Calls to taxi service will be answered 'within 2 seconds'

Dubai: Telephone calls for the taxi service will be answered within two seconds in future, said a senior official.

"We seek to attend to customers' calls within two seconds as we are appointing new staff in the reservation and distribution section to improve its efficiency," said Ammar Bin Tamim, Director of the Dubai Taxi Department at the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).

During the first six months of this year, the average call answering time was 25 seconds per call.

"The average response time of taxis was 16 minutes," Bin Tamim said.

He said the department is working on plans to reduce the time to 10 minutes in future.

He said the department is also working to modernise communication techniques to help staff to receive a larger number of incoming calls and decrease the percentage of wasted calls.

The latest statistics from the RTA show that the Dubai Taxi Department received 1.53 million phone calls during the first six months of this year with an average of 219,839 calls per month

Bin Tamim said that out of the 1.53 million calls made, some 1.39 million calls were answered at an average of 199,037 calls per month while 9.5 per cent were missed.

This means that some 145,350 calls were not answered during the first six months of this year.

The total number of taxi reservations made over the telephone was 1.065 million with an average of 152,115 reservations monthly.

This comprised 69 per cent of the total number of reservations.

The number of reservations made via the Interactive Voice Recording (IVR) system used by a large number of frequent customers who are entered in the database of computers of the Reservation and Distribution Section reached 362,906 with an average of 51,844 reservations monthly.

Out of a total 1.53 million calls made, some 1.39 million calls were answered while 9.5 per cent were missed. This means that some 145,350 calls were not answered during the first six months of this year.