New function Bonn residents can book a taxi by voice control
Bonn · It's no longer always a human being who answers the phone at the taxi control centre. The company has recently started using a "call bot" to take orders. Here's what's behind it.
If you call to book a taxi in Bonn, you won't necessarily hear a human voice on the other end of the line any more. "We use a fully automated voice-activated booking system," explains Siwar Racho, a member of the board of the Bonn taxi centre. So it could happen that a robotic voice takes your call. "This is a call bot," says Racho. But the voice recognition system doesn't kick in for every call - there are still dispatchers on duty.
"The system is always on, but it is only used if there are long waiting times," says Racho. The call bot only kicks in if customers have been waiting on the phone for more than ten seconds. It then guides them through the process of ordering a taxi. It asks for the street and house number and repeats them after the customer has given them. The next taxi then receives a notice and picks up the customer immediately, says Racho.
You can still talk to a real person
At the beginning of the call the customer can choose whether they want to be guided through the order by the voice control system or whether they prefer to speak to a dispatcher. This is something Racho attaches great importance to: "The human factor is important to us. We don't want to do away with the personal interaction." The taxi centre only wants to save customers "annoying waiting time" with the new system. It is not about saving or cutting staff, he said. "The call-bot is there to avoid waiting times," says Racho.
Currently, there are three employees per shift in a three-shift system. But finding new staff is not easy, he says. "We can't get staff at short notice," says Racho. After all, dispatchers have to be trained first - the voice recognition system does not.
At the moment, the programme is only used for booking a taxi for immediate use in the Bonn downtown area. The taxi centre introduced it about two months ago. "At the moment we are still in the process of finding our way around," explains Racho. He is trying to further optimise the system in order to keep the error rate as low as possible. For example, he says, he has decided that the programme will not ask customers for their names. "That only leads to misunderstandings because the call bot often mispronounces a name," says Racho. There are also some special cases, he adds: the bot recognises regular customers, such as ambulance transports, by their phone number and forwards them to dispatchers. "That's where the bot doesn't kick in at all," the board member explains.
Several ways to book a taxi
And what do customers say about the new voice on the phone? "Some are enthusiastic about it, some don't want it," summarises Racho. For this very reason, he says, it is important to give people the choice of whether they want to use the automated booking system or prefer to speak to a dispatcher. In Bonn, taxis can also be booked via an app and via the Whatsapp text messaging service.
Original text: Marie Schneider; Translation: Jean Lennox
