AI receptionist for a taxi company: what it can and cannot do

Software that answers the phones is often sold as an "AI receptionist". The trouble is that the name covers two different products. One takes messages. The other takes bookings. This guide shows you the difference, what each can and can't do for a taxi or private hire firm, and how to test which one you're being sold.

What is an AI receptionist for a taxi company?

An AI receptionist is software that answers your phone line, talks to the caller in plain speech and does a set job with the call. For a general business that job is answering questions, taking a message or putting the caller through to the right person. For a taxi company the job that matters is the booking.

A taxi call answering service in the UK has long meant people in a call centre answering in your name, and a virtual receptionist for taxi firms meant the same. An AI answering service for taxi companies, or automated receptionist, does that front-of-house job with software. Neither is automatically a booking system. What decides that is where the call ends up.

How is a general AI receptionist different from a taxi booking agent?

A general AI receptionist hands you information. A taxi booking agent hands you a job in your system, ready for a driver. The difference shows up at 2am:

Some suppliers sit in between. Their receptionist fills in a booking form and emails it to you. That's better than a message, but the job still isn't in your system until somebody types it in. A booking for 5am sitting in an inbox nobody reads until 7am is a passenger standing on the pavement.

What can an AI receptionist do well for a taxi firm?

An AI receptionist handles the routine calls well, as long as you set it up with your firm's real details. The calls it suits:

• Pre-books with a clear pickup, destination and time, such as station and airport runs.
• Simple questions: do you take cards, do you have an estate car, how much is it to the airport.
• Regular callers, if it recognises their number and pulls up their usual address.
• Overflow, when the office is on another call and the line would otherwise ring out.
• Nights, when nobody is in the office at all.

The calls reach it by a divert on your own number. On a standard BT business line, the no-answer divert sends a call on once it hasn't been answered within 15 seconds, so the office still gets first go at it.

Overflow and nights are where owners feel it. A call that rings out is a booking that goes to whoever answers next, and our guide to missed calls in a taxi office shows how to count yours.

What can't an AI receptionist do?

An AI receptionist can't do anything you haven't given it the rules and the information for. Keep these with a person:

1. Complaints and upsets. A passenger who's been left at the airport wants a person who can put it right.
2. Drivers. A driver ringing in with a breakdown, an incident or a passenger problem needs your controller.
3. Account work with special rules. Who may book on the account, cost codes, and jobs billed to someone other than the passenger.
4. Routes you haven't priced. A good agent hands these back instead of guessing a number.
5. Safeguarding. The Department for Transport's Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Standards say an operator can outsource booking and dispatch but can't pass on the duty to protect children and vulnerable adults. That duty stays with you, whoever or whatever answers the phone.

One kind of booking must never be refused. Under section 170 of the Equality Act 2010, a private hire operator commits an offence by refusing a booking because a disabled passenger will have an assistance dog with them, or by charging extra for the dog. Check that the receptionist's set-up can't turn that booking away. Our guide to wheelchair-accessible taxis and the Equality Act covers your other duties.

In London there's one more rule. TfL requires operators to make a person available for passengers to speak to during operating hours and while a journey is under way. Software can take the booking, but plan for a person the passenger can reach.

Why does the booking record matter so much?

The booking record is your licence duty, and a message isn't a record. Outside London, section 56 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 says an operator must record the particulars of every booking before the journey, in the form the council sets in your licence conditions.

The DfT standards go further. They ask councils to require a record of the passenger's name, the time of the request, the pickup and destination, the driver and vehicle, and the staff member who took and dispatched the booking, and suggest keeping booking records for at least 6 months. They also expect a register of everyone who takes bookings or dispatches cars, with a basic DBS check seen for each person on it. A basic check costs £20 on GOV.UK.

So ask two things of any AI receptionist:

• Does the record it writes have every field your council asks for?
• Does it show that the software took the booking, so your records stay honest?

If the answer is "it emails you the details", the record only exists once someone in your office copies it across. Our guide to private hire operator record keeping lists what councils ask for.

What should you test before you sign?

Ring the receptionist yourself, at the hours you'd use it, and run these six tests:

Then ask the supplier one plain question: what is live today, and what is planned? You're paying for what works now.

Tell callers what they're talking to. The ICO says that when you collect personal data from someone, you must give them privacy information at the time you collect it, so the greeting should say it's an automated assistant and whether the call is recorded.

Where does Dispatch AI fit?

Dispatch AI is the booking agent kind, not the message-taking kind. It's booking and dispatch software for taxi and private hire firms: it answers your phone, WhatsApp, texts and emails, books the jobs at your prices and sends them to your drivers on your own app. You can hear it on the Dispatch AI demo line, and our guide to how an AI phone agent books a job walks through a call.