History
Lesson for the Future!
With the busy period hard upon us, this is the regular
request to all drivers to assist whenever possible to
improve coverage up to the end of the year. Increased work
volumes over the past few weeks have seen the usual areas
appearing where lack of coverage causes concern.
Following meetings with our Controllers, it was decided
that now was the time to introduce fresh ideas and methods
of covering those trips that in the past have given the
Call Centre staff, other departments within Brunswick
House and clients, so many issues.
So in keeping within
the spirit of the Society, it was decided to try and be
more informative with drivers. That would ensure our
Controllers taking a proactive approach in doing their job
rather than be reactive, something which has been adopted
for so long.
Our original despatch
system was designed to be as close to our previous method
of voice despatch as possible. When we despatched by
voice, a key individual in the Call Centre was the ‘splitter’.
Every trip - or docket as it was known - would pass along
the conveyer belt to this individual. The role was to
firstly decide which dispatcher should be given the trip.
East, Central and West areas were used and each section
had its pre-bookings stored in time order. According to
the pick-up address, the splitter would pass the bookings
to the dispatcher so they could commence calling the trips
10/15 minutes before the pre-booked time. For those trips
in the outer areas, the splitter would bring them to the
dispatcher’s notice much sooner so as to increase the
lead-time and give us the chance of supplying a vehicle on
time.
The introduction of V6
meant that the computer itself became the splitter and
trips were dispatched into zones at pre-set times. This
method is all well and good providing Controllers keep a
close eye on the pre-booked trips. It has been highlighted
that in the past, a Controller would only need to view the
pre-booked trips at the start of their shift. It was felt
no further action was needed unless a trip reappeared as a
problem on their screen.
As you all know, computers can be programmed
to do the work of humans; but in my opinion they are
better suited to assist humans in doing their job. V6 is
programmed to inform the Controller that there are
trips |
dispatched that have not been
matched to a driver. The usual reason why this happens is
because there has been a time lapse of 4 minutes, or a trip
has collected 6 rejects. It’s at this time that the
Controller has to act and act fast. Messages to the
fleet would be sent informing of a trip in an area – "please
cover" etc - or the trip might be re-dispatched.
The situation can be compounded further if after a further
5minutes from taking action, the trip has still not been
accepted. This sees us having to notify the client very
close to the pre-booked time. By no means is this good
service and is one that clients just do not understand.
"I booked a
cab in advance and you now tell me there are no cabs in the
area?" You can imagine the client’s response.
Experience at understanding how drivers work and think does
enable us to look at certain pre-booked trips and make the
judgement as to whether or not we believe we will be have a
problem getting the trip covered. It has always been my
belief that with enough advanced warning, a Controller
should be able to get any trip covered no matter where the
pick-up is. We are working to a maximum notice of 10minutes
before the trip despatches, but on many occasions this will
reduce to five minutes. Trips in the zones outside the
London postal areas and M25 will not be made known.
Coverage Improving
Since introducing this method -
primarily on the evening and night shift - the number of
client complaints about poor coverage have dropped
dramatically. Even drivers have complimented on us doing
this. Coverage in the outer zones using this method is at
present very good. Such trips as SW19 to SW4, SW16 to SW16
and N1 to N16 are finding drivers arriving a couple of
minutes before the pre-booked time or on booked time. This
equates to the Call Centre receiving less query calls from
clients checking where their cab is and frees up Supervisors
to concentrate on managing the shift and more |
importantly,
allows more
incoming calls to order taxis. I know from experience that
in the past we have lost many an account due to the
failure of providing a service when picking up passengers
away from their business address.
How many times have you
been in the situation where you’ve dropped off in, say,
SW4, then booked in to SW4 and
immediately headed straight
for Chelsea so eager to get to where the work might be? On
route through Battersea, you book in to SW3 or SW10 hoping
that by the time you reach Chelsea your queue position
will be near the top. Then as you reach one of the
bridges, you notice a trip has been dispatched in either
SW11 or SW4! I bet your first thought is "oh dam, I’m
too close to the other side of the river to go in for that
now." But, by receiving advance information of where
some trips are coming out (ie: Trip in SW11 dispatched
at 1900hrs etc), I know drivers will take the decision
to either stay booked into their drop-off zone for a
little longer, or as in the above case, definitely book in
to SW11 as they drive through the zone.
I believe that keeping
the fleet informed of the number of advance bookings
within the system, can only be beneficial for drivers to
make decisions. More importantly, this method of operation
will only occur if the Controllers are sharp and doing
their job correctly.
I know some of you were
unhappy because you initially thought you were being set
up to ‘hang up’ for trips. So let me state now that if
a fleet message is sent out advising that a trip will be
dispatched in an area, no complaint will be issued.
However, please remember the dispatching system does keep
a log of all messages sent out from the Call Centre, so if
anyone does book in to an outer zone incorrectly and uses
the excuse that a message was sent out, then this can be
verified.
Our aim within the Call
Centre is to give a service to both driver and client and
we believe this way of working does just that.
Communication in any business is essential to success and
if the Call Centre communicates more with drivers, then
improvement to service is assured.
I would
like to take this opportunity to wish both you and your
families a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
Keith Cain
Driver Operations /
Call Centre Manager |
