Essentials of Taxi Software

What makes Taxi Booking Software important in today’s market?

According to Transparency Market Research: “Taxi booking software helps users to build a mobile-based taxi booking solution to manage the taxi business online. Taxi booking software controls all the operations or functions from a centralized system. The software provides significant business insights in terms of reports and helps users to track & monitor the progress of the business.”

Power Up Productivity: Taxi Booking Software System in Review

There are a lot of Software Solutions out there that promise features for every cab in the fleet, but fleet operations aren’t just about how many features there are, but how well they work together to deliver solid productivity with the booking experience of passengers or customers.

Breaking into a mature market like passenger transport needs a company with the experience and all-in-one-solution that works with startups or companies trying to break into better market share.

1. The Complete Passenger Taxi Booking Experience

The feature that impacts your bottom line first, above all, is the experience provided to your passengers and customers as the passenger experience impacts the momentum of your growth and the cost of acquiring new customers.

So how does this work with SmartMove? The passenger booking software is focused on ease of use for a smoother transaction and positive effect.

SmartMove’s software solution, the SmartHail passenger booking app, comes available as part of the package. Its generic form has the same functionality, but can be whitelisted. In other words, the User Interface and how it’s presented such as colors, accents, etc., can be customized for your brand and fleet to better distinguish yourself in the market.

SmartHail can be used for food or packages or for personal rides especially with regard to tracking orders, deliveries, and rides. In other words, one app can help your fleet be monetized in different income streams. Take advantage of the mammoth growth of food delivery as well as maintaining fleet operations.

 But whichever version of SmartHail you avail, the best features that they come with are:

• No login after initial set up
• Fare estimates
• ETA and car tracking
• Pay using the app
• Deliveries – order food and goods for collection and delivery through your app
• Promo codes and vouchers
• Upfront payment authentication
• Choice of vehicle
• Select prefilled pick up or destinations based on the travel history
• Book for immediate pickup or pre-book
• Accurate ETAs
• Driver Tracking
• Rate and review the driver
• Digital receipts
• Safe ride tracking – send a link to a friend to track your arrival
  

Individually, these are great features to have, but together, they accomplish broadly three goals that taxi companies would have a hard time without taxi booking & dispatch software: facilitating payments, simplifying the booking process, and driver & passenger monitoring.

The first two reduces friction and increases revenue, and the third helps with information gathering for better fleet management.

2. Driver & Passenger Anonymity & Safety

Now, a more specific feature that enhances the customer experience and saves fleets time and money is ride tracking. This feature allows the passenger and driver to communicate anonymously and gives both the safety and peace of mind needed when other services have heightened rates of crime committed against passengers and drivers. 

SmartHail’s tracking feature also allows for a tracking link that can be forwarded to family or friends, so they can track the taxi ride on a live map.

Ride tracking is a useful feature in itself since it can help the driver find the passenger or vice-versa. SMS tracking allows the driver to verify if the passenger will still continue with the ride in cases of pre-booking or sudden cancellations.

All in all, this feature alone saves on dead miles and reduces wait times which increases revenue capacity and productivity.

3. Account Portal

On their own, taxis working blindly without software get less passengers because they may be unaware of better areas for pickup and shorter routes for customers. They may also waste time waiting in locations with little to no passengers. 

Dispatching and Booking software solves opportunity costs and inefficiencies, and helps gather data for better mapping of lucrative times, areas, and services.

Enter the SmartMove Account Portal. As part of the SmartMove Passenger App, the account portal allows passengers to book in ways that on-demand and traditional methods cannot, which in other words, are more opportunities to generate revenue and save on waste. In particular, customers can:

• Customize their portal to make and manage their own bookings
• Create multiple bookings at a time
• View scheduled bookings and booking history
• Manage (edit/cancel) bookings without any Call Center intervention from the portal

The Account Portal is also a feature accessible to Taxi Service Providers using SmartMove’s Dispatch Systems. This allows providers to:

• Manage and control their client or account customer budgets using the customizable portal
• Easily create multiple bookings for each client and manage them
• Set up travel budgets for each client and enable automatic deduction of fare after each trip
• Receive a warning when the set threshold as per budget has been reached
• Limit pickup or destination options for particular clients
• Limit booking times to only allow travel at certain times

These features for providers are a great way to manage corporate clients or public sector clients and their passengers. This has the added benefit of managing expectations on the kind of revenue generated.

When your current system has none of these features and benefits, it’s a good idea to consider an upgrade.

4. Seamless Payment Functions

Providing the service well, and making it easily accessible to customers, is one part of the equation. But equally important if not more so is ensuring that customers pay easily so that potential income is realized.

SmartMove enables a variety of payment options as well as provides a digital receipt that is also reflected with a driver’s copy, allowing for better revenue tracking.

SmartMove’s payment process is intuitive and painless which includes:

• Credit card
• Cash
• App payment – SmartHail
• Vouchers
• Accounts
• Subsidy – for public sector passengers

This ensures that the maximum possible customers are available for the company.

For a different look and different review perspective on dispatching: Taxi Cab Technology: Dispatch Software Review

5. Tight Integration

The last feature is the comprehensive integrated nature of SmartMove’s Software. Booking and Dispatch aren’t separate but designed to work seamlessly together to be as efficient as possible while hitting two birds with one stone.

A great example of this is the payment system generating a digital invoice and receipt which is a feature appreciated by passengers. While at the same time, the system records this information and creates a driver version that breaks down their share of the income earned. And this is further integrated with how the same information is processed in a comprehensive record for the Accounting Department that takes into account regulations and legal requirements.

Lastly, SmartMove’s system can generate customized reports that front-line staff or management can use for their reports or presentations.

All from one transaction, the system makes the smart move.

Learn more about Taxi Booking Software and book a demo of how it works.