Taking bookings blind
It is Thursday afternoon and the phones are busy with bookings for Friday night: restaurant pickups, a works do, a run of airport jobs early on Saturday. The call handler says yes to all of them, because that is what you do. Nobody in the office knows how many drivers will actually be logged on at eleven on Friday night.
Most of your drivers are self-employed and set their own hours. Some always work weekends. Some said they might. One is on holiday and forgot to mention it. By the time the office sees who has logged on, the bookings have been taken and the only choice is which customers to disappoint.
The reverse happens too. A quiet Tuesday lunchtime has more drivers logged on than there is work, and they sit on the rank complaining that the office is not giving them jobs.
The office has bookings data and no availability data
Your dispatch system knows every booking and knows who is logged on right now. It usually knows nothing about who intends to work tomorrow or next weekend, because nobody records it anywhere except in a WhatsApp group.
- Drivers tell the office their plans by text, by phone or in passing, and none of it is written down in one place.
- The office manager builds a mental picture of cover that nobody else can see.
- Pre-booked work is not viewed by hour, so a cluster of jobs at the same time is invisible until it arrives.
- Holidays, vehicles off the road and drivers moving to other work are learnt late.
Many firms cannot insist on shifts for self-employed drivers, and do not want to. What is missing is not control, it is information.
What a gap in cover costs
| When cover is short | When cover is heavy |
|---|---|
| Pre-booked jobs run late and customers ring the office | Drivers wait for work and earn less |
| On-demand calls are turned away | Drivers log off early or move to other apps |
| Account customers see late pickups | The office gets complaints from drivers, not customers |
| Controllers spend the night ringing drivers to come out | Good drivers drift to firms that keep them busy |
Both sides matter. A firm that is short on Friday and oversupplied on Tuesday loses customers on one day and drivers on the other.
Availability, bookings and a warning in between
What we build is a small planning layer beside your dispatch system, not a replacement for it.
- Drivers mark when they expect to work for the coming week in a simple mobile page or through a message the tool understands, such as a text or a reply in a chat app you already use. It is a statement of intent, not a rota.
- Holidays, vehicle servicing and time off go in the same place, so the office can see them.
- Bookings already taken are read from your dispatch system and grouped by hour and by area, including airport runs that need a larger car or a driver on the airport list.
- Expected cover is compared with booked work plus a typical level of on-demand work for that hour, based on your own past jobs.
- Where cover looks short, the office gets a warning in advance, and the tool can message the drivers who usually work that slot to ask if they can come out.
- On the night, the view updates as drivers log on and off, so the controller can see which pre-booked jobs are at risk before they are late.
Friday night with a plan
By Thursday afternoon the office can see Friday's shape: the busy hours, the airport jobs at dawn, and how many drivers have said they will be out. If the late evening looks thin, a message goes to the drivers who normally do that slot, and the call handlers know whether to accept more work for that hour or offer a different time.
Drivers see when work is booked, which helps them decide when to come out. The quiet-day complaints ease, because drivers can see for themselves that Tuesday lunchtime is light.
Over a few months, the record of intentions against actual log-ons also shows you which drivers are reliable about the hours they say, which is useful when you allocate the better airport and account work.
Does this sound like your office?
- You find out who is working when they log on.
- Driver plans are spread across texts and a WhatsApp group.
- Busy nights have more bookings than drivers.
- Controllers spend peak hours ringing drivers to come out.
- Quiet days have drivers sitting on the rank complaining.