Customer service in a taxi firm: calls, texts and complaints

Customer service in a taxi firm happens in a handful of moments: the call, the confirmation, the pickup, the journey, and the day something goes wrong. Get those right and you hear far fewer complaints. This guide takes each moment in turn, with the rules councils attach to it, and shows how to set up a complaints and lost property process that would stand up to a visit from a licensing officer.

What does good taxi customer service look like?

Good service is a passenger who knows what's happening at every step: the price, the car, the time, and who to ring if something goes wrong. Most of it is cheap. It's habits, a script and a few texts.

Here's where it happens, and the rule that sits behind each moment in at least one area:

How should your office answer the phone?

In your trading name, with the same questions every time, and with a price before the caller hangs up. Birmingham City Council's operator conditions require staff answering the private hire number to use the operator's trading name only.

The questions that make a clean booking:

1. Where are you being picked up from, and where are you going?
2. What day and time?
3. How many passengers, and any luggage?
4. Does anyone need a wheelchair accessible car, or have an assistance dog?
5. A name and a mobile number for the confirmation.

Read the address and the time back. "Half six" can mean morning or evening, and a misheard street is a car at the wrong door.

Then give the price. In London, the operator must agree the fare or give an accurate estimate before each journey starts. Liverpool City Council's 2026 conditions require an estimate whenever the customer asks for one. Even where it isn't written into your licence, a quoted price is the one thing that stops an argument in the back of the car.

Write the questions down as a script and stick it by the phone. New staff, weekend cover and the owner at 2am then all take the same booking.

Should you confirm every booking by text?

Yes. A booking confirmation by text or email, with the date, time, pickup, destination and price, stops the "is my taxi still booked?" calls and gives the passenger something to check against.

On the day, add the car's colour, make and registration and the driver's first name. London's operator rules go further: before each journey the operator must give the passenger particulars of the driver and the vehicle.

Keep confirmations to the booking. The ICO says messages that confirm or remind people about appointments are service messages, not direct marketing. Add a promotion and the whole message counts as direct marketing, so the marketing rules apply.

Dispatch AI, for example, sends the passenger a text and an email to confirm, a secure link to pay by card, and a live link to track the car. Whatever you use, the test is the same: could a passenger standing on the kerb find their car from the message alone? There's more in our guide to booking confirmation texts and emails.

What do you tell a passenger when the car is running late?

Tell them before the booked time, not after. A message at 7.55 saying the car is 15 minutes behind is a nuisance. A passenger standing outside at 8.10 with no word from you is a complaint.

The law backs this up. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, a service must be done with reasonable care and skill (section 49), what you tell the customer about it becomes part of the contract when they rely on it (section 50), and where no time was agreed it must be done within a reasonable time (section 52). Councils add their own wording: Bristol's licensing policy asks operators to ensure vehicles attend punctually at the time and place agreed, and Liverpool's conditions say the same, or that the operator arranges for another licensed operator to do the job.

When a car is running late:

• Check where the driver really is before you give a new time.
• Text or ring the passenger with that time.
• Offer a choice: wait, take another car, or cancel at no charge.
• For airport runs and appointments, find another car, from another licensed firm if you need to.
• Note what happened on the booking, so you can see patterns.

Do you need a complaints procedure?

In many areas it's a condition of your operator licence. Even where it isn't, a written complaints procedure is the quickest way to deal with an angry passenger fairly and the same way every time.

The Department for Transport's statutory standards don't set a complaints rule for operators, so it comes down to your council. Four examples:

Check your own council's conditions before you write yours. Our guide to private hire operator record keeping covers the other records councils ask for.

London and Bristol also require that a passenger can speak to a person about a complaint or a problem with the journey. If an AI phone agent takes some of your calls, make sure complaints still reach someone in the office. With Dispatch AI, anything the phone agent can't handle comes to you, with the transcript.

How should you handle a complaint?

Quickly, on the record, and with an answer the passenger can live with. Bristol's guidance on operator policies asks you to say how long a complaint will take to acknowledge and answer, who deals with it, and how you'll tell the complainant the outcome.

1. Thank them, take their details and give a reference.
2. Record it the same day: who complained, when, what about, and which driver or member of staff.
3. Check the booking record, the call recording if you have one, and the driver's side.
4. Reply within the time your policy promises.
5. Put it right where you got it wrong: an apology, a refund, a word with the driver.
6. Tell them they can take it to the council, where your conditions require it.

Some complaints have to go to the council whatever you decide. Bristol's list includes sexual misconduct, racist behaviour, violence, dishonesty, theft, breaches of equality and refusing a passenger with a wheelchair or an assistance dog. Our guides to operator record keeping and safeguarding for taxi firms cover what to write down and when to tell the council.

What should you do with lost property?

Log it, try to reach the owner through the booking record, and keep it safe until it's collected. In London, an operator must record the date each item was found, where (and the vehicle registration if it was in a car), a description, the attempts made to return it, and how any unclaimed item was disposed of, and keep the record for 12 months.

Liverpool's conditions ask operators to record lost property handed in by drivers and to take every reasonable step to contact the owner through their journey records. Bristol's driver conditions make the driver check the car after every hire and deal with anything found under the operator's lost property policy, with any suspicious package reported straight to the police.

A simple routine works:

• The driver checks the back seat at every drop-off.
• Anything found is handed in at the end of the shift and logged.
• The office rings the passenger from the booking record.
• The owner describes the item before it's handed back.

Phones and wallets go back fastest, because the passenger is already ringing round.

What do disabled passengers have a right to?

The same booking at the same price, and reasonable help. Since 28 June 2022, section 167A of the Equality Act 2010 has made it an offence for a private hire operator to refuse a booking because the passenger is disabled, or to charge extra for the help the driver must give.

That help is set out in the Act: drivers must give reasonable mobility assistance at no charge and help the passenger find the car, and an operator can't refuse a booking because the passenger will have an assistance dog with them. The law gives operators a defence where refusing was reasonable because no suitable vehicle was available, so record why on the booking.

Accessible cars are scarce in private hire. The Department for Transport found that 2% of licensed private hire vehicles in England were wheelchair accessible on 1 April 2026, against 54% of taxis. If you have accessible vehicles, say so when people ring, and if you don't, know which local firm does. Bristol asks operators to train booking staff on accessibility, assistance dogs, mobility assistance and being dementia friendly.