How BidTaxi Works

BidTaxi is a new form of online platform of booking of taxi service. This form of service provides their customers and drivers with a unique way to connect with each other, offer a fair service and a safe journey. Unlike the regular working of booking cab services, the BidTaxi service makes use of a bidding service for their rides. In this system, the customer decides the beginning and ending points of their journey based on which a projected cost would be provided to the customer (Chen, Cui & Li, 2018). After the bidding has been done by the customer, the drivers would then bid for their services within a certain period of time. A wide range of tools would be provided to both the riders and the drivers, which includes the estimated time of journey, distance of the route and toll costs. BidTaxi also provides their customers to view the responses of the drivers at real time. Once the customers selects their drivers, the cost would be locked and hence the allocated drivers would reach to them within the appropriate time without any delay. The driver would receive the payment after the entire journey gets completed (Ma, Zheng & Wolfson, 2013)

BidTaxi is an online demand service of transportation. It has a major role to play within the taxi industry. This form of taxi service is primarily based on bidding for their taxis by tapping on their smartphones. After the negotiations are made, the taxi would arrive to the user within the minimum possible time. The first step of requesting a cab is an important and demanding step within the cab booking process (Bernstein, 2015). With the help of the BidTaxi application, the customers can bid for a taxi. He would select the starting and end point of the journey, number of passengers and the exact time of journey. The details should be properly entered in order to get the appropriate price of bidding. After the details are properly entered, the rider would see a number of prices of bidding. He would need to select the most appropriate bidding price in order to get a taxi service within a given time. After the rider confirms the affordable price within the given period of time, he would have to wait for the driver to confirm his request. The BidTaxi cab service makes a great use of a dynamic model of pricing. The riders are quoted a range of prices that they would have to bid before requesting a particular ride. The prices could vary depending on the projected time, time of the journey and the demand of supply of cabs at that time at the current location of the rider (Rouges & Montreuil, 2014).

Step 1: Bidding for Rides

The Second Step – Connecting With the Rider

When the rider quotes his price, the price would be displayed to the drivers within the nearest location of the rider and within a selected time. The driver would select the best price, which would be suited for the benefit of the customers. When the exact price gets matched with the quoted price of the rider, the algorithm within the application matches and connects the driver with the rider. When the deal gets confirmed, both the parties would receive a notification the ride would commence within a given time. The driver needs to accept the request of the rider after which the rider would be asked to wait based on the location of the driver (Posen, 2015).

The Third Step – Riding with BidTaxi  

When the request is accepted by the driver, the customer would get all the details of the taxi such as the taxi number, exact location of the taxi and the estimated time within which the taxi would arrive. These details would be displayed on the screen of the smartphone. The riders would be get to know the details of which licensed driver would collect them after the confirmation of the booking. The application would provide the driver with the best navigation routes, which would help him to take the customer to the desired location within the proper time and with the best shortest possible route.

An algorithm within the application would provide the mechanism “Real-Time Check of ID”. It would request the drivers to share their live location with the customers. At the same time, the riders would also be able to share their live location with the drivers. The mechanism of live tracking is very much useful feature within the BidTaxi application. Riding is considered to be a very important aspect of the business model of BidTaxi. Hence the driver has to ensure that the ride should be safe and comfortable for the customer.

The Fourth Step – Payment and Rating   

When the ride is completed, the fare could be paid through cash or some online payment methods such as credit/debit cards or other methods. The customer has the privilege to rate the driver based on his performance, travelling experience, conversation and many other factors. A good rating provided by the rider would be highly noticed and appreciated by other customers on the BidTaxi application. On the other hand, drivers would also be able to rate their customers based on the short wait time, courtesy of the customers and many other factors. Passengers would be able to view their ratings on the application (Rayle et al., 2016).

Step 2: Connecting with the Rider

Maintenance

The system of BidTaxi is extremely flexible and advanced. This is due to the fact that both the parties are able to share the personal information. These details would be managed by BidTaxi using their services of command software. This software helps in making the BidTaxi system to be robust and much more reliable. The information that would be shared between both the parties would be completely secured by BidTaxi.

Accounting

This operation would be helpful to bring transparency within the automatic accounting system. This section is also responsible for client handling, the invoice management of the client/driver and the documents of the driver that would be only visible to the BidTaxi system. This would be helpful for the customer in knowing the car and the rating of the particular driver. With this approach, many more customers would be able to bid over the application that would bring several improvements in the business model.

Based on the business model of BidTaxi, there would be some recommendation that should be implemented by the BidTaxi service.

1. There should be some improvement in the accuracy of the pick-up location of the riders. Hence the GPS related services should be improved. This could be done by mentioning the name of the building, any nearby landmark or the exact name of the road or street. This would be helpful as the riders would not be able to wait for a long time to avail the service. The GPS should also provide the real time location of the rider so that the driver should get notified about where the rider would be waiting for.
2. There should be an independent service for old people, women and children. The safety of the customers should be the topmost priority for BidTaxi service. They should ensure that the cab services should be provided to these people at the earliest. This would help in the higher rating of the cab services, ensure better quality of customer handling and establish a better relationship with the customers.
3. BidTaxi should ensure that the data provided by the customers within the application should be completely secure and stored in an encrypted format. Safety should be the topmost concern for BidTaxi. The BidTaxi system should also provide recommendations to the rivers about which trip would be the most profitable for them (Zhang et al., 2013).

Conclusion

Based on the above discussion of BidTaxi services, it can be concluded that the new form of cab services is an important step towards the transportation system. BidTaxi has an efficient service mechanism. They provide their customers with the best ever facility of cab service in the city. The drivers of this cab service are certified and highly experienced. BidTaxi provides both parties to communicate with each other in a proper way and they can rate each other. A star rating besides the IDs of both the parties ensures that they are verified by the company. The BidTaxi service also provides their customers with to book taxis and make payments with the help of their website who do not possess smartphones. They should also implement the recommended options, which would help in making the cab service much more efficient and also help to stay ahead in the competitive market.

Based on the business operations of BidTaxi cab services, there would be some suggestions, which should be implemented in order to improve the business of cab services in BidTaxi.

1. Provide Exclusive Offers to Customers

The BidTaxi services should offer exclusive offers to their customers on various occasions. This would help in attracting customers to their website or application. Customers always look for advantages that would make their ride at cheapest cost. BidTaxi should look for advantages within this and thus provide better offers and promotional codes. These offers would grab the attention of the customers and thus would engage their customers by providing them with rewards for choosing their cab services (Rayle et al., 2014).

Step 3: Riding with BidTaxi

The promotional codes should be posted on social media accounts of their customers, which would help them in viewing the codes easily. New users should get additional benefits so that the customer base of the company remains intact. Existing customers should also be able to provide referral code to other new customers.  On referring the application and after proper installation of the application, the existing customer would get a referral bonus. This would impress the customers and thus would be helpful in retaining the base of the customers.

Attracting the customers towards their application is a strategy, which should be followed and they have to implement new ways to apply the strategy towards their business. This would attract the customers towards their service and thus they would be able to gain maximum profits (Venkatesh & Easaw, 2015).

1. Improvement towards Customer Interaction

BidTaxi should improve the customer support service within their application. They should be entirely dedicated towards providing full satisfaction to their customers. They should keep a close look over the activities of their customers during their entire journey and thus resolve any issues, which needs to be addressed. They should ensure that the customers can get the best services without any delay. Customers are an important concern for the company.

BidTaxi should integrate an ‘emergency’ button within their application. This would be an extremely important step towards the goodwill of the company. The emergency button would help the passengers during the commuting journey. They would be able to report in cases of emergency. A helpline number would be provided within the application. On clicking on the emergency option, the user would be able to connect to the customer care executive in order to report any unanticipated circumstance.

Many customers are habituated with on-the-go service. This means that the mobile application should be properly and well-designed in order to serve the customers better. As there are several customers who are much accustomed with smartphones, hence the  BidTaxi application should be user-friendly and should support the customers at every step of their journey. The company should also provide email receipts after the end of the ride. The receipt should provide all the basic details of the ride such as the starting and end point of the journey, the time of the journey and the fare breakdown. Hence these services should be improved so that the customers could get a seamless experience and would prefer to choose the company for the next time.

References

Chen, Z., Cui, W., & Li, X. (2018). Research on Decision-making of Urban Taxi Management Organization. Business Administration and Management, 1(1).

Bernstein, M. H. (2015). Regulating business by independent commission. Princeton University Press.

Posen, H. A. (2015). Ridesharing in the Sharing Economy: Should Regulators Impose Uber Regulations on Uber. Iowa L. Rev., 101, 405.

Rayle, L., Dai, D., Chan, N., Cervero, R., & Shaheen, S. (2016). Just a better taxi? A survey-based comparison of taxis, transit, and ridesourcing services in San Francisco. Transport Policy, 45, 168-178.

Rayle, L., Shaheen, S., Chan, N., Dai, D., & Cervero, R. (2014). App-based, on-demand ride services: Comparing taxi and ridesourcing trips and user characteristics in san francisco university of california transportation center (uctc). University of California, Berkeley, United States Rogers, B.(2015) The social costs of Uber. James E. Beasley School of Law, Temple University, Philadelphia, United States.

Venkatesh, G., & Easaw, G. (2015). Measuring the Performance of Taxi Aggregator Service Supply Chain. SAMVAD, 10, 26-36.

Martinez, L. M., Correia, G. H., & Viegas, J. M. (2015). An agent?based simulation model to assess the impacts of introducing a shared?taxi system: an application to Lisbon (Portugal). Journal of Advanced Transportation, 49(3), 475-495.

Ma, S., Zheng, Y., & Wolfson, O. (2013, April). T-share: A large-scale dynamic taxi ridesharing service. In Data Engineering (ICDE), 2013 IEEE 29th International Conference on (pp. 410-421). IEEE.

Zhang, D., He, T., Liu, Y., & Stankovic, J. A. (2013, October). CallCab: A unified recommendation system for carpooling and regular taxicab services. In Big Data, 2013 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 439-447). IEEE.

Rougès, J. F., & Montreuil, B. (2014, May). Crowdsourcing delivery: New interconnected business models to reinvent delivery. In 1st international physical internet conference (pp. 1-19).