TECHNOLOGY TIMES EFFICIENCY IS THE NAME OF THE TECH GAME
As we all know, the cab industry is starting to feel the impacts of tech- nology platforms. Yet despite the numerous, exciting opportunities they could unlock, one could argue the reaction from our sector has been cautious, perhaps alarmist and even, at its worst, downright hostile! In fact, the key term the media loves to apply to this space is ‘disrupt’, which the dictionary defines as ‘to drastically alter or destroy the struc- ture of’…pretty gloomy stuff.
Yet ours is not the first sector to face such technological change – despite the rise of online flight comparison platforms, the number of air- line passengers in the UK has grown by 80 per cent over the last 20 years. Hotel bookings have shifted online, yet the UK hotel industry’s revenue has multiplied within the last decade.
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However, I also saw some casualties of technological change during the last decade I spent at Vodafone and O2 where I was responsible for Apps and Internet Partnerships. Whilst it was cool to deal with the likes of Facebook and eBay, I also worked closely with MySpace, Nokia Mobile and Blackberry. We all know that this latter group once utterly dominated their sectors but then faded to near extinction in just a few years. So how did they fail to dodge the bullet coming their way? I made three key observations :
they focused too much on making money today but not enough effort on figuring out how they could make money tomorrow
they didn’t collaborate enough with external platforms (in their case, the operating software) that could offer a richer user experience better than their own efforts
above all, they failed to recognise their customers’ behavior had changed (witness Blackberry pushing keyboard devices in an age of touchscreen iPhones!).
I also used to work as a part-time minicab driver in the decade prior (yes, I’ve been around) and so I fear that the cab sector is going to repeat these same three mistakes in how it deals with technological change. Clearly, all cab operators need to think through the kind of bookings they can make money from in the future; they have to adopt a more collaborative approach (be it with a booking platform, a dispatch software player, other operators, or even all three); and crucially, they must grasp how their customers will want to interact with them.
In fact, I think all of this masks a bigger truth – we’re actually in an age not of disruption but of efficiency, otherwise defined as ‘preventing the wasteful use of a particular resource’. Technology need not be our enemy but our liberator. Think of all the wasteful, inefficient processes a cab operator undergoes each day – posting cards through a letterbox hoping someone might call their number for a booking; then having someone take phone calls from customers who ask for a quote and who might then book; cab drivers having to waste time and stop en
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We’re actually in an age not of disruption but of efficiency, otherwise defined as preventing the wasteful use of a particular resource
route so the customer can get cash out from an ATM to pay their fare; cab bosses spending more time dealing with problem drivers but not even knowing how much their good drivers are admired by customers.
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It’s easy to blame the rise of on-demand apps such as Uber for disrupt- ing our sector, but I would argue they are the symptom, not the cause, of a fundamental shift by the customer wanting to book efficiently online as they’ve long done for a flight or hotel. Whilst I question some elements of Uber’s approach, let’s face it, even if they didn’t exist, the customer would have still wanted some app to fulfil this need. So instead, we should be embracing the opportunities that technologi- cal change is bringing us, enabling more trips to be booked efficiently by the customer and the cab operator. These include new ways to eas- ily make card payments via your app, such as Pingit (from Barclays), PayPal and Apple Pay. These enable customers to enter a simple yet secure passcode in an app to authorise payment from a stored credit/card, or in the case of Apple Pay, actually tap your phone like you would a contactless card. But one of the prospects I’m most excited about are the increased channels for customers to ‘consume’ a service online, broadening out from just their work PC, smartphone or tablet to a smartwatch, smart TV or even chat app.
Yes, that’s right, now you could quickly book a cab from your wrist and with the Apple TV box soon opening up its platform to third party apps, you could book your flight and a cab to the airport whilst watching a travel show. Also coming up are chat apps like Facebook Messenger’s ‘M’ service which will enable you to chat not just with your friends, but with a virtual concierge who can organise your grocery deliveries, con- cert tickets and yes, even your cab. This may all seem like futuristic fantasy to us just as mobile phones once appeared to our parents, but this new tech will seem everyday to our kids and is already happening in the Far East.
Ultimately, the customer also craves more efficiency in their lives. For the cab sector, these changes present a compelling opportunity to real- locate your precious resource away from ‘wasteful processes’ towards what any customer truly wants – a cab driver offering great service with a smile. And a smile is something even a hi-tech driverless car can’t easily match.
The author of this article, Amer Hasan is CEO of minicabit, the UK-wide cab booking platform
OCTOBER 2015
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