The Kowloon Motor Bus Co. (1933) Ltd. (KMB), Hong Kong's largest bus company, serves three million customers daily on more than 400 bus routes. The company's Customer Service Hotline handles as many as 500,000 bus route information enquires each month. To further improve the accessibility and availability of such information to customers, KMB decided to develop a costeffective Web-based GIS solution software system.

This new system, which integrates more than 100,000 landmarks and is equipped with 3-D images of major buildings, accepts three types of input from Hotline operators: text input, selection from a pull down menu and selection from a map. Primed with this information, the system's search engine identifies suitable bus route options according to the preference of the customer, such as walking distance to the bus stop, fare, journey distance, and the number of bus stops passed. By means of the new system, enquiry call handling times have been reduced from approximately 3 to 2 minutes, training days have been sharply reduced from 7 to 2 days, and call capacity has increased by 30 per cent.