Quote requests in five different inboxes
Long-distance work is where the better fares are: a family going to an airport a couple of hours away, a group heading to a wedding in another county, a customer who needs to get to a cruise port. These enquiries arrive by email, through the website form, on Facebook Messenger and by phone, often late in the evening when people are planning their holidays.
Each one needs working out. Someone checks the distance, looks up the tariff sheet, adds the airport drop-off or parking charge, checks whether it needs an estate car, an MPV or an eight-seater, and considers the return journey. The manager does most of them because they know the rules. The manager also runs the rest of the business, so the quotes wait until the morning or until the weekend is over.
By then, the customer has booked with the firm that replied first.
The pricing lives in someone's head
Most firms have a tariff for local work set by the council meter, and a looser set of rules for long-distance and pre-booked transfers that have grown over years.
- A mileage rate that changes above a certain distance.
- Different prices for a saloon, an estate, an MPV and an eight-seater.
- Airport charges, such as drop-off fees and car park charges for meet and greet.
- An allowance for the empty return journey, sometimes reduced for popular routes where a return fare is likely.
- Adjustments for early morning or late night pickups, and for bank holidays.
- Fixed prices for the busiest airport routes, kept on a sheet by the phone.
Because these rules are not written down in one place, only one or two people can quote confidently, and the same trip can be priced differently depending on who answers.
Slow and inconsistent quotes cost work
| Problem | What the customer sees | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Quote arrives the next day | Another firm already replied | Lost booking |
| Two different prices for the same trip | Distrust | Haggling or a lost customer |
| Vehicle size missed | Too many cases for the car | Last-minute swap or a second car |
| Airport charges forgotten | Nothing, at first | You pay the charge out of the fare |
| Quote never followed up | Silence | Enquiries that could have converted |
Quoting from your own rules, straight away
What we build turns your pricing rules into something a system can apply, and puts it where the enquiries arrive.
- We write down your pricing rules with you: mileage bands, vehicle types, airport and port charges, time of day and bank holiday adjustments, and fixed prices for the common routes.
- Your website gets a quote form that asks for pickup, destination, date, time, passengers, luggage and whether a return is wanted, and works out the vehicle size needed from passengers and luggage.
- Emails and social messages are read by an AI model such as Anthropic Claude or OpenAI, which pulls out the same details and asks the customer for anything missing.
- Distance and drive time come from a mapping service such as Google Maps, and the price is calculated from your rules.
- Straightforward quotes go back straight away with a link to book and pay a deposit if you take deposits, using Stripe or your existing payment provider.
- Unusual trips, such as very long distances, large groups, multiple stops or dates you have marked as busy, go to a person with the calculated figure as a starting point.
- Quotes not booked are followed up once with a polite reminder, and a record shows which quotes turned into bookings.
Confirmed bookings are passed to your dispatch system through its API, with the flight or sailing details on the job.
What the office does differently
Most long-distance and airport enquiries are answered while the customer is still comparing options, including late at night. The manager deals with the handful that genuinely need judgement, and the rest of the office can see the same rules and prices.
Prices become consistent, which makes customers trust them. Airport charges and vehicle size are never forgotten, because they are part of the calculation rather than something to remember.
The record of quotes and bookings also shows which routes you win and which you lose, which is useful when you review your fixed prices.
Is this how your quotes work?
- Only the manager can confidently price long-distance trips.
- Quote requests wait until the next morning or longer.
- The same trip gets different prices from different staff.
- Airport or parking charges are sometimes left off.
- Nobody follows up quotes that were not booked.