You are about to procure a ready-made Taxi Dispatch Software and get your business online instantly. Just before deciding which vendor to go with, check if the system provided by your chosen vendor has these top important features. One other important thing to notice is if your Taxi dispatch system has provisions to cover upcoming features. As time changes and innovation happen in the industry, your users would require these facilities also in your app. The world keeps upgrading itself from website to mobiles to bots etc. As things change, you would need to keep your business software also updated.
- Airport pickup / Drop:
Almost in every city in the world, a normal ride inside the city is different and a ride to the airport is different. Cab & Taxi drivers consider a trip to the airport completely different owing to some important factors like: More traffic, More Tolls, More distance & More time. Since a single Airport pickup or drop can consume nearly half a day of a taxi driver, it is wise to have a different billing strategy for Airport rides. The Taxi Dispatch software you choose to employ for your Car rental business should consider this fact. It should have separate provisions for you to configure separate billing and process for Airport pickups and drops.
2. Hourly Rentals:
Believe it or not, in our experience we have seen 7 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start with a ride hailing business will eventually require this feature. While in a normal Taxi dispatch business you just require UBER like business, the hourly rentals feature helps you service your customers all the more better. You will soon notice that a majority of your customers asking you if they can also hire your Taxi’s on a hourly or daily rental. This type of rental is also good business. Please note that hourly rentals is different from self-driving rentals. In the later model, the car is driven by the passenger himself ( Eg: Hertz, AVIS etc. follow this Self-Driving rental business model ).
3. Ride Sharing:
I would say, this is one feature which is very essential in any Taxi dispatch software. Even unicorn companies like UBER, LYFT have eventually introduced it in a lot many cities. Your passengers will call this the darling of all features. It enables them to share a ride with other passengers and save big on money. At the same time many passengers like to meet new people and have a conversation during their ride.
4. Geo Fencing:
Geo fencing is a feature that can be used to keep users entering from un-desired locations away. Most often you would need to open up your App only for users in certain cities or location. If a user from some other part of the world open your app, you would need to politely tell them the service is not yet open in their location & it would be coming soon. To achieve this you need the Geo fencing feature in your Taxi Dispatch software. This helps also in minimizing malicious attacks from un-wanted geographies.
5. Future Ready:
This point may not sound important, but never ignore the near future. See that the Taxi dispatch software you are buying is ready to be used by the upcoming trends. Is your system ready to be integrated with connected cars? Is there any intelligence built into the script you have selected? Is the Taxi dispatch platform ready for the Driver-less cars? Believe-it-or-Not, your fleet will have Driver-less cars by 2018 end. Every car manufacturer in the world are releasing their Autonomous models in 2018. Even if you plan on introducing 1 Tesla like car in your fleet, you would need a software that can plug into its Self-Driving software.
6. Chat feature
Many may argue why a chat feature is required in a taxi dispatch software when the customer can directly call the driver. We accept this rational thinking completely. But, study has found that a majority of customers are stuck in a spot where they cant do a voice call after booking a taxi on their app ( Meetings, Silent zone, Classroom etc. ). In such cases the chat feature becomes very handy for them to send out messages to the driver and get a reply. So to make things easy for your passenger, see that the taxi booking system you plan on employing has a robust chat feature available in it.
We will keep this list of essential features any Taxi dispatch software should have.
FAQ:
What is the difference between the hosted model and a downloadable model in Taxi Dispatch Software?
Hosted model:
It an also be called the SAAS model ( Software as a Service ). Hereby your entire application is hosted on the cloud already by the vendor. All you need to do is pay a monthly subscription fee and create an instance of the service for your business and use it by paying the monthly fee.
Pro’s: Cost effective, No need to maintain your own server, All technological headaches are taken care by the Saas provider.
Con’s: Reliable only if provided by a big company, Your data resides in the vendors server, You dont own your software.
Downloadable model:
It can also be called as the normal installable model. Here in you pay for the entire software and own it. The software will be installed on your own servers and handed over up and running. You own your source code and you can customize it as per your wish.
Pro’s: You are not stuck or dependent on your vendor, Your won your source code/ software 100%, You can customize your Taxi dispatch software as per your like using any vendor.
Con’s: The technology and server is yours to maintain and run, An extra initial investment is required procure the software.
Are mobile apps required for a Taxi Dispatch system?
Until a decade back, mobile apps was not required for a typical Taxi dispatch system. But times have changed and companies like UBER, Lyft has set a new standard to this business type. Users and passengers have become very comfortable doing a plethora of things on their mobile phones. From ordering food to booking tickets etc. people are doing it on mobile apps. While in the past users opened website URLs on browsers, now they are used to install an app for everything. And yes, the mobile also has a lot many advantages. One of the most essential thing a mobile phone provides is geo location. With this feature users can book a taxi on the go where-ever they are. Also Taxi drivers get a new way to find customers where they are and pick them up. As a owner of the taxi dispatch software, you also get certain benefits. You can track where your fleet is. You can see your cars moving in real time etc. Also you can reach your registered customers for any promotions via. Push notifications regularly.