How to Keep Drivers Happy and Productive

As a taxi company, it is important to keep your drivers happy so they can, in turn, make your customers happy. One way to ensure that your drivers are happy is to review your Assignment Settings and make sure they are set up so the job assignments are being equally distributed to all of your drivers. When your drivers feel like they are getting the same opportunity as one another, they will feel appreciated because everyone is being treated the same. 

There are a lot of different options so we would like to explain them and go into some detail so you can get a good feel for the different Assignment Settings and use them to make your business more efficient and so you can fairly distribute the jobs to your drivers.

Assignment Settings

You will want to start by logging in to the Admin Panel and heading to the Assignment Settings. The first thing you will see is the “Auto Dispatch” box. When this is enabled, jobs will automatically be assigned based on your settings. If it is disabled, jobs need to be dispatched manually. 

Below “Auto Dispatch,” you have the option to choose if you want jobs to be assigned when the driver is set to busy or away and if you want the job to automatically start once they are assigned. You can then choose how many times (tries) you want the system to automatically dispatch a job. You can also set the amount of time you’d like to give the driver to accept the job so they feel like they’ve had a fair chance to accept. And, to make sure you don’t exclude drivers, enable the “Send jobs to drivers who are clearing” option. You can then set the distance from the destination when the driver can be considered as clearing so those who are close to finishing a job can be in the running for the next one.

Advanced Assignment Settings - Pre-bookings

There are two different options you can start with in order to deal with pre-bookings. You select the option to “assign directly,” which will hard assign a job to a specific driver or you can choose to “reserve and auto dispatch.” If you choose the second option, jobs will be dispatched to the selected driver according to the t-time you have set. The t-time is the amount of time before a pre-booked job that you would like the job to be dispatched. If that driver does not accept or is not available, the job will then be sent to the next driver. 

If you have the “Reset rejects to look for vehicles that have previously declined or timed-out” box checked, the system will try assigning jobs to those drivers that have already missed or declined the job. In conjunction with this, you can choose the number of “Auto dispatch rounds” you would like to have to increase the number of chances the drivers have to accept a job.

Advanced Assignment Settings - Broadcast Settings

When you enable the “Broadcast” setting, the system will broadcast the job to all vehicles after all of the assignment tries have been made. You then have more options to break down how exactly you want the jobs broadcasted. 

Zone Queues

Zone queues are a great way for drivers to feel like they are getting a fair share of the jobs. If you have the “Zone Queues” option enabled, the driver that has been in that zone for the longest, will receive the job. Within the advanced options, you can determine the rules for who has been in the zone the longest. 

Driver Information

Under “Show Advanced Settings,” you will find “Driver Information” and “Driver Conduct.” You have the options for how your drivers will be alerted about new jobs and what information will be shown in the Driver App. Within “Driver Conduct,” you can decide what happens if a job offer is declined, has timed out, or if the driver is unreachable. 

Make Your Drivers Happy

It’s always a good idea to let your drivers know and understand the dispatch options that you have chosen. The transparency will show them that you are doing everything to make sure that the jobs are evenly distributed and there is no favoritism toward anyone in particular. And, the more they understand about the system, the better they will be at using it. When they are comfortable and feel like they know exactly how to do their jobs, the more confident and happier they will be.

There are many different settings, so if you would like a detailed overview of all the Assignment Settings, check out this video. (https://vimeo.com/395470622) And, as always, if you have any questions or concerns, reach out to our 24/7 support team for help.