Taxi Driver Online

I would much rather you tried to explain the value of data, when it's busy, over that of a decent operator's voice.

_________________
IDFIMH

So are you saying that a Decent Voice operator can dispatch more jobs than a data system?

I think what your trying to say but not putting it across very well is that the voice operator will work the cars due to his/her knowledge of the town etc.

Data systems can work if they are setup in the correct manor and also consultation with the drivers takes place. The main fault with systems is that the drivers never really have the system explained to them and asked for advice on things, this is usual a mistake. Consultation should take place and the drivers should have an understanding of what they are getting.

The problem wiht most data systems is the fact that they are switched on and you cant adjust the system to work in differant ways dependant of what time of day or even day of the week, we all know that the way you operator on a Monday morning is differant to a Friday night.

There have been some really good points in this discussion so far and its nice to see some ideas as well.

regards
RadioMan

I will tell you what there must be some terrible opperators out there and you can tell they dont own cars the waste that goes on.

look, if someone phones from an estate for a taxi at 8,30 dont these people look at the bookings and see if there will be a taxi close at that time
and say can we make it 8.15 (to save milage)?

perhaps we need pop ups to draw attention to what will be available during that plot during that hour?


but we seem to be flying around with empty taxies when its as busy as hell!

Without doubt a computer can send info quicker than a voice, when it works properly. But a decent operator will give the right work to the right driver most of the time. A computer doesn't have common sense, just the info a programmer deems to give it.

_________________
IDFIMH

Bollox
its idle controllers just stuffing jobs in with an empty brain

when we provided computers we did not expect them to leave thier brains at home.

Same again tooday.
9ocklock comes and down it went. drivers then had over an hour of no shows/jobs and lost jobs when re-booting.
I come home because I have no hair left.
Please auroga sort this out for us. You must know what firm it is.

That is a bad week.

As for knowing where every up coming job is, that is a myth.

We use to be able to do that when we had 10 drivers and one guy in the office. Old hands always remember those days. They forget the period when there was 20 cars and they sat for ages waiting for the controller to get off the phone. It improved when you add a telephonist but not much.

The lesson I keep shouting at telephonists is to direct the customers to where we want them. When booking to go out punters just pluck a time out of the air and always go for the quarters, on the hour, quarter past, half past and quarter to.

That means your cars are limited to 4 jobs an hour with lots of sitting waiting.

Can I shift my telephonist to say when a punter wants an 8o'clock booking 'we can do 5 to or 5 past (thus allowing one guy to do two jobs) and similar with half past? Can I f**k.

You go in next Saturday, press F8 (if your Auriga users) and see 15 jobs at 8 and nothing else between quarter to and quarter past. Fecks me right off.

_________________
A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

as I said leave thier brains at home

It goes from bad to worse.
Same time again thisn morning the computer went down, lost work, loads of no shows you know the rest.
Boss has had aruiga in all week cant find any faults. Go and have a look at the ariel on top of a big block of flats near the sea.
At last find out whats is causing the problem. Horray.
Afraid not, i work in a seaside city thats holding the labor con=ference next week. And our digital areail has been conficasted by the security services.
We now have to operate on a little itty bitty one on the office roof, until the [edited by admin] go home.

Hi
If this problem is happening at a certain time of day then there could be a number of reasons for it and each one will have to be checked out.

1. Local office. Problems with power to system or mains interferance. Putting a Battery backup or surge protectors in line might help with this.

2. Local office. Some sort of routine/programme running on Auriga system which comes into play at a certain time of day and is causing system problems (I would say that Auriga have looked at this already.

3. Landline. Now you have said that your running data locally but if you were not then I would look at problems with the BT Landline and ask BT to put a monitor on the line to see if they can find any issues.

4. Remote Site. Again if they were running remote then check the mains power supply at the remote site. System could have been moved onto new supply sockets which have some sort of timers on them (I have seen this happen).

5. Remote Site. Some sort of interferance generated at certain times. This would have to be reported to Ofcom (previously Radio Communications Agency) for them to investigate. Your local radio dealer should help with this.

6. Local Site. As per 5 could be interferance.

Some of the other questions I would ask is has anyone actually listend to your data channel on both transmit and receive channels to see whats going on. This is easily done by most engineers.

There are various things that Auriga can look at in the system which will tell the customer if the problem is within the Auriga system or in this case I might suspect that its an external problem to the system but this causes problems in itself as the customer is then stuck between various parties:

BT - Landlines
Ofcom - Radio Interferance
Radio Dealer
Auriga
Drivers
Staff
Customers

This sounds like someone has to come to your site for a few days and actually carryout a full inspection and then come up with some sort of plan of action.

This sort of issue is a pain in the backside and I have had to deal with these issues in the past.

Anyway, if you need advice our your boss does then drop me a line. Advice is free!!!!!!!!!

regards
RadioMan
ps I take it your in Brighton then and are you on the old Auriga System or Evocab?

join the foxhunting bragade and give em a hard time

What we really need in a data system is street level routing and multiple algorythms of closest car, on first job, No pick ups, double up pax, multi-seats, with more user definable parameters, including the input of vehicle operating costs, so that:

The computer can not only make a time plus place plus vehicle type calculation, but additionally make a customer value/type preference, so that it can wait a car for a job if waiting the car is a less costly/more profitable option than simply moving it to another job just because its next on the list. A problem however, is driver who never see that you are trying to work for them as much as yourself.

One thing that would be good if it can be done, is to have phone areas understood by the computer.

In that if you are busy, and you have loads of jobs in one area with few cars near, and loads of cars in another with little work, then maybe you can get the computer to put only phone calls from a certain area through to the office.

Or give numbers already in your data system priority.

There are a few data systems which acutally use a thing called "IVR", this part of a system is between the phone system and the data system. You set up the max number of jobs per zone and when its reached the IVR will basically not allow anymore bookings from phone numbers within that area. Its only good for fixed line numbers and will not work with people with holding their number or mobile numbers.

This sort of IVR is not cheap at all but it can also be used to answer calls as well.

regards Radioman

There are a few data systems which acutally use a thing called "IVR", this part of a system is between the phone system and the data system. You set up the max number of jobs per zone and when its reached the IVR will basically not allow anymore bookings from phone numbers within that area. Its only good for fixed line numbers and will not work with people with holding their number or mobile numbers.

This sort of IVR is not cheap at all but it can also be used to answer calls as well.

regards Radioman