With an acceleration of digital adoption within organisations, your software is your competitive advantage. What can your Chauffeur or Limousine company do, to ensure your company not only survives but thrives, in the post-COVID-19 world?
For a successful recovery, companies must bring a mixture of qualities to their plan, such as innovation, imagination, flexibility, and courage to take chances. This moment is one where business has a blank slate, it’s the time to strip down the business and reimagine what they do. The moment should not be squandered and those people who put in the effort now will be in a better position to confront the challenges and opportunities coming our way, this is the time to change.
Many opportunities will come out of the past year:
- A reduction of companies and owner drivers in the driving industry, leaving a shortage of high-end drivers and vehicles.
- The health crisis will leave a long legacy, people will have a fear of crowds and public transport for a long time to come.
- Although home working has dominated the media space for the past year, it is clear people are tiring of the isolation and lack of human interaction. There are also many issues that were initially ignored such as adverse effect on physical and mental health and lack of adequate, safe, and productive working space in a domestic environment.
- No-one knows how long it will be for confidence to return as regards to taking flights, this will result in a staycation boom for the next year or two.
Post C-19 customers will be different.
It is vital that companies try new ways of operating to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. Decisions should be made quickly and they should be adaptable and flexible. The old tried and tested strategy may not work in the future.
- There has been an accelerated shift to digital technology over the past year, it has always been on the increase, but this period has made adoption of digital tech necessary.
- Digital technology allows remote working, strengthens links to clients and colleagues, and allows a company easy and instant access to global markets, and by the same token global competition has easier access to our market.
- As your clients are adopting IT in their industries, they expect the same from you!
To keep their clients, companies need to stay close to their customers, and continually study trends taking place in the market. By finding out what customers new, evolving values are, means you can better exploit the possibilities, and offer tailored experiences based on these insights.
In the present situation, revenue recovery is most important issue.
To ensure a speedy return to pre-2020 revenue levels, you must identify and prioritise money-making opportunities, and make those ‘now or never’ moves. So making the changes before the recovery starts and before your competition does is crucial. And using your previous client lists are a good place to start, so why not keep in contact with your previous private and corporate clients:
- Create a personalised email campaign, to your corporate and loyal private clients to win them back. Focus on an enhanced customer experience that you can provide, detailing your health and safety credentials and what hygiene measures you have put in place.
- If you have CDS, you can Inform them of how you have an automated system for booking and tracking journeys, with a dedicated passenger App, and booking portals. There is renewed emphasis on customising client interactions, all online, while providing a personalised experience, taking into consideration their needs and preferences.
Your corporate clients will be under increasing pressure to look after the wellbeing of their staff. Contact them to see what they are doing and find out if you can help them by offering a tailored service, developing your service to your customers evolving requirements. Many companies will not want their staff to use public transport, so why not target them with promotions and gain their trust and loyalty, thus keeping you are the forefront of their mind. You can experiment by segmenting your client base and offering targeted campaigns, sculpting your product offering accordingly. You need to make sure you are constantly visible to your target market, and that you communicate frequently and clearly to them.
Keeping a close eye on how the recovery effects your client base, will help you determine how clients’ needs are emerging. For instance, will people start visiting pubs and restaurants at the first opportunity, and will they feel confident taking a flight. Giving the end customer what they want and not what you want to give them is the key, and to do this successfully you must have a deep understanding of your customer and their requirements.
Build your long-term advantage.
Adopting technology in your business, enables you to streamline your operation. It can have huge cost and time savings and gives you the relevant data you need to analyse your costs. Having all data to hand means that you have the figures available to make on the spot strategy decisions based on economic truth rather than just off the cuff.
Your IT platform should be cloud technology, the benefits of which is a small ongoing cost, there is no huge initial outlay on hardware. This allows a company of any size instant access to tools usually only available to large companies with huge IT budgets. If you do not have a cloud system it is time to decommission your old, out of date server infrastructure.
Kick off your stale operating model – now!
By acting now, you can create an enduring source of competitive advantage, if you are not doing it, you can be sure your competitors are. Kick start your ambition and capture the new opportunities as they arise, this is a new and exciting era.
At Chauffeur Drive Systems we will do everything we can to make your migration to our software as easy as possible, and if you are a first-time adopter, we are also very experienced in working with the least IT literate clients.
Give us a call to find out how joining our CDS community can benefit you, 01786 611299, send us an email at info@chauffeurdrivesystems.com or look at our website https://www.chauffeurdrivesystems.com.
