How do you lose a customer before you even have a chance to do business with them? For my brother, it’s putting him on hold three times when he’s trying to book a taxi to the airport for a 7 AM flight. He was considering using a taxi service, the traditional route where he would call ahead and book. But he felt that he would have a better chance of getting an Uber at 5:30 AM in Miami for the short trip and at that time in the morning, he just wasn’t much in the mood for talking. And although he went the taxi route, he never really got the chance to talk anyway. 
Customers don’t think of channels. They think about their goal and take the path of least resistance and most comfort to achieve it. Businesses need to ensure the channel provides a path that’s simple and intuitive so that a new customer is able to reach their goal. Interestingly enough, my brother used to drive a taxi and the only way that he knew how to engage with the taxi service was to call them and this resulted in three calls in 5 minutes, each time getting put on hold by the operator. Frustrated, he said he’d be fine the next morning with Uber and he was right.
All over the world, we’ve seen Uber take significant business away from the established taxi industry. This is due in part because of technology and part because of Uber’s ability to offer their service outside of the significant regulations that govern taxis. The key takeaway for me has been taxi services (like many entrenched industries) became complacent and did not invest enough in innovation, especially on the customer interaction side to fend off such an attack. The macro product that taxis and Uber offer is essentially the same, getting you from one destination to the other, but the entire customer journey to deliver the service is what separates the providers.
While I concede that Uber has the advantage of offering one method of interaction worldwide (so that there’s no difference in booking a ride in Miami or Krakow), the taxi industry could have easily kept this competitive threat at bay by going one step further: offering booking through Interactive Response over voice (IVR) or text (ITR). Using ITR, my brother could have provided the almost-used taxi service an address he wanted to be picked up from (or used location services), the pickup time, and the destination and then been given a confirmation receipt over SMS – just like Uber does. The next morning a text could be sent to confirm that he still needed the ride and told him the name of the cab driver and the car number. No app to download, no credit card to confirm. Just a simple interaction that helped him reach his goal: get to the airport.
Like my brother, this type of innovation is what customers are beginning to expect and they will hold you accountable if business as usual, isn’t usually great.
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