Hello, Amer here, minicabit’s founder and CEO. As we leave 2018 for what should be an eventful year, some highlights remain following a memorable 2017.
January – March
We started the year with a gong, winning ‘Best self booking tool’ at the Business Travel Awards, the first time we’d been nominated. The award recognised how, given over a quarter of our bookings are business trips, minicabit for Business makes it easy for companies of all shapes and sizes to easily book for colleagues and clients. Since we had recently launched our new look site which highlights how all our trips are ‘Backed by minicabit’, it was a nice start to the year.
Things took an interesting twist as we headed into Easter, with the ‘Beast from the East’ snowstorms hitting Britain. In many cases, getting from A to B was now via Z as customers across the UK needed a nice warm cab to get around. Fortunately, one of the many strengths of minicabit is its sheer UK wide reach via our network of hundreds of Cab Operators which are also available in the rural towns and villages, not just in major city centres. It was fantastic to see our Cab partners step up with many showing a Dunkirk spirit to help stranded customers, for example here. At the same time, our Customer Operations team performed admirably to help keep customers and Cab partners connected. But then, having supported cab bookings through tube strikes, airport shutdowns and marathons, we’re veterans in dealing with disruption!
April – June
As the longstanding, official cab booking partner for the likes of Heathrow Airport, London City Airport, Expedia amongst many other travel brands, we were delighted that Stansted Airport now offered minicabit. Our significant expertise in managing all the issues relating to airport transfers, as well as offering very competitive prices, has been built up over several years with even more to offer in this space this year.
For the third year running, we were proud to co-sponsor the annual UK cab industry event, PHTM Expo. As the annual gathering for the UK cab industry, it was heartening to see more Cab Operators around the UK embrace our mission to help them easily engage with customers in the digital age. Indeed, what you won’t see behind the online booking experience of our website and app is the considerable technology that minicabit invests to empower Cab Operators to easily service our bookings. From data analytics that enables a Cab firm to see how their pricing or drivers are performing, to integrating with Cab firms’ own office software, there’s a lot of tech unique to minicabit that enables the highest and lowest tech cab fleets across Britain to easily gain and support your online bookings.
July – September
Having enhanced our tech platform earlier to further spotlight the experience offered by our Cab partners, we were thrilled to see our Trustpilot score increase in response. Customer feedback is vital to the effectiveness of our online marketplace and so hearing what’s going well or where we can improve really makes our day! In fact, we listened to customer feedback requesting online chat with our Customer Operations team overnight and so we extended our live chat support to 24/7 over the summer.
Perhaps an even bigger thrill, at least for one member of our team, was them attending the England football team’s ascent to the World Cup semi-final. We suggested he wear minicabit-branded face paint in the stadium but settled for this instead.
As summer came to an end, we were delighted to partner with American Express to offer their UK card holders an exclusive time limited discount when booking with minicabit.
October – December
Having started the year with one gong, we were absolutely ecstatic to end it with another gong, again on the first time we were nominated! minicabit won ‘Digital Business of the Year’ at the 2018 National Business Awards, recognising our mission to help Britain’s cab industry thrive in the digital age. Given the UK is the largest cab market per capita in the world. the win spotlights how far minicabit can really go. To cap off another rewarding year, I was also delighted that minicabit came runner up for the inaugural ‘Team of the Year’ category at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards.
As always, none of this would be possible without the support of my hard working team, our suppliers, partners and above all, our Cab Operators and customers, so a huge thank you to all. When you see feedback like this, it’s an unbeatable feeling knowing our mission is truly having a delightful impact!
Finally, each year I look at the longest single cab trip taken via minicabit
2014 : Newcastle to London
2015 : Snowdonia (in North Wales) to London
2016 : Bournemouth to Leeds
2017 : London to Edinburgh
…and in 2018, it was from Cambridge to Glasgow!
Will the longest cab trip taken via minicabit in 2019 be yours?
