Wellington Combined Taxis - Time for a Change

February 2002

Situation
Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand is a thriving hub of sport, commerce, industry and the arts. It's the home of the Government, and many of New Zealand's largest companies. Wellington is where smart people make smart decisions. And it's here that one cab company made a very smart decision.

Wellington Combined Taxis is the biggest and busiest cab company in the capital, and the second-largest taxi company in the country. In order to keep its competitive edge in the deregulated taxi industry, it needed a technology upgrade that would improve its performance - and put more cash in drivers' pockets.

The system had to meet several key requirements. It had to improve the efficiency of the call takers and control room, dispatch the taxis more efficiently, and provide enough functionality to meet the specialist needs of the Wellington market.

All of these needs were met by the Raywood GPS dispatch solution.

Solution
Raywood first came to Wellington's attention after it successfully implemented the system in New Zealand's largest city, Auckland. That system now provides dispatch services to seven other taxi companies spanning New Zealand.

Richard Wright, chairman of Wellington Combined Taxis, shares what made Raywood stand out:

"We were familiar with Raywood because of its position as the market leader in Australia and we wanted to be with a company that had a proven record in supplying and supporting Australasian taxi dispatch companies. Our last suppliers weren't specialists in this area, and eventually we were left with an orphan system. We were determined that wouldn't happen this time round."

The system also had to meet key requirements: "It had to reliably dispatch jobs and cabs. It had to be dispatcher friendly, easy-to-use in the ops room and be able to deal with customer and driver enquiries quickly and easily," said Mr Wright.

Raywood took those instructions on board and worked with the management of Wellington Combined to tailor the dispatch system to meet their needs.

Sunday 17th February was "all systems go". The entire fleet of 381 cabs had the system installed on the same day; they left the workshop with the new mobile data terminals and GPS units allowing them to be pinpointed on a GPS map.

In the control room, operators revelled in the ability to input information as customers speak. Under the old system, customer information had to be typed in a set order, but the new Raywood system removes that restriction.

There is also a whole host of new features designed to make the dispatchers work easier. The system immediately alerts them to the possibility of a duplicate job being booked accidentally, takes into account where public holidays fall during the year and adjusts fixed bookings accordingly, and gives the operator the opportunity to immediately recall the last job they sent out if necessary.

Now, it's not uncommon for the jobs to be taken down and the booking dispatched to a taxi within seconds of the customer calling. The customer can also be told how long they're likely to wait for the taxi to arrive at the pickup address. The call taker is notified immediately when the booking is "Accepted" by the driver and the closest available taxi can often be at pickup address within a few minutes.

To one side of the control room, you can see the busy query operator in action - talking to drivers directly when there are problems with street addresses, or confusion about jobs. The most common query is not finding streets, but finding lost property, as customers ring up to retrieve their forgotten cell phones!

Outcome - Smart decision pays off
Within the first month of installation, Wellington Combined found that their investment was already paying off. Even while staff and drivers were still familiarizing themselves with the system, customer-waiting times dropped by 20 percent! This efficiency is due to the smart allocation of jobs by the system. By automatically matching the location of the customer to the GPS location of the cab, the system swiftly dispatches the job to the "closest available" cab. This means the customer-waiting time and the drivers' "dead" miles drop substantially.

They also saw a big drop in "no jobs" - that is, when the taxi turns up, but the customer doesn't. Both the cut in waiting times and "no jobs" mean that Wellington Combined's cabs spend less time waiting around, and more time driving. And that's what everybody wanted.

At first, Wellington Combined found that their taxi-van service was being compromised. That's because when a taxi-van was ordered, the system allocated the job to the nearest taxi, exactly as it was programmed to do. However, Raywood had a solution that suited the whole fleet, and was quickly able make the system recognize taxi van bookings separately and allowed them to operate under an independent set of dispatch rules.

A Dream Run
Richard Wright says the whole installation process was "a dream run" with Raywood's project management ensuring a "smooth, seamless transition" and that drivers have responded enthusiastically.

"There is tremendous support and enthusiasm from the drivers, no gripes or grizzles. They just wanted to get on and do it; they can recognise the benefits for them and the company. During changeover they were supportive and understanding and it was a real privilege to deal with them - especially as cabbies are not usually short of an opinion and happy to express it" continued Mr Wright.

"Everybody's happy with it, it's a simple system - easy to learn, easy to use and the drivers enjoy using it. It's clear to me why Raywood has 85% of the Australasian market," says Mr Wright.

Now, as the system continues to evolve, the company expects things can only get better.

For more information
For more information about Raywood computerised GPS job dispatch solutions visit www.raywoodcommunications.com

For more information on Wellington Combined visit www.taxis.co.nz .