The Saturday morning phone calls
After every busy Friday night, the phones on Saturday morning bring a run of lost property calls. A phone left on the back seat. A handbag. House keys. A child's toy that apparently cannot be slept without. Each caller is worried, and most of them know only roughly when they travelled and where from.
The call handler searches the dispatch system for the pickup address and the rough time, finds a few possible jobs, works out which driver it might have been, and rings them. The driver was on nights and is asleep. A message goes into the drivers' WhatsApp group instead. Meanwhile, a driver has already found a phone in the car, and it is sitting in his glovebox, but nobody has linked it to the caller.
Some items are returned days later. Some never are. The office has spent hours on it either way, often at the same time as taking bookings.
Why items and owners never meet
The problem is not that items go missing. It is that there are two separate searches, the customer looking for their item and the driver holding something with no owner, and nothing connects them.
- Customers do not know which car or driver they had, especially if they hailed or were booked by someone else.
- Found items are reported by drivers informally, if at all, and not recorded against a job.
- Enquiries arrive by phone, email, social messages and the website, and are kept in different places.
- There is no clear rule for how items get back: collected from the office, dropped by the driver, or posted.
- Items that are never claimed pile up in a drawer with no record of when they arrived.
What the calls take out of the day
| Task | Who does it | What it displaces |
|---|---|---|
| Taking the enquiry | Call handler | Booking calls at busy times |
| Searching for the journey | Call handler or controller | Dispatch work |
| Contacting drivers | Office | Drivers' rest time |
| Arranging the return | Office and driver | Paid work, unless the return is charged |
| Following up | Office | Other admin |
Customers judge you on how this is handled. A quick, organised return often earns a loyal customer, while a slow, confused one earns a public review about the firm that 'stole my phone'.
A lost property log that finds the journey for you
What we build is a small lost property system connected to your dispatch data.
- Customers report a lost item through a form on your website or by a link sent in reply to a call, email or social message. The form asks for the pickup, destination, rough time, and a description.
- The report is matched to likely journeys in your dispatch system by address, time window and, where known, the customer's phone number, so the office sees the likely job and driver without searching.
- Drivers log found items from their phone with a photo and the job they think it came from, or the car and time if not.
- Reported and found items are compared, and likely matches are shown to the office to confirm.
- The customer is told when their item is found and offered the return options you set, such as collection from the office, drop-off by the driver, or post, with any charge paid online through Stripe or your payment provider.
- Items that are not claimed stay on a list with the date they were found, so the office can follow your policy on how long to keep them.
Messages to drivers go only to the driver who had the job, rather than to the whole group, which keeps customer details private and keeps the group for work.
Saturday morning, sorted
Lost property no longer takes over the phones. Many customers report online before they ring, and the office sees the likely job and driver straight away. Drivers who find something log it in a minute before their next job, and the match is often made before the customer calls.
Returns follow the same process every time, and drivers are paid fairly for their time when they deliver an item, according to your rules. The drawer of forgotten umbrellas finally has a list, with dates, so you can clear it according to your policy.
Is this your weekend?
- Lost property calls take up the phones after busy nights.
- The office searches dispatch by hand to find the car.
- Drivers are rung on their days off about found items.
- Found items are not recorded anywhere.
- Nobody knows how long unclaimed items have been kept.