City Taxis had a 14-hour outage on their telephone system in 2010 that cost them £17,000. They approached Solution Telecom to develop a new system called "Genesis" to prevent future outages. Genesis, now called SolCom, reduced downtime to minutes and has saved City Taxis hundreds of thousands in staffing costs alone by automating call handling. In the first year of using SolCom, City Taxis saved over £270,000 and increased bookings by 34% while maintaining a high level of customer service. City Taxis now handles over 75,000 bookings per week without operators and aims to further improve service through new technology.

1. Success Stories

2. The Whole Story
Driving Sheffield forward
On 5th November 2010, City Taxis had an outage on their telephone system. When switching to the backup that also failed. Just over 14 hours after the fault was reported to their supplier the problem was finally
fixed and calls to City were restored. Cost to the business?……..£17,000……unacceptable.
City approached Solution Telecom with a number of challenges to avoid a situation such as this ever
recurring.
From that point on the down time can be counted in minutes and since the introduction of an early form of
SolCom called “Genesis” City Taxis have saved hundreds of thousands of pounds. SolCom is now fully
developed and due to automated call handling it continues to save City £1000s per week in staffing costs
alone.

3. 75,000
Successful bookings
per week
34%
£270,000
More bookings taken Saved in the first year
of introduction

4. Their Story
Ranks to rewards
Since 15 May 2003 City Taxis has been literally moving the
people of Sheffield. The private hire industry has certainly
evolved since then but City Taxis remain at the forefront of
pioneering taxi technology.
Not only are they the leading taxi company in Sheffield but
one of the largest & most innovative operators in the UK.
Their success is purely down to the commitment to our
industry on all levels and their belief in putting the customer
first. Their state of the art telephony system is not only one
of the finest in the UK but leads the way across the globe.

5. Their Goal
Beyond the City limits
As with all customer facing businesses, City Taxis has enormous reliance on their staff to respond to
calls. What if they didn’t have to answer the phone? Can a smart IVR system handle & increase our
booking capabilities? Is there a Solution?
As technology takes great strides forward so do City Taxis. Solution Telecom is consistently developing
smarter elements to their existing platforms to allow cost reductions across the business whilst improving
the service delivered to their customers. City Taxis now want to maximise the use of their mobile apps,
social media and a whole host of other exciting technological advances.

6. “The introduction of Solution Telecom to our business has allowed
us to meet & surpass all our goals. In year one we saved more
than £270,000 in staff costs alone and still managed to take more
bookings and improve our customer service. Now we’re in 2014 and
we are a market leader backed by state of the art technology that
in all honesty was very cost effective. As we continue to improve
and expand we look forward to strengthening our bond with
Solution – here’s to the next 5 years!”
Arnie Singh, Managing Director, City Taxis

8. Their Solution
“Genesis” now SolCom was introduced in 2011 after 8 months of development. First and foremost,
SolCom is reliable; over 90% of system faults that do occur are identified and fixed before City Taxis
know they exist. Then there is the smarter advances; nearly 36% of all bookings are taken without the
need for an operator – a clear cost saving. Should there be any need to review a call; SolCom will have it
ready as soon as the call is complete and with over 100,000 calls per week there is enough storage for 7
years without the need to archive.
If the worst happens and a component of the SolCom system breaks – SolCare+ is in place to react & fix
the issue within 4 hours but with resilience and dual clusters built into the platform the calls are not lost!!

9. Their Success
City Taxis achieved the following results from its SolCom endeavours:
£270,000 saving in overall costs in year one
36% of booking taken without an operator
Average of 75,000 successful bookings per week
940 vehicles in the fleet