The phone that never stops
At the busy end of the week, the office has two or three people on the phones and the controller on the radio and the dispatch screen. Every line is lit. Some callers want a car now. Some are asking where their car is. Some want to book Sunday's airport run, which could easily wait until Monday. A regular customer who takes the same journey home from the same pub every Friday waits on hold behind all of them.
Callers who are kept on hold too long hang up. Many of them open another firm's app or ring the next number in their phone. You never know who they were or how many there were, because the missed calls vanish into the phone system's log, which nobody has time to read.
Why adding another call handler is not the whole answer
Peak hours are short and sharp. Staffing for the worst ten minutes of Friday night means paying people to sit idle for much of the week. And a large share of peak calls do not need a person at all.
| Type of call | Needs a person? | What usually happens |
|---|---|---|
| Regular customer, usual journey | Rarely | Waits in the queue like everyone else |
| Where is my car? | Rarely | Ties up a line to read out what the screen already knows |
| Advance booking for another day | Not urgently | Taken at the worst time of the week |
| New customer, unusual pickup | Yes | Waits behind the calls above |
| Complaint or problem | Yes | Handled in a rush |
The calls that genuinely need a call handler are the ones that suffer most, because the line is full of calls that could have been handled another way.
What the lost calls cost
A missed call on a busy night is often a lost fare, and a customer who has now used a competitor and may stay there. Where-is-my-car calls add stress for the call handlers and delay everything else. Advance bookings taken in a rush are more likely to have the wrong address or time, which causes problems later in the week.
Because the phone system's missed call log is rarely read, the office has no measure of how bad the problem is, and so it never gets fixed.
Call handling that takes the routine calls off the line
What we build connects to your phone system and your dispatch system, and handles the simple calls while your call handlers deal with the rest.
- Incoming calls are matched to known customers by their number, using the booking history in your dispatch system.
- A regular caller hears their usual journeys offered, such as home from the station, and can confirm one with a keypress or by saying so. The booking goes into your dispatch system as normal.
- A caller who has a live booking is told where their car is and its estimated arrival, taken from dispatch, with the option to speak to someone.
- Callers who want an advance booking at peak time can be sent a booking link by text through a service such as Twilio, instead of waiting.
- Anyone who hangs up before being answered gets a text with a booking link, and appears on a callback list for the office.
- New customers, unusual requests and anyone who asks for a person are passed straight to your call handlers.
- A simple report shows answered, handled automatically and missed calls by hour, so you can see your busy periods clearly.
Voice recognition can be added for callers who prefer to speak, using speech services from providers such as OpenAI or Azure, but many firms start with keypad options because they are simple and reliable.
Friday night with shorter queues
Your call handlers spend peak hours on the calls that need them: new customers, unusual pickups and problems. Regulars rebook their usual journey in seconds. Where-is-my-car calls answer themselves.
Callers who gave up are no longer invisible. They get a booking link straight away, and the office can see the list later and decide whether to call back.
Over a few weeks the call report shows the real shape of demand, which helps you decide when an extra call handler is really worth paying for.
Recognise this?
- All your lines are busy on Friday and Saturday nights.
- Callers ring to ask where their car is.
- You do not know how many calls go unanswered.
- Regular customers wait on hold for the same journey every week.
- Advance bookings are taken during the busiest hour.