi operations is to pick up the customer within minimum time and drop the customer while ensuring that the customer is being informed by the expected time of taxi arrival. Conventionally, without an automatic taxi dispatch system following are the concerns and issues:
InfoTrack studied the concerns of the Taxi Operators and the challenges that they faced during their day to day operations an automated the routine functions such that employee productivity improved and reduced the no. of call centre agents to run the operations of Taxi Company. Our system helped the Taxi company to manage their fleet size of 750 Taxis with just 2 call centre agents.
|
Sl.No. |
Concerns / Isssues |
How InfoTrack Resolved |
Benefits to the Customer |
1 |
Confirming the arrival of a Taxi |
We built in the business rules into our engine which fetched the nearest available taxi to the customer and awarded the job to the taxi and at the same time announced the ETA ( expected time of taxi arrival ) to the customer over phone using IVRS system. |
The customer just easily calls a hot line no., confirms the destination and address for pick up, the customer is asked to hold the line and the system automatically dispatches the Taxi and announces the Taxi no. and arrival time to the customer holding the line. |
|
2 |
Awarding job to
nearest Taxi |
The business rules factored the various zones and made nearest available taxi’s more visible and automatically initiated the bidding and awarded the job to the right driver. |
This helped a lot in reducing the customer waiting time from 30 minutes to just 5 minutes and thereby resulted in more jobs that could be taken rather than the conventional manual mode. |
|
3 |
Recording of Jobs
undertaken |
With the help of Caller ID interface and system capturing the point of pick up, drop and real time tracking helping to track the Taxi till the customer is dropped at the destination helped to record the activity of a job from initiation to completion. |
It helped the customer to eliminate the manual process of entering the details into the system which required more resources in terms of man power, time , money, paper work etc which had a telling effect on the system. |
|
4 |
Jobs Done |
InfoTrack dispatch system helped the customer to see the no. of jobs based on booking types such as advance/ current at one glance with their status. |
This helped the management to understand how many jobs were done from time to time instantly by just logging into the internet anywhere at anytime. This facilitated the top management to access these reports anytime anywhere there the unique facility for borderless remote administration. |
|
5 |
Revenue |
We integrated the Taxi meter with our MCT so that the taxi fares can be captured and transmitted wirelessly from the device to our system. This helped to remotely capture the revenue accruing from the day to day operations and helped the Taxi operator in the revenue collection process. |
The system is robust to allow the customer to generate revenue report by Taxi/ Time frame/ Driver/ Corporate customer. Taxi company saved process time of 24hrs to know the Revenue of Taxi operations on the previous day through manual recording process. |
|
6 |
Unhappy customers |
The customer were unhappy as they had to wait for over 30 minutes for Taxi arrival, moreover frustrated to see even taxi not arriving and call centre personnel helpless due to inability to trace the Taxi. InfoTrack, with its rule based dispatch engine tracked available taxis closest to the customer and awarded the job and parallely announced the Taxi no. and arrival time to the customer. |
The customers were picked up within 5 to 10 max. They didn’t have to wait for over 30 minutes. Moreover, they knew the ETA ( Expected Time Of Taxi Arrival). |
|
7 |
Call centre efficiency |
The call centre agents were frustrated with the manual dispatch system. Drivers don’t say exactly where they are etc. They did not have a mechanism to log every call and see the details of the job & status of them. Well, InfoTrack with its CRM module helped the Taxi Operator to measure QoS ( Quality of Service ). |
The system captured the duration of each call and also incorporated voice recording of each call that is stored as voice file in the history such that the call centre operations in charge can play these files sitting remotely anywhere anytime to access the service level of the call centre and decide on the improvements/ re-training exercise on customer support accordingly. |
|
12 |
Taxi Fleet Maintenance |
Convention recording of mileage and forthcoming service dates etc missed because these remained in the mind of an individual. InfoTrack provided a fleet maintenance module which automatically recorded the current odometer reading and checked with the settings for engine oil change, service etc and provided an automatic alert mechanism to remind operators on due dates for service and parts replacement. |
This helped a lot to eliminate emission of black smoke, minimize car break down and helped in the timely maintenance. |