Author: Lin Hongda (Business Weekly Issue 962: Two hundred professors and bosses lined up to name the athletes)
"If you want to take my car, you must make a reservation one week in advance at the latest ”. Zhou Chunming spread out his dense schedule and happily said that at the time of the interview at the end of March, his appointments had been scheduled until May. While other taxi drivers were still on the road hurriedly looking for their next customers, what troubled him was that they couldn't find time to take care of old customers.
He has a dense list of regular customers, including more than 200 professors and small and medium-sized enterprise owners. For example, Professor Liu Birong of Soochow Department of Political Science, who is busy taking classes all over Taiwan every day, and Li Jiren, CEO of National Taiwan University EMBA, are well-known. Scholars such as Shi Qiping, Ma Kai, Fu Peirong, and Yan Xinyong who once helped the financial industry guide etiquette.
Outstanding results: two hours less working hours and twice as much income. Zhou Chunming drives a three-and-a-half-year-old Ford Metrostar. The interior is a bit outdated and not as good as its counterparts equipped with GPS and LCD TVs. Wu Yijian, general manager of Huawei Fleet, estimates that an average personal taxi, driven at least 12 hours a day, does an average of 60,000 yuan in business a month. But Zhou Chunming, who does not have fancy equipment and works eight to ten hours a day, did more than 120,000 yuan in business last year and earned about 850,000 yuan a year.
With one car, he managed to create twice the income of others in less time. In the past, Zhou Chunming was no different from other people experiencing a mid-life crisis. He is 49 years old. Seven years ago, due to the downturn in the construction industry, he gave up his job as a plumber. He drove from Keelung to Taipei every day, and together with 30,000 other drivers, made money by stealing customers on the road. The competition is so fierce, Zhou Chunming is thinking about how to differentiate.
The first thing Zhou Chunming did that was different from others was to provide long-distance passenger services regardless of cost. For ordinary taxis, taking passengers to Hsinchu and Taichung involves the risk of returning empty, which is equivalent to making two trips to make money. Therefore, it is agreed that the cost will be passed on to the customer, and the price will be 50% higher than the jump table. But Zhou Chunming observed that this group of people are the most valuable business travelers. In order to stabilize them, he only increased the price by 17%.
Target long-distance business customers: Don’t pass on costs, win business with thoughtfulness. Zhou Chunming believes: "Caressing is the beginning of poverty." On the surface, his income per trip was lower than that of his peers, but he won the favor and trust of his customers and began to receive many long-distance orders. In particular, in his fourth year of driving, he drove a manager of a business management consulting company from the Science Park. The manager was so impressed by his considerate service that he took care of the long-distance business of transporting a lecturer from the business management consulting company to other counties and cities. Open up a key source of long-distance customers.
Since that year, his customers have gradually changed from individual travelers on the street to predictable long-distance business travelers. Looking through his driving records, he made 100 long-distance trips that year, but this year he is expected to make 800 trips. The greater significance is that it has opened up a large number of customers with predictable journeys. They are no longer taxi drivers aimlessly waiting for passengers on the street, and the empty rate has been greatly reduced.
A client told Zhou Chunming: "Novices care about price, veterans care about value. Only experts know how to use culture to create long-term competitiveness." Zhou Chunming picks up lecturers from business management consulting companies every day, including famous celebrities from various universities. Professors and senior business people absorbed the ideas of this group of elites and developed a set of standard operating procedures and customer relationship management (CRM) methods for managing the taxi business.
Understand customer preferences: customize everything from breakfast to conversation topics. Zhou Chunming said that before every guest gets on the bus, he must first understand who he is and what he cares about. If you make an appointment to drive the lecturer to Taoyuan Airport at five o'clock, he will ask the business staff of the business management consulting company the day before about the guest's expertise, personality, and even his breakfast and preferences. The next morning, he would wear a suit and wait for the guests downstairs ten minutes early. Like a retinue, he would hold the roof of the car and help the guests get on the car. There was already breakfast bought with my own money in the insulated bag on the back seat.
He even pays attention to the way he speaks to his guests. If he is a stranger, he will not strike up a conversation casually. He will wait until the guest has finished his meal before asking if he wants to take a nap, listen to music, or chat. "From his choices, you can tell how he is feeling today." If the other party chooses to chat, Zhou Chunming will prepare in advance and bring up interesting topics related to the guest's expertise. But political, religious and other business secrets of guests, he knew were forbidden areas of conversation and would actively avoid them.
Even when seeing him off at the airport, he has a standard way of seeing him off. "You can't say goodbye, but say have a nice journey." If you are sending a teacher to give lectures in other counties or cities, it is indispensable as soon as you get in the car. He prepared local specialty products and kumquat lemon tea to soothe his throat at his own expense. Zhou Chunming emphasized: "Differentiation means to achieve 101 points in service. You have to provide services that customers themselves can't even imagine to get that point."
He also has a customer book. The secret of relationship management details the preferences of all regular customers. There are as many as ten kinds of breakfast drinks alone. Some want tea, some want sugar-free Coke, and if you want coffee, how many packs of sugar and how many packs of milk? Fine, all must be precise.
Yan Xinyong remembers the first time he took Zhou Chunming’s car. When he got off, Zhou Chunming asked him why he didn’t use the rice burgers and coffee he had prepared. Yan Xinyong said that he only eats Chinese breakfast. From then on, whenever Yan Xinyong takes his car in the morning, there will be a set of hot sesame seed fried dough sticks on the car.
Through systematic management, he will try his best to provide tailor-made services to each customer no matter what music he likes to listen to, what snacks he likes to eat, or what he cares about when he gets in his car. He is like a personal chauffeur for the client. Yan Xinyong said that ordinary car rental companies cannot provide such customized services.
Redefine the role: not a driver, but a problem solver. Slowly, more and more people named him, and Zhou Chunming became busier and busier. He began to copy the standard operating procedures of the service to other drivers and use an enterprise-like approach to operate fleet services. "One time he said he couldn't come because he had an appointment, but he recommended a friend to drive me." Li Jiren recalled that as soon as he got in the car, although he changed the driver, there was no trace of what he should prepare, what he liked, and Zhou Chunming's service method. Not bad again on the new driver.
Now, Zhou Chunming has so many customers that he has seven or eight cooperating taxis. His value is not just a driver who carries passengers, but also gradually becomes a fleet owner who controls quality. He can transfer orders to exclusive fleets. With a fleet of vehicles, they can do more sophisticated services. Once, he took Zhan Jianxing, the vice president of Qiyi Company, to the airport. He managed to get through the Monday traffic to Taoyuan Airport, but the guest forgot to bring his passport. There was only one hour left to board the plane. If he drove back to get it, it would be too late. Zhou Chunming mobilized the fleet in Taipei to pick up the passport at the guest's house. He then took a shortcut from Bali to the airport and delivered it to the anxious deputy general manager at the last minute. superior.
There are more and more customers. In order to expand his business, he plans to enter university this year and get a degree in the service industry. Zhou Chunming said that his goal is to contract a large company like TSMC to provide fleet services. Faced with bigger plans, Li Jiren analyzed that Zhou Chunming's future challenge is that he must learn to operate in the form of a company so that he can replicate high-quality services in large quantities and expand into a larger market.
Zhou Chunming’s story is actually a good example of corporate strategy: he does not position himself as a driver, but as a solution provider. When the taxi product was already oversupplied, he repositioned himself as a private driver for a group of people, providing higher value-added services.
Zhou Chunming also has to compete with high gas prices, tickets, parking fees, and even high-speed rail, but his example proves that the service industry is an industry where software is more important than hardware. If you know how to position yourself, you will have opportunities