One of the fields in which voice response systems aid in worker efficiency is dispatching. Taxi and shuttle drivers depend on communications with central dispatchers in order to best serve their customers and eliminate down time. A driver will often need to communicate with dispatch in the middle of a fare, which means he or she could really be helped by a hands-free system of communication. Voice response systems provide such help, as they allow drivers to give verbal answers instead of keying in their entries.
I was on an airport shuttle van recently and noticed that the driver had to make an entry on a small dashboard keyboard every time a customer got on. The keyboard also had a digital display, which was yet another distraction for the driver. I know he had to let his dispatcher know how many passengers he had so that when he reached his limit another driver could start making the rounds, but it made me nervous that he kept looking at and typing on this keyboard. Had the van been equipped with a voice response system, the driver could have simply said, "I have [blank] number of passengers and am leaving the airport now."
A dispatcher often operates under quite a bit of stress. Busy times call for quick thinking and fast reflexes--a dispatcher must make sure that every customer reaches his or her destination as quickly as possible (and that every driver gets his or her fair share of customers). This means staying on top of which driver is going where; if a dispatcher has to stop and type in each customer as he or she is picked up, the entire process is that much slower.
Voice response systems can aid dispatchers in matching customers with drivers more quickly and efficiently. Instead of stopping and typing in, "Fare: John Doe, Driver: Jane Smith, destination: Reseda," a dispatcher could simply say the information to a computer that is equipped with voice response software. The software acts much like an assistant taking dictation--you say something, and the information is entered into the computer.