The Old Delivery Model for Taxi and Private Hire Firms
Many of us will remember that not too many years ago the key to the success for a local cab or taxi office was a combination of a memorable phone number, a business name with an “A” at the start of the name, cash only business (with no ability for consumers to pay by card without additional charges) and often a highly visible, bricks and mortar local booking office. The mode of delivery has served the industry well for many years and yet in the past decade even without COVID-19 the sector has undergone a dramatic shift change as it strives to keep up with technology that has in some quarters taken the industry by surprise.
Placing the Customer First – is the Sector Doing This?
Putting the needs of customers at the heart of any local or national taxi or private hire business has in many aspects always played second fiddle to what the sector always felt that worked for them. The biggest demonstration of how slow the sector has responded to change is probably in its reaction to allowing customers to pay with a variety of payment methods. Not wishing to pick on the London black cab trade, as it is certain many PH operators have operated like this in the past too, but even as late as 2015 you would often witness cab drivers actively advertising that customers could only pay for their rides with cash. Such a lethargic response to a changing world around the sector is made even more remarkable when you consider that in the past 10 years, many high street banks and building societies have closed, meaning access to cash has been made more difficult. So when we start to plan for a taxi or PH business of the future the sector needs to learn from these examples to ensure that the advancements of technology and social change do not continue to undermine the hard work of many taxi and PH operators across the country.
So, what does placing the customer at the heart of any PH or taxi company really mean? The modern service needs to consider the following key points:
-Accessibility
-Customer safety
-Connectivity – strong online presence alongside a mobile friendly website and real time communications that doesn’t focus on the telephone
-Online transparency in terms of prices and scope of service (customers no longer want to call for quotations)
-Customer peer group reviews and welcoming both good and bad reviews – operators don’t always get it right, but to avoid this in an age of super-connectivity and social media feels short-sighted
-Flexible payment options including card, mobile phone and online payment gateways
-Effective dispatch systems that interact with the customer in real time
-Genuine 24/7 customer support
-Drivers that offer a consistent customer centric service that helps to build the operators “brand”
-Carbon reduction focused service offer that isn’t just about the vehicles
-A willingness to review opportunities for aggregation locally/regionally between smaller taxi and PH operators, sharing a range of fixed costs potentially and joint fund R&D into new ways of delivering their local/regional services.
-Long terms plans for autonomous operations
This list is not meant to be exhaustive but to simply highlight areas which taxi and PH companies need to be considering now in a world where change is considered to be the new normal. The pace of change is not slowing and has been seen over the past two years with the advent of COVID-19, and as the sector starts to open again, growth in terms of aggregation in the sector is considered to be a significant part of this.
Is Aggregation in Sector the Real Answer?
Aggregation can enable much needed investment to work effectively and to also deliver many of the suggested customer focused improvements needed for the sector in terms of technology that can help streamline the customer journey, providing quotations, AI for dealing with generic Q&A for customers in real time, capturing customer reviews and feeding these back in real time, and tracking data for all vehicles/drivers.
There are a range of new market entrants that can offer local and regional operators to link in with larger aggregators where, in partnership, providers can link into new ambitious technology-based service offers that places the customer at the heart of the service from the outset. Examples of this more recently include Karhoo (through sector leading dispatch system), Autocab and UBER and also Mozio Group.
Airport Transfers UK are a new start up in 2021 that has embraced the principles of placing customer at the heart of their operation, working with HoppaGo, they are able to offer higher levels of service, enhanced choice, and better value for their customers. All of these attributes were what they have sought to deliver for their customers across the UK and can only be done by working in partnership with a platform that can help deliver this seamlessly. With a system that is now looking to provide technology based airport transfers in over 500 locations right across the UK, they are confident that even in a world emerging from COVID-19 that they will see demand scaling up in the second half of 2021 and into 2022 with their airport fares offering the best value anywhere. The London market is a growth target for Airport Transfers UK in 2021 and so book here for Greater London airport transfers.