Eric: Welcome to the contact center cactus chat podcast. I’m your host Eric Mulvin coming to you from sunny Phoenix, Arizona.
Jake: And I’m your co-host Jake Cayang from Dumaguete City, Philippines.
Eric: I’m a serial entrepreneur, started my business 10yrs ago and 6 LLC’s later, I started Pac Biz Contact Center Outsourcing in 2015, today we have over 200 employees, and growing.
Jake: And I’m the Operations Manager here in Pac Biz and I have been working with Eric since 2014 and I grew as the company grew.
Eric: So whether you’re looking to outsource for the first time, whether you manage a Contact Center or you’re just looking to improve your customer experience, we’ll be covering topics for you.
Jake: So Business Managers, Operations Managers, Business Owners, this is for you so make sure to subscribe.
Jake:I would like Eric go, what is this? Why is this passion different than outsourcing your customer calls?
Eric: Oh, yeah, that’s a great question. So customer calls is pretty basic. You people call in, I need to go here, I need to get there. We’re just collecting information. We’re just collecting addresses, maybe some details, how many passengers are there? Do they have any luggage? You know, if it’s a metal medical appointment, and we’re working with a medical transportation company, there could be a couple other questions that we have to ask, if they have they need a wheelchair, things like that. But it’s still just collecting information. When you get over to the driver’s side of things and dispatching, now you’re starting to have to make some decisions. It’s not just let me take that address down and making sure that we have it accurately. Now we’re actually having to decide, okay, we got two customers that need a ride, one person has been waiting for 30 minutes and other persons waiting for 15 minutes, and now you got a driver that’s sitting in the middle, where do you send this driver, and we’re starting to have to make decisions like that. Now, these days, their computer handles a lot of the decisions. But when you have dozens of calls an hour, if even if you’re a small fleet, that we have clients that we work with that have 10 cars, well, you have to manage those resources even more closely, because you only have 10 cars, you send them up to the wrong locations, and you have more customers calling in. Now you don’t have any cabs to take care of them, maybe you made the wrong choice sending him to the wrong place. So it all comes down to you need people that be able to think and make decisions and and need to know what’s the best choice to make whether I’m sending it to this place or that place. And when you’re outsourcing. You know, we talked in the last episode, again, about the customers and the drivers, there’s really three sets of customers with taxi companies. There’s the corporate clients, the customers and the drivers. So the drivers are a big part of that they have got to work with the other two different groups there. So that’s where I see the big differences. And that’s why you do need a bit of a different skill set, you can’t just throw someone right into dispatching , you, you have to know a bit about the area, you have to know about the company and what what the rules are around the different places for picking up. So yeah, how do we manage that for for the companies when we are so far away?
Jake: Yeah, of course, the I would say that the skills would, you know, would come out and take care of that. Yeah, we always try to make sure that everything is balanced. And, you know, for, you know, sometimes we even say that, you know, being frank to the customers that we can’t cover this job, you know, considering the, you know, the location of the customers. So we don’t, right, before we just, you know, as much as possible, we do pick him up and you know, just put in the order and you know, hoping that someone you know, it’s always been you know, they the there are lots of drivers waiting. So, you know, you would not be worried about not being those customers and not being picked up, they always been, they’re always being picked up. But you know, as after the, you know, the when we have this driver shortage. And, you know, the problem is this kinds of problems showing up. So, one thing that would matter, that I see is that if the driver is not taking care at all, and you know, there are things that are you know, that they don’t see that is fair to them in big company, they can use a different platform and you know, just work for other companies and you know, they they they have different experiences with different companies and they can measure up and weigh, or they can weigh which one which company is better. And so that’s another thing. If, if you’re, if you have a dispatcher that doesn’t take care of them, doesn’t listen to them. And, you know, if they’re not, they feel like they’re not being listened to, if they have these issues, you know, that’s the problem is gonna start, they don’t, you know, they don’t, they might not be, you know, logging in to your company and might choose a different one. So it’s, you know, there’s a balance, what’s going on around the world right now, and especially in UK, there’s, there’s a problem with a driver, you know, every every situation creates a problem, and you know, you just, all you need to do to listen to them. And just to make sure that, you know, those are being addressed, there’s a certain level of problem that can be addressed by dispatcher. So we will try our best to take care of that. And there is also a problem that can be addressed by the management. So we always make sure that we report those problems, so that the management would know that they are having these issues with the drivers. Because sometimes the drivers, the, the owners doesn’t know, the drivers would call in and say this, I have a problem with this and that, you know, when I went to the airport, the, the, I wasn’t informed, I didn’t know when to check, there was a problem with, you know, the flight number that it doesn’t say that it’s delayed for two hours, and I went there and waited for the passenger to come out and didn’t realize when I wasn’t really there, that the passenger will, the plane will arrive in two hours. So another two hours wasted, but a driver, while he’s there because, you know, you would you would get it, you would wait for a chance hoping you’re hoping that somebody from the airport will go out and you know, you can take those passengers to where they want to go. And that way you won’t be going back and, you know, empty. So those are the scenarios, but what if, what if there’s, I mean, you know, what if you don’t have anything, and you will wait there for two hours, and, you know, that’s two hours wasted, wasted of your time. And sitting while you can go around and, you know, if you were not, if you were just informed,that you know, there’s a delay or stuff like that. And, yeah, it’s it, it matters. So if you have this, dispatchers who are good at what they do, and, you know,with the long with long experiences, this, this problems can can be avoided. And, yeah, just need to take care of the drivers the same way as we take care of the customers. And there you know, if you have more drivers, because we can’t, we can’t deny the fact that right now we have more bookings than drivers available. So if you always have drivers around, most of the bookings will be picked up without any delays without, without no cancellations. And that would put your name of business, as you know, very good and people would just rely and trust your company for for this kind of job. So that’s, you know, it’s, uhm, there’s so many factors that could make your business, I mean, a success and these are so many, these are little things that could contribute to it. And if you’re if you would just, if you miss taking care of one aspect of the business especially in the driver side, or probably the call taker side you know, it has a chain effect it will you know, it will give different results and you know, and you know all you need to do is just, you know, balance things and make sure that you, everything is taken cared off and as for our side as a call center or a dispatcher we are people are trying to do and to make sure that those drivers are are taken cared of.
Eric: All right, well, thank you guys for listening. That’s the end of our two part series here for taxi fleet owners and again last time we talked about customer calls. This episode was the driver calls. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge Alright, so make sure you subscribe if you want to hear more stuff about outsourcing your, your customer support and outsourcing dispatching keep, keep listening on and we’ll keep talking about this and more episodes. So thank you guys for listening. And thanks for thanks for following the contact center Pac Biz chat. See you guys next time.
Jake: See you guys, thank you.