National Radio Cabs - Leading the way in a competitive market

June 2003

Situation
With a fleet of over 400 taxis, National Radio Cabs (NRC) is the largest taxi company in Dublin, Ireland.

In the late 1990's it was very difficult for customers to get a taxi in Dublin. Often waiting time could be up to two hours and the taxi industry was receiving a tremendous amount of bad publicity due to this issue.

NRC was faced with an abundance of work, but was not able to dispatch it quickly enough or guarantee that the driver would be able to pick-up the customer within an acceptable period of time. NRC realised that they needed to be able have more certainty over the service that they could provide to customers, so that they could realistically set customer expectations, improve customer service and loyalty.

Their existing voice plotting system could not keep up with the volume of calls nor was able to give them the control that is necessary to manage a large fleet of taxis. With the plotting system, the driver could "plot" into any area they liked. This was often miles away from where they actually were and potentially a long way from the customer's pick-up address. This meant that NRC could not give any guarantee of service to the customer and drivers were often travelling many miles without a fare to pick-up a customer. This was extraordinarily inefficient for the drivers and frustrating for customers and NRC.

Solution
National Radio Cabs chose to replace their plotting system with a computerised, GPS dispatch solution from Raywood Communications.

Raywood is a pioneer in computerised, GPS dispatch technology for the taxi industry. Their sophisticated dispatch solution uses GPS (Global Positioning System) satellites to track the location of vehicles and locate the closest vehicle to the customer, and complex algorithms to automatically dispatch jobs efficiently to the correct vehicle. This innovative solution increases call centre efficiency, driver income, customer satisfaction and ultimately increases income for the company.

Raywood offers a variety of flexible dispatch solutions, including simple plotting systems, a combination of plotting and GPS dispatch and full GPS dispatch. National Radio Cabs selected a combination solution that allows drivers to plot into the area where they are located and adjacent areas in quiet periods and automatically switches into automated GPS dispatch in busy periods. This solution finds a balance between fairness to drivers in quiet periods of the day and true optimization of the fleet during the busy periods.

In a full GPS dispatch solution, the system automatically selects the taxi for the job using GPS co-ordinates to determine the closest car to the customer. Other conditions can also be taken into account, including the amount of time that the car has been vacant, and the conditions required by the customer for example, a station wagon or language spoken by the driver.

NRC explored other solutions and selected Raywood for their flexibility and their innovative use of GPS. "In many solutions we looked at GPS did not actually work. Most of the competition said that they used GPS, but very few use GPS to actively dispatch jobs to the closest car, with the right conditions, the way that Raywood does" said Liam Brady, Director National Radio Cab.

NRC successfully went live on 28th October 2000 and became Raywood's first customer in Ireland.

"Overall we're delighted with the service provided by Raywood. We had a very successful switch-on and we have had excellent support from the UK team over the years" said Mr Brady.

After some initial teething problems everyone got used to it. "The drivers got used to it pretty quickly. Within a few days it became second nature to them. They'd never go back to the old voice system" said Mr Brady.

Raywood's solution is also incredibly flexible, with multiple dispatch modes and system options. "Having the ability to automatically change dispatch schedules to cater for the daily peaks and troughs of job bookings, is very powerful" said Liam Brady.

In the call centre the Raywood system does a lot more than the previous voice system. Jobs are instantly dispatched from the telephonist's terminal, removing the need for a radio dispatcher and a mountain of paper work.

"We are definitely handling more jobs. We went from 700 jobs a day to handling on average 2,000 jobs a day. Our record is 3,000 jobs a day, which was at Christmas and we could've handled more" said Liam Brady from National Radio Cabs.

Customers love the speed and efficiency of the service and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. However, National Radio Cabs did not expect the market to be de-regulated. Now customers don't necessarily need to call for a taxi as they can get a cab by hailing one on the street.

Outcome
In a highly competitive, de-regulated market, NRC continues to lead the way. "You've got to bear in mind that there is now a glut of taxis. Where there were previously 2,700 taxis, there are now 10,000 taxis in Dublin, with a population of 1.25 million" said Mr Brady.

Drivers have experienced a drop in earnings because of de-regulation, plus the value of taxi licences have dropped substantially. However, NRC drivers don't leave as they know NRC is the best company in the city and they wouldn't earn what they do with other companies.

So much so that NRC has a waiting list of drivers wanting to work for them. They know that, with the market the way it is right now, no other driver gets more work than NRC drivers. "The Raywood system is brilliant and we know it works" said Mr Brady "On our busiest day we're dispatching 3,000 jobs and we could handle more."

"We won't add any more drivers until we can guarantee that it won't dilute the amount of work available for our current drivers" said Mr Brady "In fact we are currently implementing a marketing campaign to increase job totals" continued Mr Brady.

NRC also provides a bureau dispatch service to other fleets. This helps to grow the company and can provide an additional revenue stream. "Our bureau customer only has 25 cabs. He would never get the quantity of work that he has now without the back-up of our dispatch service" said Mr Brady.

NRC has always been at the cutting edge in the industry investing in state of the art technology, staff and training. NRC can now deliver the fastest response time possible and the largest quantity of jobs in today's competitive taxi industry. Raywood dispatch solutions help NRC deliver outstanding customer service to maintain their competitive edge.

For more information
For more information about Raywood computerised GPS job dispatch solutions visit http://raywoodcommunications.com.

For more information on National Radio Cabs visit www.radiocabs.ie. To book a taxi call +353 (1) 677-22-22

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