Friday, February 24, 2012

TABS can change the way that taxis are booked

I carried out research of taxi booking over the past two years and obtained these findings:

a) About 25% of commuters book a taxi (and pay a fee of $2.50 or $3.50); the other 75% stop a taxi on the road (because they do not want to pay a booking fee).
b) About 80% (my estimate) of the taxi booking goes to Comfort and Citycab taxis and 20% goes to the other taxi companies.
c) A Comfort taxi drivers gets 5 to 10 requests a day. Many of them complained about "no show" when they pick up a booking.
d) The taxi drivers of the smaller taxi companies hardly get any booking each day.

I have launched TABS (taxi automated booking system) and hope to achieve the following:

a) Get more passengers (i.e. the 75% that wait for a taxi on the road) to book a taxi with the $1 booking fee
b) Get taxi driver (other than Comfort) to use the system and get the calls that they miss out.
c) Reduce the "no show" rate, as the taxi driver can call the customer before going to the pick-up point.

TABS can change the way that taxis are used by commuters and taxi drivers. I hope that, one day, most taxi drivers will pick up passengers using TABS or other taxi booking service, and taxi drivers do not have to ply the road to look for customers.


1 comment:

Tan Kin Lian said...

A taxi driver came to my office to suggest how TABS should be changed.

After I showed him a demo of what TABS does, he realized that the current model is good. He will be rounding up other taxi drivers to join TABS.

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