Coventry Connections is in the process of bringing “app technology” to its taxi service. Once installed, customers will be able to virtually hail a cab, track it via GPS and pay for its services.
Ottawa’s taxi industry is about to undergo a major overhaul in the way it does business.
Coventry Connections, which operates all of Ottawa’s taxi fleets, including BlueLine, Capital, WestWay and DJ’s, has recently announced that it has installed cutting edge “app technology” into virtually all of its 1,180 cabs.
Such technology will allow customers to order and track the progress of their taxi from their smartphones.
“This move is all about making it very convenient for people to use our taxi services,” says Coventry Connections president Hanif Patni.
The new technology is long overdue in the nation’s capital. For many, Ottawa is viewed as being behind when it comes to its taxi services. Of Canada’s top five cities, including Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary, Ottawa is the only city that has not integrated app technology into its taxi fleets.
The app being used by Coventry Connections is called TaxiHail and has been developed by the Mobile Knowledge firm located in Kanata.
“It’s a simple app: you just download it, create a profile and order a taxi,” says Travis Gray, director of marketing at Mobile Knowledge. “Then you can sit back and track your cab as it makes its way to you.”
A common complaint about Ottawa taxi services is that after ordering a cab, the customer is left with little idea as to whether or not it will actually arrive. The BlueLine fleet promises that a cab will be at the customer’s destination within “five to 15 minutes” but doesn’t contact the customer if it has been delayed or diverted.
Now, thanks to TaxiHail’s GPS technology, customers will know exactly where their cab is and when it will arrive at the location.
Patni says the app will provide other benefits to the passenger.
“More of our customers want taxis to be waiting for them,” Patni says. “But often they are in meetings, at school in a lecture, or are in a place where they can’t actually pick up a phone to order a cab. Now, they don’t have to.”
The new technology will not only be an advantage for passengers, either. According to Gray, TaxiHail will be crucial in cutting down the number of times customers bail on their order and flag down a different cab.
“When you use the app to book a taxi, there is a sense of ownership involved,” Gray says. “The passenger sees that they have been assigned a specific cab, they are shown who the driver is and can track his or her progress. They feel wedded to that driver and will be less likely to jump into another taxi.”
The app is being tested.