Business Operation of Ministry of Public Transportation

Discuss About The Smartphone App Evolution Early Understanding.

Bid Taxi is a proposed Taxi sharing service that aims at improving the ride sharing by considerably reducing the time required to book a service and enhancing the process of Taxi booking services. Bid Taxi makes use of a highly structured bidding service in order to provide the customers with the Taxi service in a best possible price. In order to book a Bid Taxi, a passenger needs to share certain details with the driver providers, which include, the destination, pick up point, the number of passengers availing the service and the time for pick up. These details are broadcasted to all the driver providers who are interested in bidding for the service (Bai et al., 2014). The passenger has the full authority to choose a driver from the list. The bidding takes near about 10 minutes and that is an average waiting time for availing the Bid taxi service. The Report discusses the business operation of Ministry of Public transportation, and recommends certain modification in the existing operation of Ministry of Public Transportation.

The Ministry of Public Transportation has provided a well structured business operation in order to provide a hassle free service to the customers. The payment that is to be made by the passengers includes the toll cost as well (Wang, Cheu & Lee, 2014). The services provided by the Bid Taxi are very secure as the entire journey is tracked with the help of GPS. One of the major advantages of availing the Bid taxi service is that the customers can book for a ride with the help of a smartphone application.  The business operation of the Ministry of Public Transportation is discussed in the following paragraphs-

 In order to ensure that the passengers who are availing a Bid Taxi will have a safe journey, the vehicles and properly checked. The Ministry of Public Transportation only allows the certified drivers to engage with the Bid Taxi services (Wan & Chen, 2012). Therefore, the customer safety and security is the primary concern for the Bid Taxi application. This further helps in gaining the trust of the customers, which in turn indicates that more passengers would engage with this service in future.

One of the main business operations of Bid taxi is to provide the customers with an easy option for booking for a taxi service. The Bid Taxi service enables the users to book the taxi through the mobile application which is faster and simpler. Moreover, the users who do not posses Smartphone can book the taxi through the website of Bid Taxi. Majority of the people in recent times have an access to Smartphone and therefore, it will be easier for the passengers to book for the taxi services.

Advantages of Bid Taxi Service

In order to make the services more transparent, the Ministry of Public Transportation has incorporated a star rating system in it business operation. With this system, the passengers and the drivers are allowed to provide a rating for the services availed. This rating system is an integral part of offering tailored services to the passengers (Seesan, Rungkasiri & Cooharojananone, 2012). The ratings provided by the passenger will enable the Ministry of Public Transportation in improving their business operation. Based on a positive feedback, a driver can be rewarded while a negative feedback by a passenger can help in removing the incompetent drivers from the system.  The rating for the drivers and the customers can be provided through the online ID of both the passenger and the driver.

In order to encourage more passengers in engaging with the Bid Taxi services, a service loyalty scheme is proposed where the customers will be rewarded for the services availed. These reward points can be used by the customers as a discount in the next ride. The passengers can further use the reward point as a tip to the drivers or can donate it to the charity as well. This customer loyalty point is therefore expected to increase the customers’ engagement with the Bid Taxi services.

One of the major advantages of the customers in availing the Bid taxi service is the ease of payment. The customers are allowed to make the payment with the help of their debit or credit cards according to their convenience (Pueboobpaphan, Indra-Payoong & Pueboobpaphan, 2018). Bid Taxi furthermore, offers an option for making a payment using the Osko application, which is one user friendly mobile payment applications. The Osko payments will be held by the Bid Taxi office. Therefore, the Bid Taxi services offers a secure platform for the customers for making the payment, which further helps in gaining the trust of the customers. Customers’ satisfaction and trust is an important consideration for a business and therefore, it is a major business operation by the Ministry of Public Transportation. Bid Taxi works on providing a satisfactory service to their clients which is very essential for flourishing the business. With the number of benefits apart from easy booking and easy payment, the business of bid taxi is expected to flourish in no time.

Along with the customers’ loyalty scheme, the drivers and the driver providers are also rewarded once they complete a previously set target of time and distance. The rewards are given in form of the fuel discount and the gift cards offered by the company. This is an intelligent business operation of Ministry of Public Transportation as it is expected to increase the engagement of more driver providers with the service (Maciejewski, 2014). Furthermore, the drivers will have a tendency to provide a god service to the passengers with an interest to achieve more reward points for the services provided.

Recommendations for Service Improvement

These are some of the critical business operations undertaken by the Ministry of Public Transportation in order to achieve the goal set by the company (Agussurja & Lau, 2012). These business strategies ensure more customer engagement with the service thus increasing the profit gained by the Ministry of Public Transportation for providing the Bid taxi services. However, the existing business operation can be improved by bringing in certain modification and addition in the offered by the Bid Taxi (Lucas & Lau, 2012). Some recommendation for improving the business operation is discussed in the following section.  

The Business operation of Bid Taxi and Ministry of Public transportation can be improved by bringing certain changes in their operation. The major three recommendations for improving the Bid Taxi services are as follows-

1. Bid Taxi can upgrade their services a bit by further reducing the waiting time for Taxi booking for proving services to the passengers who are in a hurry. This can be achieved by bringing in an option of pre booking of a Bid Taxi service (Maciejewski, 2014). A pre booking charge can be claimed for this service or can be made free for regular customers. This in turn is expected to increase the customers’ engagement with the service. The minimum bidding time can further be reduced from ten minutes to five minutes as an improvement to the existing business operation.
2. In order to further improve the services offered, a feedback system can be introduced along with the star rating system. This will help the authorities in improving the services on basis of the customers’ reviews. Presence of a customer support can be an addition to the feedback system. The customer support system is expected to resolve the queries of the passenger 24*7. Both the feedback and the customer support options can be accessed by the customers from their registered ID. The use of customers’ feedback in order to tailor the service offered to them is a technique to customers’ satisfaction. This in turn will encourage more customers in availing the Bid taxi services.
3. Customers’ security can be enhanced by incorporating certain security measures in the existing services (Inquiry, 2012). Although the vehicles are properly checked, it is essential to provide an option to the passenger to abort the service if any difficulty is faced in the journey. Presence of the report button in the Bid Taxi application will enable the passengers in reporting any problem faced in the journey (Haque, Chin & Debnath, 2013). Since the entire journey will be tracked using GPS it will not be difficult to track the vehicle of the passengers who are asking for help.

The above recommendations are made on basis of the operation of Bid Taxi and the services it offers to the clients. Implementation of these modifications is expected to improve the business operation of Bid Taxi.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be deduced that, the current operation of Bid Taxi is expected to engage a large number of daily passengers and driver providers to their service. The report gave an overview of the existing business operation of Bid taxi and the service it is capable of offering. Certain recommendations are made on the existing operation of the Bid taxi service, which will further improve the services offered.

The Bid Taxi application tends to improve the facilities it provides to the customers so as to attract more customers thereby increasing its business. There are various recommendations for the Bid Taxi application so as to increase its profits and expand its business.

The Bid Taxi application requires drivers with a proper knowledge of the aspects of driving the vehicles. Thus, it is highly recommendable for the company to enhance their skills so as to enable them to understand and cope with the technological enhancements such as the Global Positioning System and the utilization of smart phones. Therefore, it becomes extremely essential for the company to train the drivers so as to facilitate the easy usage of the technological advancement by them. Moreover, the drivers should also be trained so that they could have a clear understanding of the software system. Moreover, the company should also incorporate proper techniques to deal with the customers as the well trained drivers ensure that the journey for the customers is smooth and safe (Shaheen, Cohen & Martin, 2017). This can be attained through prolonged period of time.

 Moreover, during the training period the drivers should also be provided with some real time driving activities under the guidance of the leader such that they could posses a clear understanding of the task that they need to perform. Other than the above stated training factors, the company should also take the leverage to train the drivers how to pick and bid for the journey. They should also be trained to enter and review the feedback in their online ID. Moreover, they should be trained to access the online Id and also state any grievances faced by them and also rate the users. These factors should be undertaken by then by the company and be dealt with seriously and for a longer duration of time (Angrist, Caldwell & Hall, 2017).  It is highly recommended that there should be an in depth training regarding the utilization of the application from picking up the customer to the receiving of the feedback of the consumer after dropping them to the respective location. This would lead to increase in employment as well due to large number of drivers getting engaged in the profession.

The incorporation of the relaxation techniques in the can system would lead to increased customer satisfaction as it would keep them entertained and would also kill their boredom. Thus, it is highly recommended to implement the free WIFI system for the customer as it will keep the consumer engaged in case the cab gets struck in the traffics (Singh, Teng & Netessine, 2017).  The introduction of the prime play in the Bid Taxi application also enables the customers to spend time without getting bored when struck in traffic jams. Moreover, access to various other applications can also be imparted so as to facilitate customers in trip entertainment and there by gaining the attraction of new customers. This would further help the company to gain huge amounts of profits. 

References

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Angrist, J. D., Caldwell, S., & Hall, J. V. (2017). Uber vs. Taxi: A Driver’s Eye View (No. w23891). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bai, R., Li, J., Atkin, J. A., & Kendall, G. (2014). A novel approach to independent taxi scheduling problem based on stable matching. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 65(10), 1501-1510.

Haque, M. M., Chin, H. C., & Debnath, A. K. (2013). Sustainable, safe, smart—three key elements of Singapore’s evolving transport policies. Transport Policy, 27, 20-31.

Inquiry, T. I. (2012). Customers first: service, safety, choice. Draft Report.

Lee, D. H., & Wu, X. (2013). Dispatching strategies for the taxi-customer searching problem in the booking taxi service. In Proceedings of the Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting.

LUCAS, A., & LAU, H. C. (2012). Toward large-scale agent guidance in an urban taxi service.

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Maciejewski, M. (2014). Online taxi dispatching via exact offline optimization. Logistyka, 3, 2133-2142.

Pueboobpaphan, S., Indra-Payoong, N., & Pueboobpaphan, R. (2018). Information Effect in Taxi Service Double Auction with Opportunity Cost: An Experimental Analysis. Engineering Journal (Eng. J.), 22(1), 77-91.

Seesan, R., Rungkasiri, T., & Cooharojananone, N. (2012). Taxi Friend: Innovation Application For Taxi Passenger.

Shaheen, S., Cohen, A., & Martin, E. (2017). Smartphone App Evolution and Early Understanding from a Multimodal App User Survey. In Disrupting Mobility (pp. 149-164). Springer, Cham.

Singh, J., Teng, N., & Netessine, S. (2017). Philanthropic Campaigns and Customer Behavior: Field Experiments on an Online Taxi Booking Platform. Management Science.

Wang, C., Ng, W. K., & Chen, H. (2012, July). From data to knowledge to action: A taxi business intelligence system. In Information Fusion (FUSION), 2012 15th International Conference on (pp. 1623-1628). IEEE.

Wang, H., Cheu, R. L., & Lee, D. H. (2014). Intelligent taxi dispatch system for advance reservations. Journal of Public Transportation, 17(3), 8.