Feature Spotlight: The Personalized Ride Board – A New Way to Allocate Future Rides

Autofleet is proud to present a new approach to the multi-faceted challenge of optimized dispatching  - the Personalized Ride Board.

‍
Optimized ride dispatching is complex - there are multiple types of future rides, ASAP rides and both gig and contract drivers to contend with. This advanced capability empowers drivers, helps Increase supply and provides built in flexibility that allows ride operators to focus more on the driver and customer user experience as needed.

The Personalized Ride Board presents each driver with a curated list of future rides they can commit to and plan their day and week around. The board is created for each driver personally, taking into account the fleet requirements and other variables such as vehicle capabilities, driver training and preference and more. 

Thus the Personalized Ride Board allows drivers to plan and pick their own rides, without sacrificing dispatching efficiency and control (including the ability to pool future rides and to plan optimal routes). It is combined with Autofleet’s Optimized Dispatching to ensure smooth operations and advanced notifications. 

‍

“This personalized way to manage drivers and rides gives drivers more control and predictability over their day, frees up dispatchers, and provides new functionality like driver notifications.” _{Itay Cohen, Head of Product, Autofleet.}

‍Benefits for drivers:

• Greater control and flexibility over their working day 
• Predictable income
• Take opportunities of lucrative rides outside regular hours

Benefits for dispatchers

• Higher driver acceptance rate, no more endless searches for matching drivers 
• Automatic notifications make sure drivers do not forget rides 
• Advanced rules and autoations 
• Full visibility and control and manual override on all types of occasions including VIP rides

‍Benefits for operators

• Higher driver acceptance rate
• Reduced last minute driver cancellations
• Improved driver retention and driver commitment 
• Increase supply and provide better service levels to passengers
• Avoid driver-dispatcher friction
  

Diving deeper into the Personalized Ride Board 

The Personalized Ride Board works in conjunction with operators' dispatching strategy by automatically matching multiple drivers that meet criteria set by the operator to future ride requests. Offering eligible drivers (and only them) the opportunity to pick up suitable rides in a personalized and optimized manner.  

This way, for example, if a wheelchair accessible vehicle is required, only drivers using a suitable car will be offered the ride.

This method of offering rides to drivers greatly increases supply. Say for example a request for a car with a bike rack at 2PM at a certain part of town is made. Naturally, only those drivers that have a bike rack installed will see the offer on their Personalized Ride Board. But now, even a driver that did not plan on working at 2PM, may decide to anyway, and pick the ride up (for any number of reasons, including a good price, if they know they will be in the area anyhow, or even if it means they will just start their shift a little earlier for the guaranteed fare). 

Allowing drivers to pick their own rides (based on fleet requirements and variables such as vehicle capabilities, driver training etc) not only gives them a greater sense of control, enhances their commitment, and boosts retention, it also saves a lot of time for dispatchers. Eliminating the need to hunt for a driver that fits the bill. It also removes a lot of tension around the perceived “fairness” and favoritism by the dispatching team. Making operations run smoother. 

Rides picked up by the drivers are optimized and pooled along with any rides they are dispatched to, thus allowing them to maximize their efficiency, and access rides they would otherwise not be able to complete. This ensures better availability for passengers as well as more income for both drivers and operators. 

This way, for example, if a driver is already committed to a ride from a downtown area heading uptown they are not blocked from picking up a similar ride heading in the same direction, allowing them to pick up two passengers (or even more) instead of just one.  

Naturally, drivers can also take themselves off the ride for any number of reasons (and within the allowed time window). The Personalized Ride Board automatically puts the ride “back in the market” for other eligible drivers to take. Streamlining driver-dispatcher communication and preventing last-minute surprises.

‍

Validating rides and manual overrides 

Once a driver picks a ride, it is validated by Autofleet’s platform to make sure it is feasible and they can perform it. Manual control of the dispatching team is of course still an option, especially for those VIP clients you want to take personal care of. Dispatchers can also override drivers self-booking as necessary if circumstances change.  

Any rides not picked up by drivers on the Personalized Ride Board are added to the general pool, to be dispatched as usual. 

Flexible management for operators 

For operators the Personalized Ride Board offers additional flexibility, allowing them to  focus on drivers' needs to increase supply as needed, or center on customers’ requirements when they need to increase demand. 

Adding it to Autofleet's advanced real-time Optimized Dispatching solution, broadens its range of features. Making it easy to manage and immediately dispatch on-demand, ASAP, rides alongside pre-booked ones, and manage both on the same system seamlessly. Include multiple pickup and drop-off points , Ride Pooling (or multi-loading as it is sometimes called), special ride requests and more. 

The Personalized Ride Board is already available for Autofleet’s customers. 

For more details, contact us at Contact@autofleet.io