Taxi Rittner 208 relies on fms/Austrosoft´s cloud service EuropaServer

Taxi Rittner was founded in the Lower Austrian capital of St. Pölten in 1967 with a onle single dark blue Mercedes 190. 50 years later, Joe Rittner is the third generation of his family to run the taxi business;  with his 42 vehicles in the Krems´s and St. Pölten´s surroundings he is the clear number 1 here.

In 2016 Taxi Rittner introduced the fms/Austrosoft cash register solution called “Belegdruck”. In 2017 the PIN pads for cashless payment transactions and digital voucher processing were added to his business. In 2018 the changeover to fully automated dispatching took place, in order to process a 5-digit order volume (including shared taxi (AST)) monthly.

Digitalisation of the Taxi Rittner 208 call centre

Taxi Rittner 208 does not have a physical dispatching server. The entire hardware is provided by fms/Austrosoft on the fms EuropaServer in the cloud. Josef Rittner prefers to concentrate on good quality for his mobility customers. “My call centre agents have now more time for my customers,” emphazises Joe Rittner. Especially during peak times, automatica dispatching is a big plus. As a result, fewer calls and thus orders are lost.

And in the exceptional situation caused by Corona in 2020, Joe Rittner took advantage of the location-independent cloud-based overall solution: “My call center agents could easily switch to work from home and thus protect themselves better from Covid-19, as only PC with access to the Internet is required for the fms EuropaServer.

System change in the vehicle

In addition to the optimization of taxi dispatching  and the simplification of the administration of the entire business process, the drivers also benefit from Taxi Rittner 208. With the launch of the cash register in Austria, drivers were able to create legally compliant receipts with a single push on button and so manage their daily closings and shift slips electronically. For the drivers, the time-consuming paperwork belongs now to the past.

With the full equipment for dispatching including taximeter integration via the smartHUBX, drivers now have a complete digital solution at their disposal. “Before the changeover, it could had happened that two drivers would arrive at the same passenger,” recalls Joe Rittner and says: “With the fms/Austrosoft dispatching system, this is now solved efficiently. The incoming order is automatically dispatched to the vehicle within the shortest approaching time. “

Via the smartphone-based fms terminal, each driver receives the order on his display. “A pleasant effect was, that it became quieter for the passenger due to the elimination of the voice radio in the taxi,” says the CEO of the dispatch centre, “and an integrated navigation function on the display makes it easier for the driver to determine the route.

Paperwork belongs now to the past

“The turnover cockpit, the working time recordings with the shift statistics, the taximeter protocols and as well as the order and customer evaluations, support me in the daily administrative activities in the company,” explains Joe Rittner and adds:. “Without fully automated digitalization, we would no longer be able to handle that business volume at our company size”.

The invoices as well as the card and cash payments are clearly structured for each order via the turnover cockpit and thus the actual revenues are constantly monitored. Additionally, the recording of working hours with shift slips offers the taxi entrepreneur the simple possibility of preparing the payroll and so fulfilling the obligation for the tax. All taximeter data is automatically linked to the order and accounting data. It is archived digitally in compliance with the law, so the driver or the contractor does not have to worry about it.

Switching has paid off

If you ask Joe Rittner today how he sees the switch to an automated system, he says: “That was one of my best business decisions I made for my taxi company.”

And he has more plans in mind. The next step will be to integrate the taxi.eu customer app to his system, so digital mobility customers can also be offered app ordering channels. The 208 taxi fleet tends to grow vigorously and continue to assert itself as number 1 in St. Pölten and Krems!

About fms/Austrosoft´s EuropaServer

The fms/Austrosoft Cloudservice EuropaServer is an ideally tailored solution for entrepreneurial dispatch centres with up to 35 vehicles, which offer their mobility services in small towns or rural areas with a large influx area. fms/Austrosoft offers Taxi Rittner a precisely coordinated overall system, from the extended order channel for the passenger to dispatching and order processing for the driver.

Before Joe Rittner switched to the fms/Austrosoft´s automatic dispatching system, he worked via voice radio. “The automatic dispatchins system for both instand and pre-orders has strengthened my taxi service in the long run,” emphazises Joe Rittner. He was also able to increase his walk-in customers considerably, as his vehicles are now used in a more optimized way. And the savings of empty kilometres helps him to reduce costs and to increase turnover.

Joe Rittner concludes: “The core factors to make my decision in switching over to the fms/Austrosoft´s EuropaServer was: The userfriendly overall system,  the flexible solutions for all analogue and digital channels, which can be easely expanded at any time as well as the great assistance of the support team. “

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