Monday, April 4, 2016

The Fall of Malaysia's Taxi Business

Source: My Sinchew

Multiple protests from Malaysia taxis had been occurring since the existence of Uber and GrabCar. And we can no doubt to expect more protests to come in the near future as long as Uber and GrabCar continue to operate.

Since the rise of the Malaysia taxi's competitor, the Malaysia taxis finally feel that their boats are no longer stable. The wave had massive impact to them for now and future. Which is really obvious to everyone, regardless if they are taxi drivers, SPAD, the competitors or the customers.

The protest had turn out to be a great disadvantage to Malaysia taxis instead because it's too obvious that the protest is just a matter of showing dissatisfaction as a result of own incompetence.

The protest was done for the sole purpose of asking Uber and GrabCar to close down so that Malaysia taxis can monopolize the market again and everyone got no choice but to depend on the taxis. If this protest make any sense at all, isn't it going to work if I'm going to run an internet service provider company and I protest to ask Maxis, Celcom, Digi and all other service providers out there to close down so that I can monopolize the market? Of course this is going to be some of the largest jokes in the country as if we haven't had enough joke in this country.

Improving Service & Reputation: Practical but Not Possible

Needless to say, the protest bring the Malaysia taxis reputation further down to the abyss because the people had been forced to take taxi and there's no other choice when you need a temporary transportation by car and their dissatisfaction had been accumulating with no hope of seeing the Malaysia taxis to improve for more than 10 years.

When such competition appear, given that they are an ordinary business, they should put up some guts to compete and improve their service so that they can compete with the competitors.

But they don't think so. Rather than doing something practical and logical to compete and get back their customers, they go with the illogical and unreasonable method of protest and blaming on their competitors, as if that could somehow make their competitor go away.

Many still think that they should improve themselves rather than putting all the blame on others. Yes, that is the most logical and reasonable way of doing business. However, what I can see is they are doing the harder way to step deeper into the abyss and losing the reputation even more rather than improving when they have massive amount of obstacles to get back their customers to begin with. This is why, the fall of Malaysia taxis is just a matter of time.

If SPAD able to realize the important needs to change all these mindsets to be competence and improve so that they can at least maintain the business even if they are can longer monopolize the market, SPAD would face many obstacles in not just to convince the people to consider using their service sometimes, the taxi drivers also play a major part in making the business difficult to go on.

The Oldies are Difficult to Change

The communities of taxi drivers hasn't been a good one since the beginning. People in the society are too used to being ill treated in speech, attitude, and charging without taxi meter when they need to use a taxi. This has been a common issue to many people out there for uncountable of years but no one will ever be used to it and feel alright about it. And to make it worst, any sort of complaints since years ago doesn't have any improvement at all. More taxi drivers start to do the same instead of the other way round.

You know that when people are getting older, they will eventually more reluctant to change. They prefer things to be the same as always because that's something they had been doing since the past. They feel comfortable and adapt to it. They have a strong resistant to changing things as they age. If you ask the elderly or senior taxi drivers to change their attitude, be polite, and don't ever pick up customer without taxi meter..... I can only imagine and laugh at it.

Of course, given the current situation there are people who willing to do so because they see the needs of being competitive. But the taxis community is a huge one. When a large group of people unwilling to change and insist on doing the same way, many would follow. That's one of the major reasons of their downfall when they refuse to change their way of thinking but prefer to let their ego work things out and going to cause more protests to come, and further destroy their own reputation.

Lack of Real World Competitive Knowledge & Strength

Uber and GrabCar is a new business, and one of the great advantages of a new business is the flexibility of implementing new method & technology and changing of operation style compare to old businesses that had been operated for too many years.

I would say they did a good job to take advantage of mobile apps to add value into their business. Since most people nowadays have mobile phone and accessing the internet is not an issue at all, people can access to car transportation service with a few tap on the mobile device rather than standing beside the road and under the big hot sun and wait for taxi. And we know that even if we manage to find one taxi that willing to stop for you, they might reject picking you up due to their liking or offer unreasonable charges beforehand.

There are small amount of taxi drivers begin to take advantage of the mobile apps for such flexibility, but it's not going to be easy to change entirely because many people are too used to doing the typical way. I wouldn't bet on seeing Malaysia taxis trying to be competitive from the technology aspect.

Another great obstacle is to maintain the standard operation. For Uber, their method of picking up customers is written clearly and people should expect that as their standard operation. When people need to use Uber, they just need to tap on their device and look for Uber drives that willing to pick them up on specific location, get on board, reach the destination, get off, the charges will be calculated accordingly. You can even rate the driver if you want. And they are able to carry the standard operation as expected.

But for Malaysia taxis, it's hard for you to guess what type of charging method they are going to use on you because it's all up to their own liking. When you stop a taxi, you will be dealing with one of the possible charging method as below:
  1. Running on the taxi meter
  2. Offer you the preset charges and not using the taxi meter
  3. Using or not using the taxi meter but comes with additional charges from nowhere after the ride
If there is suppose to be a standard charging method, the most ideal one would be running on the taxi meter. But there is a huge problem. The taxi meter has many occurrence of being "malfunction" and there is no choice other than narrow down to the second option.

If SPAD able to fix on their standard of no charging method other than using the taxi meter and if the taxi meter cannot be used for some reason, the taxi driver cannot pick up any customers at all until the taxi meter is fixed, there is still some issues with this method.

Many taxi drivers who frequently targeting on tourist hot spots such as Petaling Street and KLCC can no longer earn as they want. These tourist hot spots are the places that are known to charging unreasonable costs and can go up to RM25-RM50 even for short distance. If the taxi drivers are force to use meter, the usual profits can be many times lower and we may expect taxi drivers to do another protest for SPAD to bring down this standard operation.

Thus, implementing new method or changing things in the usual operation can easily result in huge dissatisfaction among taxi drivers which make it harder for SPAD to take the appropriate steps to satisfy all factors. While it's not totally hopeless for SPAD to carry out new changes for a better future as long as taxi drivers willing to co-operate but as mentioned earlier, the resistant for the taxi drivers to change is another major issue. So.... too bad.

Job Seekers Found Better Opportunities for Uber & GrabCar

I don't have the statistic, but I can assume that lots of youngsters are not interested to be a taxi driver. Uber driver is much more appropriate, but definitely not taxi driver.

The thing about being a taxi driver is usually some of the last thing that parent can expect their child to do. The society's general perspective doesn't take taxi driver as one of the recommended job for the youngsters.

People in general don't think about being a taxi driver unless they have nothing but driving skill. There isn't much to talk about being a taxi driver for a low pay, minimal benefit, lack of career advancement kind of job.

But everyone love to talk about the benefits of being Uber/GrabCar driver and consider as one of the good choice of side income. One of the promising benefit is the flexibility to work whenever you want as long as you are able to achieve the least expected profit.

This is exactly what many people want because not everyone want to work full time on picking up customers, there are many people out there who prefer spend additional time for their personal stuff at their own preferred time.

How much you earn is depending on how hard working you are on picking customers, which is quite reasonable. But you don't have to try really hard to pick up on customer because it's all depending on customer to look for you, and the demand of calling for Uber and GrabCar is getting higher nowadays. So you don't really have to worry about difficult to get customer at all.

So, is this the end of Malaysia's Taxi Business?

Although the title of this blog stated the fall of Malaysia's Taxi Business, but we can't say for sure right now. It's been a known issue of the people general perception towards taxi and I could say most passenger would definitely choose Uber/GrabCar as long as they have clear idea between this two option. But there is still slight hope for Malaysia taxis to survive and go on.

Despite being the first time that Malaysia taxis need to deal with such large scale competitors, they had established their base in Malaysia for many, many years. Thus, there are still large population (especially the oldies, yeah...) used to taking taxis and don't feel like trying new thing.

Uber and GrabCar is depending on people's mobile device to obtain the service, this means the passenger must use their device in order to get the service. But taxis on the other hand is going all over the places for passengers. Although there are good and bad for this method, but doing so allow taxis to reach larger scale of passengers and throughout wider range of places. So in terms of number of passengers and territory, Malaysia taxis can still get an upper hand on this, just that it's for now.

By the rise of Uber and GrabCar popularity and passenger liking to choose them, this is definitely one impact that taxi drivers need to take serious consideration and carefully plan their way to pick the right decision to maintain their business in this society.

Perhaps they should start with fixing on the timing and organizing their protest if they want to perform any protest in the future so that they can avoid the future situation like this.
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