The elements of success - good service and management - are simple. Getting them right is the hard part.
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Entrepreneur: Daryl Murrell, General Manager
Company: Bay City Cabs
Business type: Personal transport services
Founded: 1964
Turnover: $5M - $10M
Head office: Geelong North, Victoria
Contact details: +61 3 5278 9699
The Bay City Cabs Story
Any company that grows steadily in the same city for over 35 years clearly has a strategy for long-term survival. And it takes an especially good strategy to keep increasing market share and to post a 20% growth rate in taxi bookings for the 1998-9 financial year. Bay City Cabs has done all this within Victoria’s highly regulated taxi industry.
The origins of Bay City Cabs go back to 1964 when Gordon and Lorna Murrell got their first taxi licence. The current 80-strong fleet makes Bay City Cabs Australia’s largest privately owned and operated taxi depot. A Victorian Taxi Directorate-initiated survey published in 1999 rated Bay City Cabs the leading taxi service in the Greater Geelong Region.
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Key learning points:
- Decisiveness - Ensure your controlling body is dynamic, consultative and focused on the key business issues such as customer service.
- Support people - Surround yourself with good legal, accounting and marketing people. Help them get a feel for your business and how it works - then listen to them.
- Flexibility - In service provision, be prepared to change in line with your customers’ needs and wants.
- Innovation - Being the first to offer something new can help you permanently stay ahead of your competitors.
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What are its survival secrets? A decisive, focused board, good support staff, flexible services, and innovation that is tied to research and development.
As a family company that is completely controlled by its own board - rather than being a member of a co-operative of taxi owners - Bay City Cabs is a unique member of the taxi industry. Indeed, it was formed to avoid the group politics of the co-operative and to focus on the most important issues: customer service and response times.
The company has had the same business services providers since the late 1980s. Daryl Murrell, general manager, says: “In trying to keep a level head in how you go about your business, the people you surround yourself with are very important - your legal, accounting and marketing people - and them getting a feel for your business and understanding how it works. And listening to those people, because you can’t do it all on your own.”
The company tries to be as flexible as possible in meeting customers’ needs. Feedback from both staff and customers is important in service development. Murrell says: “If someone asks: ‘Why do you do that?’ you have to be able to answer why, and if [you] can’t then it’s immediately open to alteration. Because we used to do it doesn’t mean we still have to do it. You have to be very flexible and be prepared to change to be successful and continue on.”
Superior customer service is one result of a passionate commitment to research and development by management. Murrell says: “We are innovators in a lot of things in the taxi industry. Wherever possible we look at what is and see what we can do to make it better.”
Among the company’s numerous innovations are the world’s first cab pay-phone (1990), the first special purpose vehicles for clients with disabilities (1987), the first automated booking system (1991), and the first freecall booking number (1990).
The freecall number drew criticism when it was introduced in 1990. Murrell says: “We were howled down by the entire taxi industry as idiots. Our opposition took two years before they put in a freecall number. We picked up 25% more clients in that period and have never lost them.”