‘App’grading Customer Experience- The Key to Car Rental App Success

Remember how at the onset of the current century, cab-hailing and cab travel used to be an absolute ‘Nightmare on Elm Street? You stood and you waited, while one cab whizzed by after another. If your baritone vocals or piercing whistles did manage to stop one near you, your ordeal had just begun. Shabby exteriors, unkempt interiors, a taximeter which was a mere decoration piece, and the icing on the disaster cake- an uncouth cabbie! The cabbie thought he was doing you a favor, and decided whether your destination was worth his while. He deliberately chose circuitous routes, and charged outlandish fares, upon neither of which you, the passenger, had any say. Then the Uber Age or the age of car rental apps dawned, with technology, communications, & applications appearing as the veritable Manna from heaven, and the veto powers of the cabbie were Ub’erased’ forever!

The car rental app market is conservatively valued at $ 60 Billion. Let’s do a quick tour of the leading success stories: 

Lyft 

US-based, Lyft cabs are available in 60 cities (Uber -700 cities globally).  Lyft’s transparent pricing policies and driver-friendly image have pitchforked it to no: 2 in the US, with a market share of 28%. 

Bonus read: Want to be the next Lyft? Here’s your list of advanced features!

Hailo 

A UK biggie, Hailo (founded 2011), operates in 100+ European cities and has expanded to cities like Boston, Osaka, and Atlanta. Its USP- being accessible on both Google Play Store & the Apple store, has attracted over $ 100 Million in funding thus far.

Grab Taxi 

S.E. Asia-based, Grab Taxi is popular for secure and pleasant rides. Despite Uber being numero uno, Grab grabbed huge popularity in the region and rapidly expanded to the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Two winnovations that stand out are- buying smartphones for drivers and a sign-up outreach program covering airports, taxi queues, & other busy centers. 

BidRide 

BidRide (2017), is an immensely popular Milwaukee-based ridesharing company. Its claim to fame is a unique app feature that enables riders to bid for both private taxis and shared cabs. Further, the app is designed with a friendly UI that curbs surge prices. 

So, enterprises of 2022, please note- App-led booking systems are here to rule… 

Find Out- How AllRide Cab experts helped BidRide hit the Milwaukee audience like a storm

A Win-Win for both Customers and Enterprises 

White label car rental app provide taxi businesses with superior service and help enhance users’ experience of swift booking with just a few clicks. This enhances the enterprises’ customer knowledge, provides better services, and finally boosts their brand image. Let’s examine how.

Huge Visibility Boost 

With the ubiquitous Mobile phones becoming an extended human appendage, today,  promoting taxi businesses through a mobile app is a sure-fire way to increase your brand visibility and multiply ROI. 

Convenience 

Be it the common man, or even tourists, people today, prefer to get goods/services ready with a click on their smartphones. What easier way than being able to book a cab and receive it on your doorstep/ just outside the airport. 

 Tracking Cars And Reaping Real-Time Benefits 

The car rental app empowers customers to track the cabs in real-time, know the exact location of their drivers and ETAs. This innovative feature also tells drivers the exact locations of their clients and reduces transit delays by taking the shortest route possible, thus reducing the cost of operations. Importantly, it boosts customer satisfaction, minimizes booking cancellations, and controls ROI losses.

Interactivity and Customer Feedback 

The car rental app enables customers to give feedback regarding the service they enjoyed/did not via reviews, ratings, and comments in the app stores. Positive feedback indicates those aspects of the service the enterprise needs to build on, while the negatives highlight the pain points that require immediate attention and correction. This enables enterprises to continuously improve their services and it gives the customers a feeling of being a true ‘stakeholder’. This helps in generating positive WOM, attracting new clientele, and increasing customer satisfaction- a feeling that they’ve been ‘heard’.

 Auto-Pilot Mode- Mitigating Booking and Payment Hassles 

Akin to customers having to wait for long, get sub-standard cabs/cabbies, and argue over fares, taxi owners/drivers too had to resort to curb crawling to locate customers who would then inspect the cabs and haggle on the fare.  The apps’ autopilot mode has made such pain-points history. They provide customers with details of the cab/driver/fare enabling hassle-free journeys and payments- another win-win! 

 Brand Credibility Gets A Lift- ‘App’ 

Brand awareness-credibility-reputation/image- this is the classical brand-building sequence. The more powerful the brand, the more the business/premiums the enterprise commands and the more satisfaction the consumers attain!

Uber’s business spans 80+ countries, and 670+ cities worldwide. It was able to hit these awesome numbers simply by utilizing its mobile app to grow its brand name! User-friendly white-label taxi apps, which allow users to customize it according to their preferences, accelerate gaining the trust of the hoi polloi quite easily. 

Driver Efficiency- Monitoring the Way to Customer Satisfaction 

Drivers are a unique breed- their performance is a critical input for customer satisfaction; on the flip side, their behavior can make or break the enterprises’ business! Rash driving, traffic violations, and unacceptable behavior are often par for the course for drivers. They impact fuel expenditure, customer satisfaction, vehicle health, and brand reputation. Monitoring their behavior via mobile apps enables enterprises to help them with safety tips, reduce accidents, control maintenance expenditures, and improve/reward their performances. Win-win again!

Tracking Customer Information Enhances Customer Delight 

Car rental app enable enterprises to gather adequate user information to provide them with quality services, by getting an insight into their tastes and preferences. Data such as location, contact information, and call data between users & drivers help curate personalized offers, discounts, and send push notifications. This buoys delight and aids stickiness

Car Rental App Solutions- ‘To Make or to Buy- that is the Conundrum’

With due apologies to the Bard of Avon, let’s delve into the dilemma that enterprises have between white-label car rental software and buying bespoke!

With the proliferation of enterprises eyeing on-demand taxi app solutions, a plethora of taxi app development services surfaced. Some offer scratch development, and some- tailor-made solutions. There are a number of compelling reasons/advantages why an enterprise should choose a readymade solution. The devil lies in the details: Enterprise strategy honcho, this is for you… 

Time to Market

Enterprises choose to buy off-the-shelf software solutions, factoring time as a priority, considering that development companies take eons to reinvent the wheel- and charge for the same! Faster delivery & speedy launch enables the enterprise to focus on essentials- boosting customers, choosing the right business model, and effective strategizing. 

Deadlines & Quality 

Piloted 

Any pre-built software implies a pre-tested solution lacking technical glitches, bugs, and ensuring superior performance. Obviously, a zero-based solution can’t compete- commercially or temporally!

Cheaper

In case of the bespoke option, the development cost is borne by one client alone. However, if the same is allocated across multiple clients, as it is for off-the-shelf solutions, it’s a no-brainer as to the economics!

White- Labeling the Best; Rest WIP

Many people opine that an off-the-shelf solution may not suit the specific needs of a particular business. But that goes against the very principles of white-labeling since such solutions are fully customizable. Wish to change colors- do so. Wanna remove a feature- do so. Need to add a plug-in- do so. That brings us to the definition of a White-label App, a ready-made solution, complete with the IPR, company branding, & logo which allows the inclusion of specific features to make it enterprise-ready! This makes a white-label solution relatively hassle-free since other than the company-specific customizations, there is not much to supervise. Hence, a white label app is simply the best solution for your taxi business.  

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7 UX TIPS For the Ultimate Car Rental App

Designs on your customers’ satisfaction?  As a ‘smart’ enterprise- keep design and interactions in focus for the best user experience. Follow these simple rules:

     1. Keep It Simple For Your Car Rental App

Highly Recommended mobile app UX principle. It is a tautology that a simple, easy-to-use, clutter-free, visually attractive solution THAT WORKS- is the ultimate! Create an MVP, test market it, study competitive goof-ups, combine learnings- need I say more my dear naive enterprise?

    2. Don’t Just Keep Up, Appdate, Stay Ahead, & Stay Alive

Keep the variety of the audience in focus. Factor in age, location, new-fangled payment preferences- basically the latest market fads and demands to keep your customers from jumping to a competitor. Innovate, and your enterprise will increase the customer base and retain the existing ones. And Stay Alive… 

    3. Easy Come, Easy Go- Logins & Permissions 

“Your password should have at least one uppercase/lowercase/symbol/number, and a minimum of eight letters.” – Hitlerian app or what?

While the need for a strong/secure password is all very fine, instead of sounding Hitleresque, it’s easier to integrate social media registrations for simplicity, safety, and speedy account creation with auto verification of the one-time password for mobile number verification. Next, for permissions, the software should seek access to contacts for users wishing to initiate rides for friends and family. Make it easy for your customers to create a win-win… 

      4. It’s All About Keanu’s Speed 

In the app-eat- app world of cab booking app services, enterprises have to work on making it fast.  Uber’s initial app took a gargantuan 15 – 20 seconds to load- with each subsequent update, it now stands at 5 seconds. How to play catch up? 1. No page blank while loading leading users to assume the app has frozen. 2. Indicate the percentage loaded (skeletons a la Facebook or quora will do to start)

      5. Ease the Cursor’s Course-Tap Dancing Made Easier

Users interact with cab booking apps by clicking on texts, icons, or action buttons. So, the annotations used should be easily understandable with minimum clutter and texts- the jargon is a no-no! Communication should be direct and easy, with any clickable item being adequate in size. Today’s smartphones have big screens, so the in-app interactions- texts, buttons, and icons need to be speedy and sized adequately, and allow the user to tap dance his/hers way through!

      6. Practical Considerations- Bandwidth And Battery 

Apart from the visual considerations like in-app interactions, practicalities such as battery consumption, the size of the application, and the rate of internet consumption make a difference in the quality of user experience. Users tend to favor car rental apps that consume lesser bandwidth; hence enterprises should optimize the size of their apps by sticking to their MVP features and eschew dispensable animations. Equally, they should build their apps to minimize the phone’s energy by reducing bright colors and running activities in the background to reduce user expense. 

       7. Usability- The King

Finally, user experience is governed by the fine print. This depends on usability factors – like glitches, bugs, crashes, and the ultimate frustration of finding a particular page! Working on users’ feedback is not an option-.  buy a white label app – the best way out for your taxi business. Upon receiving a complaint, apologize and ensure that the issue is solved. 

The Final Step

A decade’s experience has taught us plenty about consumer desires, preferred designs, integrating features to marketing the final customized cab booking app– we have truly, ‘been there, done that. So all ye intrepid enterprises looking to build a cab booking app or a car rental app, or any ride and transportation software, contact AllRide Cab experts today.