It’s 11pm on a Saturday. The pubs are closing, the takeaways are busy, and every phone line in your office is lit up. Your controller is dispatching cars, talking to drivers and trying to answer calls all at once — and sooner or later, a caller hears the busy tone and rings the firm down the road instead.
Why peak hours break a desk
Friday and Saturday nights are not just busier; the calls bunch. Three passengers ring in the same minute, each call takes a minute or two to book properly, and the fourth caller gives up. Hiring extra full-time staff for six peak hours a week means paying for a lot of quiet weekday hours you don’t need — which is why most firms muddle through and accept the losses.
The alternative: overflow call handling
Overflow cover works alongside your own team rather than replacing it:
- Your in-house team answers calls as normal.
- When your lines are busy or a call rings unanswered for a few rings (set with your phone provider), the call diverts automatically to the overflow team.
- Our operators answer as your company, take the booking and enter it straight into your dispatch system — iCabbi, Autocab, Cordic and others — so your drivers see the work as usual.
The aim is simple: no caller at your busiest moment should hear a busy tone. Your own staff keep control of the desk, and the overflow team only picks up the calls that would otherwise have been lost.
What to check before you trust anyone with your peak
- Do they know your dispatch system? A booking taken on paper and phoned through later is not overflow cover; it’s a message service.
- Can you hear the calls? Recordings should be yours to listen back to — that is how you judge quality.
- Can you trial it on a real Friday? Peak cover proves itself on your busiest night, not on a quiet Tuesday demo.
Our overflow cover is part of our taxi call answering service, from £4 per hour, and you can judge it on your own phones with a 7-day free trial — recordings and a booking report included, no card required.
