Taxis: Giving tech a fare crack

The next time you hail or book a taxi give some thought to the complex dance taking place between call handlers, drivers and data management systems. It ensures the whole process can meet customers’ increasingly high expectations without coming to a screeching halt during periods of heavy demand.

It’s not an easy market to operate in, made less so by the rise of Uber and ride-sharing platforms. However, traditional companies are fighting back by adopting new technology. One such firm is Glasgow Private Hire, a 500-cab taxi company that has recently migrated to the iCabbi cloud-based dispatch and automation platform.

“We were happy with the system we had. However, we have a duty to our customers and drivers to always be looking forward, and with the advances in development and technology within our industry we reached a point where we had to move with the times, which is what we did!”,says Peter Kelso, office manager at Glasgow Private Hire. The decision to move to the iCabbi platform wasn’t done blindly. “One of our sister companies [Penny Cars in Chapelhall] installed iCabbi at the beginning of May 2016, and from then it has had no downtime and no issues of any real concern,” Kelso adds. “We monitored its progress and quickly came to the conclusion that iCabbi was the company to go with.”