The Flickassist Concept
The Flickassist is a system designed to help trade plate drivers find lifts between jobs thus reducing their public transport costs and time spent traveling.
Drivers are always looking for the fastest, most cost-effective way to travel between deliveries and collections. This often means using public transport which is expensive and time consuming. In recent years drivers have turned to social media channels to arrange lifts with other drivers. This is inefficient and for the most part, ineffective. Using social media platforms to arrange lifts present several problems all of which Flickassist addresses.
How Does It Work?
We use the following terms throughout our system:
- A ‘passenger‘ means a person who has delivered a vehicle and needs to travel to their next collection point.
- A ‘driver‘ is a person with a vehicle driving to their delivery point, stopover point or home.
- A ‘match‘ is when the system finds a driver who is in the same area and traveling in the same direction as a passenger.
In brief, all users of the system add their driven jobs using the easy entry form on the flickassist.com web site. The system works out where lifts are needed by looking at each driver’s jobs.
Once a match has been made, the driver can choose to offer or reject the lift. If he offers the lift, the passenger will receive a notification and can then contact the driver to arrange a mutually acceptable collection place and time.
Social Media Groups
If drivers are not in the correct social media groups, they simply won’t know that a lift might have been available.
Flickassist provides one central system where all drivers, regardless of company, location, social media groups or working patterns can upload their jobs and find lifts.
Inconsistent Posting of Jobs
Many drivers don’t upload their jobs each day or do so very late. Some drivers never upload their jobs at all, instead choosing to ‘lurk’ in social media groups looking for lifts without ever offering any.
Flickassist solves this issue by finding lifts only after jobs have been uploaded. The system automatically works out where drivers need to travel from and to. If drivers don’t upload their jobs, then the system doesn’t know where they need to travel between and so cannot find them a lift. No jobs means no lifts!
Interruptions and Checking
If drivers are in many social media groups, then they will be constantly interrupted with notifications. These notifications must be checked in case that elusive lift has been posted. If interruptions are muted then social media groups need be checked regularly. Failing to check might mean missing that elusive lift and facing an expensive public transport fare.
Flickassist will only send you a message when a definite lift has been offered. No checking required.
Human Nature
It’s human nature to feel aggrieved if you know a driver is going your way yet no lift is offered. This could be due to time constraints, a new vehicle, a retail or timed delivery to name just a few reasons.
Flickassist removes this issue by keeping all jobs private. A driver can only see their own jobs, no one else’s. Therefore, there is never any bad feeling if a lift is not offered. We also monitor drivers who never offer lifts but frequently accept them and will remove those drivers if they don’t improve their ‘offered: accepted’ ratio.
Matching
Once a match has been found the driver receives a notification that a passenger is in their area. The driver views the suggested lift on flickassist.com and makes a judgment as to whether the lift is feasible time and mileage wise. If it isn’t then the driver simply presses the ‘Reject’ button. Nothing else happens and passenger nevers know a match was found.
If the lift is feasible and the driver wishes to offer it, they press the ‘Offer’ button. This sends a notification to the passenger with the drivers’ contact details The passenger should call or message the driver to arrange a mutually acceptable location and time for collection.
Important
The Flickassist system is not a ‘magic taxi service‘. The system simply matches up drivers and passengers near each other. It is up to the driver to use their knowledge and experience to decide whether a lift is feasible and should be offered.
Sometimes we see matches that make no sense. For example a match might be for a 4 mile lift across a city centre. This might be a perfectly valid match for our system but a human being would look at it differently and might judge that the passenger could probably use public transport instead. However if the same 4 mile lift was from a village in the middle of nowhere to a small town with a train station then that would be a very different prospect and a lift would be very welcome.
This is why we put the onus on the driver to use their own experience to make a judgement call. If the lift looks unviable then simply press the ‘Reject’ button.
We hope you find Flickassist useful.
