The most hated man in Canberra
Feb. 26th, 2007 03:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringHe was on the verge of apoplexy when I picked him up from an inner-city hotel. His face was red, his eyes were bulging out, and he spoke through gritted teeth. "I know it's not your fault, but I'm never coming back to Canberra again, so long as I live and you've still got that bloody idiot robot booking system. It's a piece of pustulous shit."
"You're very kind," I told him, "Most people say far worse things about it."
Just before I began driving cabs, the cab company, forced by government to do something about lengthy hold times to get through to an operator to make a booking, purchased an automated voice recognition system that answered all calls promptly.
Unfortunately, the voice recognition bit didn't work quite as well as it could have, and our customers found that instead of hanging on the phone for half an hour waiting for a human operator to pick up, they were now spending the same half hour grappling with the robot voice of the system, a male, uncaring and sinister voice that apparently didn't understand Australian accents or recognise the names of Canberra's suburbs and streets.
Over the months it has steadily gotten better in operation, and I don't cop quite the same amount of abuse, but I've long since given up trying to defend it from those who really hate it. Instead I just employ the strategy outlined to us in taxi school when the passenger wants to talk politics. Just agree with everything they say, regardless of your own feelings.
"That voice," I say, "is the most hated man in Canberra. Especially by cabbies."
I generally get a wry grin at that stage. "You guys must really be suffering, hey? You'd be losing a lot of business?"
I tell them about the publican who got sick of having his drunken customers throw their mobile phones at the wall when trying to book a cab ride home and instead bought a minibus and hired a driver to get them home safely. Or the multinational company that developed a new policy for its representatives visiting Canberra - instead of booking cabs, they now hire cars in order not to miss important meetings or their flights out.
The robot voice has caused a lot of grief, and though as I said, it is steadily improving (or maybe the regular users have worked out how to deal with it), the damage to the taxi company's reputation has been done. Especially with the cabbies. In theory, we should be out there defending it and talking it up, but in practice that just leads to unhappy, disbelieving customers.
One group of cabbies got so angry with the system that they decided to break away from the monopoly cab company that has operated here for the past twenty or thirty years, and are on the verge of forming their own company. It will be the same drivers of the same cars, but instead of having an automated booking system, they will employ human operators to answer their phones.
I can understand their motivation, and I can recognise that they have a great selling point, but in the end, it probably won't have that much of an effect. There will still be the same number of cabs and drivers on the road, and in peak times, the cab system is going to be overloaded. If there are a maximum of 250 cabs on the road, and there are 200 people waiting at the airport in addition to the normal amount of Canberra residents requiring cabs to get to and from jobs, doctors, motor repairers and so on, then there are going to be delays in service, no matter how you spin it.
During the morning and afternoon peaks, I'm usually flat out. I drop off a passenger and immediately the computer screen tells me I have another job. The fact that there are several choke points in the traffic system at these times doesn't help matters. The most efficient despatch system in the world won't conjure up more cabs out of thin air. Or more drivers.
The new taxi company is going to face a huge challenge in facing up to the established monopoly. The immediate problem will be finding and training staff to man the booking system. Human telephone operators, even if employed at minimum wage, are still expensive, and it's not just a matter of hiring a half-dozen or so. They will need to have enough staff on hand to cover peak times, as well as the lean times and the early morning, weekend and holiday periods, when the mandatory penalty rates kick in. These operators will also have to have a good knowledge of Canberra geography, down to the level of knowing the names of individual government office buildings and the differences between (say) the three Rydges hotels in Canberra and the string of similarly-named establishments up and down Northbourne Avenue. If a passenger is waiting at the Comfort Inn and the cab arrives at the Comfort Suites a block away, you are going to have both an unhappy customer and an unhappy cabbie.
A robust, uncrashable computer despatch system and software is also required. Plus time to train staff and test the system. It's no good having an advertising blitz if on the first day of operations the thing crashes.
The cost of advertising is also going to be huge. Potential customers need to know the name of the new company and the phone number. That means hitting all the media in town, especially the tourist magazines and newspapers. A crucial factor may well be the fact that the phone directory won't have an entry for the new company until the next edition comes out. Of course word of mouth will have an impact, but a lot of the taxi business focuses on visitors and tourists, and they fly in cold.
Establishment costs mount up. New livery - decals and signs - for the vehicles. Uniforms. A depot to house the company offices and despatch centre. Training courses for new drivers. Computers and software.
And possibly the most significant factor will be the cost of borrowing money to get the enterprise running. No bank likes to fund a challenger to a long-established monopoly. It's a risk, and the interest rates on the startup loan are likely to be high. If the new venture doesn't come up with good results and prospects within a few months, it's not going to survive. "Bumping along the bottom" for long-term growth is not an option for a new startup in the industry. It's a matter of succeed or die.
The new company is within a few weeks of starting business. 48 days, according to their website. It has gained government accreditation and announced that it will initially have around 60 cabs - nearly a quarter of the entire Canberra fleet. It will be interesting to see how it works out on the cabbie coalface. At the moment we have three established brands within the company (even though they are basically just three phones on one desk), and adding another to the mix might not seem significant to the average passenger, especially one walking up to a cab rank. They will get into the first car on the rank, regardless of brand.
Oddly enough, if the new company is phenomenally successful, it won't be able to handle all the bookings it receives. Sixty cabs will be stretched very thin, and either there will be a significant delay at peak times, or it will have to offload bookings onto the established company. The first will result in bad experiences for the customers, the second will lead to confusion.
My guess is that for we cabbies, it will have little effect. We'll continue to treat each other in a fair and friendly fashion, taking our turns and doing the right thing, regardless of what logo is on the cab's side. For the new company, I wish it every success in improving standards and performance, but realistically I cannot see it surviving the first year. I predict an expensive and embarrassing failure, resulting in the existing company adding the new brand to the three already in operation.
"You're very kind," I told him, "Most people say far worse things about it."
Just before I began driving cabs, the cab company, forced by government to do something about lengthy hold times to get through to an operator to make a booking, purchased an automated voice recognition system that answered all calls promptly.
Unfortunately, the voice recognition bit didn't work quite as well as it could have, and our customers found that instead of hanging on the phone for half an hour waiting for a human operator to pick up, they were now spending the same half hour grappling with the robot voice of the system, a male, uncaring and sinister voice that apparently didn't understand Australian accents or recognise the names of Canberra's suburbs and streets.
Over the months it has steadily gotten better in operation, and I don't cop quite the same amount of abuse, but I've long since given up trying to defend it from those who really hate it. Instead I just employ the strategy outlined to us in taxi school when the passenger wants to talk politics. Just agree with everything they say, regardless of your own feelings.
"That voice," I say, "is the most hated man in Canberra. Especially by cabbies."
I generally get a wry grin at that stage. "You guys must really be suffering, hey? You'd be losing a lot of business?"
I tell them about the publican who got sick of having his drunken customers throw their mobile phones at the wall when trying to book a cab ride home and instead bought a minibus and hired a driver to get them home safely. Or the multinational company that developed a new policy for its representatives visiting Canberra - instead of booking cabs, they now hire cars in order not to miss important meetings or their flights out.
The robot voice has caused a lot of grief, and though as I said, it is steadily improving (or maybe the regular users have worked out how to deal with it), the damage to the taxi company's reputation has been done. Especially with the cabbies. In theory, we should be out there defending it and talking it up, but in practice that just leads to unhappy, disbelieving customers.
One group of cabbies got so angry with the system that they decided to break away from the monopoly cab company that has operated here for the past twenty or thirty years, and are on the verge of forming their own company. It will be the same drivers of the same cars, but instead of having an automated booking system, they will employ human operators to answer their phones.
I can understand their motivation, and I can recognise that they have a great selling point, but in the end, it probably won't have that much of an effect. There will still be the same number of cabs and drivers on the road, and in peak times, the cab system is going to be overloaded. If there are a maximum of 250 cabs on the road, and there are 200 people waiting at the airport in addition to the normal amount of Canberra residents requiring cabs to get to and from jobs, doctors, motor repairers and so on, then there are going to be delays in service, no matter how you spin it.
During the morning and afternoon peaks, I'm usually flat out. I drop off a passenger and immediately the computer screen tells me I have another job. The fact that there are several choke points in the traffic system at these times doesn't help matters. The most efficient despatch system in the world won't conjure up more cabs out of thin air. Or more drivers.
The new taxi company is going to face a huge challenge in facing up to the established monopoly. The immediate problem will be finding and training staff to man the booking system. Human telephone operators, even if employed at minimum wage, are still expensive, and it's not just a matter of hiring a half-dozen or so. They will need to have enough staff on hand to cover peak times, as well as the lean times and the early morning, weekend and holiday periods, when the mandatory penalty rates kick in. These operators will also have to have a good knowledge of Canberra geography, down to the level of knowing the names of individual government office buildings and the differences between (say) the three Rydges hotels in Canberra and the string of similarly-named establishments up and down Northbourne Avenue. If a passenger is waiting at the Comfort Inn and the cab arrives at the Comfort Suites a block away, you are going to have both an unhappy customer and an unhappy cabbie.
A robust, uncrashable computer despatch system and software is also required. Plus time to train staff and test the system. It's no good having an advertising blitz if on the first day of operations the thing crashes.
The cost of advertising is also going to be huge. Potential customers need to know the name of the new company and the phone number. That means hitting all the media in town, especially the tourist magazines and newspapers. A crucial factor may well be the fact that the phone directory won't have an entry for the new company until the next edition comes out. Of course word of mouth will have an impact, but a lot of the taxi business focuses on visitors and tourists, and they fly in cold.
Establishment costs mount up. New livery - decals and signs - for the vehicles. Uniforms. A depot to house the company offices and despatch centre. Training courses for new drivers. Computers and software.
And possibly the most significant factor will be the cost of borrowing money to get the enterprise running. No bank likes to fund a challenger to a long-established monopoly. It's a risk, and the interest rates on the startup loan are likely to be high. If the new venture doesn't come up with good results and prospects within a few months, it's not going to survive. "Bumping along the bottom" for long-term growth is not an option for a new startup in the industry. It's a matter of succeed or die.
The new company is within a few weeks of starting business. 48 days, according to their website. It has gained government accreditation and announced that it will initially have around 60 cabs - nearly a quarter of the entire Canberra fleet. It will be interesting to see how it works out on the cabbie coalface. At the moment we have three established brands within the company (even though they are basically just three phones on one desk), and adding another to the mix might not seem significant to the average passenger, especially one walking up to a cab rank. They will get into the first car on the rank, regardless of brand.
Oddly enough, if the new company is phenomenally successful, it won't be able to handle all the bookings it receives. Sixty cabs will be stretched very thin, and either there will be a significant delay at peak times, or it will have to offload bookings onto the established company. The first will result in bad experiences for the customers, the second will lead to confusion.
My guess is that for we cabbies, it will have little effect. We'll continue to treat each other in a fair and friendly fashion, taking our turns and doing the right thing, regardless of what logo is on the cab's side. For the new company, I wish it every success in improving standards and performance, but realistically I cannot see it surviving the first year. I predict an expensive and embarrassing failure, resulting in the existing company adding the new brand to the three already in operation.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 06:56 pm (UTC)I remember when I was in Melbourne having terrible problems trying to pay my toll fees using the automated telephone system! I put it down to my broad Scottish accent not being particularly common in NSW as even the "real" operators had problems with it.
My accent also caused other more amusing (and fondly remembered) mis-hearings, especially when I discovered my love of Crown lager (sadly missing over here - though I keep looking!) but was consistently presented with a Corona instead (or informed the bar did not stock the latter). A few clearer pronounciations of CROWN and a bit of pointing usually got the message over.
(I think it's the extra sound Scots put into the dialect. I say "Crown" cu-rown - similar to fil-um for "film")
no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 11:08 pm (UTC)Then 5 or 6 years ago the rules changed, and it opened up. Now we can choose LA Taxi, Canadian Checker Cab, Veterans Cab, or Rose City Taxi. They all wait on the same cab stands, and have the run of the city. And they all operate independently of each other. In September, Veterans Cab went on strike for 6 weeks, and the other outfits profited handsomely from it. It's been at least 7 years since I had regular need of cab services, but when I need one now, I call anyone but Veterans because I can still remember their arrogant disregard of their customers.
I hope Canberra's newest taxi outfit survives and flourishes. Now if only someone could fix your automated system, you'd all be off to the races!
Suggestion
Date: 2007-02-25 11:38 pm (UTC)Assign a four digit destination code to every common location. For example - 0001 = Airport 0002 = Parliament House 0747 = Diplomat Hotel Kingston, etc.
Then, give people an option to type the destination code into their phone if they know it. Then, tell every hotel what their destination code is, or put a sign in their lobby. Even put destination codes on taxi ranks. That way, pressing a few buttons on the phone could summon a taxi, instead of relying on a computer to understand which particulr Rydges hotel you want to be picked up on.
Do they have internet reservations? Perhaps they should. A drop-down list of suburbs, then another for street names, then type a street number and a time.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-26 05:33 am (UTC)Personally, I have to say that if I'm going to wait an hour and a half for a taxi, I would still prefer to use a phone system/taxi company that can tell me that quickly via a real person, rather than making me deal with a disembodied voice.