Despite the insurgence of third party taxi booking apps such as GrabTaxi, now-defunct Easy Taxi and Uber, back in January 2015, ComfortDelGro, announced an impressive 2.5 million app downloads. Following that, in November 2015, the company announced its 30th million booking through its mobile app.
Fast forward to this year, ComfortDelGro, the company behind a fleet of 17,000 taxis, has just announced another equally if not more impressive milestone, hitting its 10 millionth booking in a week last week. This is a combination of both the normal call centre bookings as well as bookings through its mobile app.
They were also quick to highlight another significant achievement, for having the highest number of successful booking jobs in a single day and in a single hour. It was an excess of 130,000 booking jobs in a day, and over 5,500 bookings every hour.
To commemorate the milestone, ComfortDelGro ran a promotion to thank customers.
On the 15 and 16 of April, the first 2000 customers who booked through the ComfortDelGro app using the code ‘10MIL’ received a $5 waiver to their metered fares. The waiver was only applicable to current booking jobs and was limited to one redemption per mobile number. Additionally, the company also waived the booking levy for their drivers for those two days.
ComfortDelGro Taxis CEO Mr Yang Ban Seng attributes the company’s success to three main factors, and the most important one would be the ComfortDelGro app, which accounts for more than half of booking jobs it receives daily. On top of that, it now has better dispatch algorithms and is actively embarking on various marketing promotions.
Mr Yang also acknowledged the continuous support that passengers and drivers have been giving to the company. He also mentioned that leveraging on their large taxi fleet and their active drivers, their two strengths, has helped them to better carry out their services to customers when making taxi bookings throughout the day.
We look forward to the next milestone by ComfortDelGro amidst growing competition in recent times. With the popularity of Uber and GrabCar coming into full attention of the authorities, and their drivers to be licensed by the first half of 2017, ComfortDelGro will definitely have to step up their efforts to retain their commuters.
