There are so many mobile apps nowadays that I don't even bother downloading any.
You have apps for banking, booking taxi, finding ATMs nearby, finding restaurants, monitor health, magazines, sports, scheduling, job search, checking bus arrival time, Facebooking, search and the list goes on. How many of these apps did you download? And how many do you actually use it every day?
While these apps are developed to solve problems and make life easier for the users, do they actually solve the problem. Take it a step further, was there a problem in the first place?
Singapore's Land Transports Authority (LTA) launched a new mobile app Taxi-Taxi@SG two days back.
The main difference between this apps and the likes of Uber and GrabTaxi is that Taxi-Taxi@SG does not has a booking facility.
Taxi-Taxi@SG shows the location of available cabs of all six taxi operators in Singapore through location data provided. Taxi drivers do not have to download the app to be detected by it. However, they have to download it to see where commuters are.
Within a day, the apps has drawn so many negative feedback. The main complaint is because of the main difference, that is, there is no booking facility.
There is even an incidence of a taxi being located in the sea and people joking that it's the Duck Tour or river taxi.
In response to this, LTA says its new app is meant to help commuters who want to hail taxis along the road, and not pay more to book a cab. Thus it is not fair to compare it against other apps.
So was this add developed to counter its third party competitors which are jeopardizing the booking business of the taxis operators? Or was it really developed with the intention of helping commuters save on booking fee?
Photo Source : theonlinecitizen
If you look at the apps, it's really simple to use. There are only three functions.
For the taxi drivers, the only function they will use is the Tap For Address (Commuters) to see where commuters are.
For you, the passenger, they can "Tap to shout out your location" so that taxi drivers can see where you are and drive towards you. You can also use Tap For Address (Taxis) to see where most taxis are and decide if you want to move to another street to hail a taxi, instead of continue at your current location with no taxis.
But the problem it seeks to solve is the cause of the problem itself.
Firstly, if a driver sees someone waiting for a cab nearby, how likely is he going to drive there to pick up the passenger? Have you encountered situations where you are trying to hail a taxi on the road and all the empty taxis are on the opposite side of the road? Do they make a U-turn to pick you if there is one? Most of the times they will just stop at the opposite and wait for you to cross over. Why? My guess is that the driver thinks that you will probably be picked up by another taxi by the time they U-turn back (unless he has signaled to you).
What if there are two, three, four or even five drivers who see it and head there all at the same time? Unless the driver is sure he can pick up a passenger when he arrives, it will be a wasted trip for him. And if you are staying in a remote location where it is accessible via private transport, how likely is a driver going to make the effort to go to pick you up without some form of incentive?
There are often complaints about taxi drivers hiding somewhere or refusing to stop for passengers in order to wait for call booking so that they can make more from each trip. During peak period when the demand for taxi is higher than the supply and or when there are more people making booking, will this app works? Unless the booking fee is scraped, most taxi drivers will rather take booking instead of picking up passengers hailing on the street, even if the passenger is two steps away.
For the passenger, you can indicate your location and wait for a taxi to arrives. To use this function, you either let GPS locate your location and confirm it or you can tap on the map to change your waiting spot. As there's no indication to you that a taxi is on its way to pick you, how long are you going to wait? Even if you monitor the taxis location and see one taxi moving towards your location, how sure are you that it's coming to pick you? If it's not picking you, are you going to continue waiting or you will just hop on another taxi that comes along? Drivers using this app are going to get frustrated not being able to pick up any passenger despite making the effort. But there's nothing they can do. Will you get blacklisted for no show all the times in future?
And if you see there is a taxi on or approaching a particular road and decide to walk there to hail it, remember that taxis are mobile. Will it be hailed by others or gone by the time you reach? Will you end up trying to play catching with taxis? Or would you rather call to make a booking?
Another problem with this function is that the GPS is not accurate. I tried using it and it showed me an address that I'm not even sure if it exists at the location I was at. Furthermore, instead of indicating the name of the building which is what most people are familiar with, it showed the street address which people usually do not know. For example, if I'm at National Library, instead of displaying the address as National Library, it showed 100 Victoria Street.
While you can tap on the map to change your waiting spot, will you even bothered to do so? Or will you just walk to the main road?
Know how your customers think, and you'll know how your customers will act.