Asheville Taxi, North Carolina streamlines operations and grows customer base with Sherlock Taxi dispatch
- Better management of financial transactions - saving admin time as transaction IDs are automatically received within Sherlock
- Predictable and easy to understand driver wage statements - increasing driver confidence/satisfaction and reducing admin time
- Streamlined operations, greater efficiency and tools needed to grow the business
Background
Asheville Taxi is a completely locally owned and operated company which proudly serves Asheville and the surrounding North Carolina communities. Founded in 2014, the business has built a trusted reputation with approximately 60 drivers providing local rides, airport transfers, and servicing both corporate and local business accounts.
To support its expanding operations, the company adopted Sherlock Taxi dispatch.
Challenges & Requirements
Woodward (‘Woody’), Owner of Asheville had been using another taxi dispatch system, however, as the business expanded, it became clear that the legacy system was no longer meeting Asheville’s needs. Key challenges included:
- A poor passenger app that made it difficult to automate bookings and dispatch
- Inaccurate trip allocation
- Tariff issues including an inability to adjust waiting time rates
- Lack of reporting including the inability to provide airport trip data required by law
- Unreliable pricing estimates – particularly for airport fares and inability to auto-calculate additional charges for trips with long distances from pick-up to drop-off
- Legacy system not able to fully support corporate accounts – following the closure of a competitor, Asheville acquired several new accounts but needed additional staff to manage these due to functionality issues with previous system
These limitations were holding the company back just as demand for services was increasing.
Why Sherlock?
After evaluating several providers, Woody and his team chose Sherlock Taxi. The decision was driven by Sherlock’s proven success with taxi operators worldwide and the team’s operational expertise rooted in real-world taxi experience, rather than a purely technology background. This gave Woody confidence in their understanding of how to implement technology to solve genuine business operational problems.
“The team at Sherlock really understand the industry from the operator’s perspective, not just the tech,”
Implementation & Results
The migration to Sherlock was managed onsite by Adam Ross, Sherlock Technical Sales & Implementation and Natalia Osipenko, Sherlock Technical Project Management and Support. Their hands-on involvement before, during, and after launch ensured a seamless transition.
The two-week implementation included:- Driver training with test bookings and trips
- Operator training including transferring pre-bookings from the legacy system
- System configuration tailored to Asheville Taxi’s requirements
- Onsite go-live support for telephonists, drivers, and staff adapting to Sherlock
- System tuning on pricing, invoicing and driver wages workflows
Once core operations were live, the team fine-tuned pricing, invoicing, and driver wage workflows. By breaking implementation into manageable stages, Sherlock ensured Asheville Taxi’s operations were never disrupted.
Corporate Accounts and Vouchers
A key improvement came in managing corporate account vouchers. Many businesses in the USA use vouchers for staff to book taxis to ensure compliance and effective cost control. With Asheville’s previous system it was difficult to effectively manage their influx of new corporate account work without requiring additional staff to perform manual checks. Sherlock created a workflow in which a driver can take a photo of the voucher, and this is automatically displayed on account invoices to reduce customer queries and ensure invoices are paid in a timely manner.
Managing Payments
Integration with Stripe to seamlessly manage payments is essential for Asheville Taxi. Sherlock’s ability to build authorisations and process refunds has eliminated common issues faced with previous systems such as failed authorisations or difficulties in renewing authorisations and reconciling charges. Additional features including the ability to retrieve transaction IDs directly within Sherlock have streamlined operations dramatically; what once required tedious manual searches in Stripe to match transactions with rides is now handled effortlessly within Sherlock.
Driver Wages and Payments
Statements and payouts are predictable and easy for drivers to understand for drivers. Woody noted, “this sounds like a small thing, but it is among the most crucial and delicate components of our business. Drivers can be quite suspicious when they don’t understand their payments and they can instantly defect to Uber and other gig jobs. Replacing drivers is wildly expensive for our business and time-consuming. Multiple calls with drivers to explain statements and tip totals is also time-consuming so we are grateful that Sherlock has mostly eliminated these conversations.”
Phone System Integration
It is now easier for operators to find calls relating to individual trips without needing to search externally. This also makes it easier to monitor operator performance and identify any training needs.
Since launching with Sherlock in March 2025, the team at Asheville Taxi has seen smoother operations, greater efficiency, and greater confidence in its ability to serve a growing customer base.
With Sherlock powering its operations, Asheville Taxi is well-positioned to scale while maintaining its reputation as a locally owned, customer-focused taxi company.