How to Run a Taxi Service: Work IN Your Business

One of the big mistakes taxi business owners make is not working "in" their taxi company. I am a huge proponent of working "on" your business and devoting a lot of time to marketing, acquiring customers and making sure that customers stick with you, but you also got to work in your taxi service.

Answer the phones. Drive a cab. Great thing about driving cabs is that you can talk to the customers. Most customers love talking to cab drivers. Use this opportunity.

Other businesses have to jump through a gazillion of hoops to be able to spend some time with their customers and learn what their customers are thinking about the business. We in the taxi industry are truly blessed - we don't have to do anything for it. Our customers are happy to talk to us. So talk to them!

Drive one of your taxicabs, introduce yourself and ask questions. Ask your customers how they feel about your taxi company. Are they being treated well by your drivers and dispatchers? Do those who bring you a lot of business feel appreciated by you for doing so? If not, what would make them feel appreciated? What are their priorities in choosing a taxi service? Talking to your customers you'll get tons of information that you'll never get from your drivers or dispatchers.

On average a good ball park figure is to be working 80% on your business, which means marketing your taxi business  and creating systems, and 20% in your business, which means doing technical work, seeing how everything is done, how everything falls into place, participating in it and making sure that all the things that you're doing marketing-wise work as supposed when it comes to implementing them.