1. Proposal for Outlining of the Technology
Sun Wukong (SW) is one form of the newest form of taxi service that would be able to deliver a newest form of service to the customers. This taxi service would be able to deliver their customers to the Melbourne Airport. The SW taxi service is based on a certain model of business that would be based on the demands of the customer (Rayle et al., 2014). This form of taxi service is not based on a fixed rate services. The system of Sun Wukong is based within a mobile based application. The customers would be able to open their mobile based application of Sun Wukong in order to book the taxi services. On providing the location of the user, the SW application would be able to locate the user based on the GPS provided location. Different form of online tools within the application that would include the estimated time of arrival, costs, distance would be taken into consideration (Rayle et al., 2016). These tools would be displayed on the application of both the driver and the customers. The customer would be able to view the real time responses that would be provided by the drivers. The entire journey of the users would be tracked and live updates based on payment and other details would be provided to the users for their benefits. There are also various forms of payment methods that are inbuilt within the application that would lay a variety of options before the customers based on their payment modes after they have availed the taxi services.
The Sun Wukong mobile application provides a user-friendly experience to their customers who would provide taxi services within the Melbourne Airport. The taxi service would help in providing the best experience for their users. They would help in providing real-time experiences and live updates to their customers for their better form of experiences (Restuccia & Das, 2014). Hence the application should be developed on a higher basis with very skilled developers who would be responsible for every form of actions within the website.
Technology plays a major role in the business progress of Sun Wukong. The main form of proposal for the outlining of technological requirements in order to accomplish the objectives of the business are:
1. Criminal Check on Both the Parties – The taxi company should perform a tight security check on their drivers in order to include the inspection of the records based on criminal court. The taxi service should implement a section based on background screening. This would be meant for running various forms of additional checks on the customers as well as the drivers in order to check and scan the past criminal records. They should also perform a national search facility based on the database of the criminals (Aloisi, 2015).
The taxi service should make high level of arrangements based on the screening of the records of both the parties. There are several reports based on different other cab service providers that were various allegations faced by customers as well as drivers. In order to protect the taxi operator from competition within the market, the policymakers of the application should be able to decide the best ways to secure the drivers and the riders. The policy makers should also perform several background checks on the would-be drivers (Greenblatt & Shaheen, 2015). This could be done based on different form of approaches, which would be able to provide the best form of results. The law makers should keep a check based on the fingerprints of the parties.
There should also be a policy for those drivers who would fail within the background checks. Based on their performance within the checks, the license of the drivers should be seized and there should be a minimum form of punishment for a certain period of time.
2. Rating of Both the Parties – Ratings are an important aspect of any form of communication service. This form of service based within the cab systems would be able to provide a higher level of feedback to both the parties. Based on the services provided during the service, the drivers as well as the customers would provide rating to each other. This would be quite helpful for understanding the quality of the cab service (Greenwood & Wattal, 2015). Hence, the application should integrate a compulsory system within the application. This system should enforce the technique of rating system within the application such that both the parties should compulsorily give ratings to each other. The provided ratings would be displayed next to their verified IDs. This would help the customer to identify whether their driver is an efficient and well-behaved driver. Hence, the star rating system is an efficient approach for a proper ride experience of the customers (Harding, Kandlikar & Gulati, 2016).
3. Availability of a Website of the Company – It may be a problem for some of the customers to download the mobile application of Sun Wukong and book their taxi service. Hence, the company should focus on implementing or developing an efficient website, which would be helpful for customers in order to book their desired cab service. Various kinds of API should be implemented within the application of Sun Wukong in order to enhance the experience of the user and provide better form of functionalities within the application. The website should possess each and every functionality that would be present within the web application. The feature of detection of location services, payment methods, ease of choosing taxi service should be quite handy for the benefits of the customer. The customers should be provided with the highest form of functionalities in order to satisfy the demands of the client. The development of the website should be performed by an efficient team of developers who would provide every possible functionality within the application. They should not face any form of hassle during the booking of the service (Baden-Fuller & Haefliger 2013).
There could be some customers who would not possess credit/debit cards during the journey or they might choose the option of not paying with their cards. The problem could be solved with the integration of gift cards. These gift cards could be purchased from Eleven-Seven Stores and could be stored within the application. It is one of the subsidiaries of Sun Wukong, which provides gift cards to the customers. The purchasing of gift cards would provide them with some amount of money with which the users would be able to make their ride. This would not create a problem during the ride as people would not have the need of possessing their credit/debit cards during their journey.
2. Proposal for Enabling Reward to Loyal Customers
The Sun Wukong taxi service provides hassle free rides to their customers who book the taxi service. This taxi service is based on a mobile application interface through which the customers are able to book their desired taxi service. In the recent times, the taxi service provides various kinds of services such as gift cards to their customers with which they would be able to pay for their ride fares without making use of their credit/debit cards. In the highly competitive market, the taxi service should be able to provide newer form of services to their customers in order to gain popularity within the market and thus be able to compete with other taxi services (Christensen, Raynor & McDonald, 2015).
In order to deal with the issue, the taxi service should make proper form of deals with some other company in order to provide better services to their customers apart from regular rides. The company should make a deal with some coffee shops, which are a favourite destination of most of the customers. This would helpful in enhancing the growth of the business and thus attract the prime customers to enjoy the rides. Additional services have always been a huge matter of interest for customers. People mainly try to avail such kind of services, which attract them and provides them with a lot of satisfaction (He & Shen, 2015).
The Sun Wukong taxi service should be able to understand the interests of the customers and the areas in which they would have to implement the necessary services. An authentic form of two-way conversation should be done with the customers in order to understand their issues and thus the organization should be able to focus upon them. They should be specific with the requirements, which is highly essential in order to satisfy the needs of the customer (Leng et al., 2016). The company should adjust accordingly to the needs of the customers and thus would be able to provide better form of services to the customers. The loyalty based programs are meant to engage with the core of the level of understanding of the customers. These are also meant to express the concern of the company towards the customers and thus would represent the customers as they are unique from other people. Customers should feel special about the way they would be served within the organisation. This would hence to higher level of loyalty towards the organisation. This might eventually lead to much more attraction of customers and incur more clients towards the company (Lovelock & Patterson, 2015).
The idea of rewarding the loyal customers with coffee vouchers is a great concept in order to increase the level of profit for the organisation. These vouchers could be stored within the application of Sun Wukong and could be used by the customer when they would visit the coffee shop in the future (Larivière et al., 2013). There should be a separate section within the application, which should be labelled as Gift Vouchers. Customers who adhere to the rules of the taxi services and access the ride facilities on a daily basis are considered to be loyal to the organization. Customer retention is a very important aspect of any organization as they are the most valuable asset for the organization. The higher number of customers within an organization would lead to better form of customer service facilities and better level of profit margin for the organization. In order to retain the loyal customers towards the organization, they should be provided very high level of services and special offers in order to gain the attraction of the customers (Loudon & Carter, 2013). These customers often search for better form of options that would be able to suitable for their needs. Hence, the retention of the customers is a crucial aspect that should be needed to be considered (Yang et al., 2017). The section within the application based on ‘Gift Vouchers’ would store the vouchers that would be provided by the company to the customer. The customer would be able to check the total number of vouchers and thus would gain information from time to time about the latest offers and updates (Herzog & Wörndl, 2016). The loyalty of the customers is an important aspect as it means that the services provided by the company are being liked by the customers. This would mean that the growth of the company is ever increasing and the company is able to compete within the existing market within other form of taxi services (Noulas et al., 2015).
The method of payment should be improved in order to implement the best form of payment methods within the application (Kamargianni, Matyas & Schafer, 2016). The payment gateways should be modified and the best form of payment options should be integrated within the application for the betterment and viability of the customers (Ding & Keh, 2016). There are many customers who prefer to pay for their rides from their preferred payment modes. The company should be able to understand these aspects and thus should integrate these services within the applications. Customers should also provide honest reviews about the application and the services provided by Sun Wukong. This would be extremely crucial for implementing newer form of operations within the application and thus improve the feel of the application. This would be useful for attracting the customers and thus increase the base of the customers (Shin, Lee & Odom, 2014).
References
Aloisi, A. (2015). Commoditized workers: Case study research on labor law issues arising from a set of on-demand/gig economy platforms. Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J., 37, 653.
Baden-Fuller, C., & Haefliger, S. (2013). Business models and technological innovation. Long range planning, 46(6), 419-426.
Christensen, C. M., Raynor, M. E., & McDonald, R. (2015). What is disruptive innovation. Harvard Business Review, 93(12), 44-53.
Ding, Y., & Keh, H. T. (2016). A re-examination of service standardization versus customization from the consumer’s perspective. Journal of Services Marketing, 30(1), 16-28.
Greenblatt, J. B., & Shaheen, S. (2015). Automated vehicles, on-demand mobility, and environmental impacts. Current sustainable/renewable energy reports, 2(3), 74-81.
Greenwood, B. N., & Wattal, S. (2015). Show me the way to go home: An empirical investigation of ride sharing and alcohol related motor vehicle homicide.
Harding, S., Kandlikar, M., & Gulati, S. (2016). Taxi apps, regulation, and the market for taxi journeys. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 88, 15-25.
He, F., & Shen, Z. J. M. (2015). Modeling taxi services with smartphone-based e-hailing applications. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 58, 93-106.
Herzog, D., & Wörndl, W. (2016). Collaborative and Social Mobility Services. Digital Mobility Platforms and Ecosystems, 198.
Kamargianni, M., Li, W., Matyas, M., & Schafer, A. (2016). A critical review of new mobility services for urban transport. Transportation Research Procedia, 14, 3294-3303.
Larivière, B., Joosten, H., Malthouse, E. C., Van Birgelen, M., Aksoy, P., Kunz, W. H., & Huang, M. H. (2013). Value fusion: The blending of consumer and firm value in the distinct context of mobile technologies and social media. Journal of Service Management, 24(3), 268-293.
Leng, B., Du, H., Wang, J., Li, L., & Xiong, Z. (2016). Analysis of taxi drivers' behaviors within a battle between two taxi apps. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 17(1), 296-300.
Loudon, D. L., & Carter, T. (2013). Customer advisory boards: A strategic tool for customer relationship building. Routledge.
Lovelock, C., & Patterson, P. (2015). Services marketing. Pearson Australia.
Noulas, A., Salnikov, V., Lambiotte, R., & Mascolo, C. (2015). Mining open datasets for transparency in taxi transport in metropolitan environments. EPJ Data Science, 4(1), 23.
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.
Restuccia, F., & Das, S. K. (2014, June). Fides: A trust-based framework for secure user incentivization in participatory sensing. In World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM), 2014 IEEE 15th International Symposium on a (pp. 1-10). IEEE.
Shin, S., Lee, W. J., & Odom, D. O. (2014). A comparative study of smartphone user's perception and preference towards mobile payment methods in the US and Korea. Journal of Applied Business Research, 30(5), 1365.
Yang, S., Song, Y., Chen, S., & Xia, X. (2017). Why are customers loyal in sharing-economy services? A relational benefits perspective. Journal of Services Marketing, 31(1), 48-62.
