CRIENGLISH.com
Ride-hailing Cars with Smart Navigation?
Source: english.cri.cn
This is going to be a short post, more of a brief rant. I catch a lot of taxis for business. The business prescribes which brands I use.
Over half of the rides I take, ask me for directions or are vague in their response to my questions of “Do you know where that is?” and “Do you know the quickest way to get there.”
Most of them have GPS in their cabs, some of them have a TomTom or other device, but they also have nav built into their dispatch systems, the touch screens they have on the windscreen between themselves and the driver door so you can’t quite see what is on it.
As per this blog I wrote a couple of years ago http://ow.ly/LpaHF about how to get an honest fare out of a cabbie, I reckon there is a syndicate that trains taxi drivers and send them out of their homeland to a country where they don’t speak the local language (or English) (or pretend not to) and don’t know the local roads. It is a rarity in many cities (not so much small towns) I go to, to find a local driving a cab.
So the reason his little story caught my fancy was that the taxi company is telling their customers that they use GPS navigation in order to help customers trust them.
As I’ve said in previous blogs, if taxi drivers were more honest with their customers and give them what they want, they would be able to get more repeat business and wouldn’t have to compete against the likes of Uber. Do they know what customers want? Of course they do, cabbies know everything, they overhear conversations all day every day, many of which they shouldn’t. If you want to know something ask a taxi driver right? So why don’t they give us the best deal? Because every extra mile is an extra dollar.
I challenge taxi drivers everywhere to be honest, drive by the fastest or best route using GPS (with real time traffic) and let your customer know you are dong the best possible job for them. Then, like Uber, get them to rate you, give them your business card and tell them next tie they are in town you will give them the same high quality service. Build trust and loyalty and the competitors will struggle to take your business off you.
What’s your experience?
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