How one London-based car service thinks it can compete with Uber

The unstoppable rise of Uber, GetTaxi, and Hailo have turned London’s taxi market upside down.

After finally winning Transport for London’s blessing, Uber recently raised another $1.2 billion, piling extra pressure on existing local players including London-based transportation giant Addison Lee.

Addison Lee’s response has surprised commentators. Instead of racing to the bottom by competing on price, it’s made significant investments in its own tech, with a redesigned app and new API known as SmartEngine.

We caught up with Addison Lee’s head of product innovation, Nick Constantinou, to find out how his company plans to fight back against Uber.

How important is the new app to Addison Lee’s future growth?

As our customers needs have changed so have the ways you can book a car with us.

We complete 22,000 journeys a day on average, with that number reaching as high as 36,000 on our busiest days (namely, the build up to the festive season) and we recognise the app as a key part of our success since its launch in 2010.

Where do you see the market in London going? Will all of your jobs be booked on mobile?

Over 50 percent of our jobs are booked through digital channels; we only see this number increasing, especially in the mobile space. Mobile is the natural place for people to seek and book our services.

Since our inception we have been proud to build and grow our integrated technology offering and this doesn’t only mean a focus on smartphone and digital bookings. Our call center remains an important part of Addison Lee and as a tool it’s an effective way to process bookings and something we see as supporting online and app bookings rather than an alternative.

The market for taxi apps is getting increasingly crowded, how will you differentiate your service from the competition?

As the market and category grows, it’s important we maintain our focus and our own values. Of course we regularly review other competitors; we would be negligent if we didn’t. Our goal is to be the best, not the biggest.

There are key and influential points of difference that we, as an established provider of transport, bring to the market:

1. We offer a premium service through professional drivers who are screened, recruited, trained and supported at every turn.
2. We have built a 1,000-strong highly experienced team available 24/7/365 to look after you personally.
3. We are built on the latest technology and have been for years.
4. We offer fixed prices, 365 days a year (no surging vs. demand) with the ability to pre-book up to three months in advance.

There has been a lot of hype around Uber. Is its offering disrupting the industry? Or is it the same product in a different wrapping?

Uber has highlighted on-demand taxi services as a travel option that wasn’t in the forefront of everyone’s mind before.

The truth is we have been doing exactly the same for far longer and far better.

We have served Londoners for over 40 years with a breadth of knowledge and experience unmatched by anyone globally.

For us it’s the start of a new journey. With people like Uber, our view is bring them on in a good way. They are a slightly different business to us; we execute to a different service level, but the good thing for us is that everybody is excited because it’s shaking up and disrupting the category. As the category grows it will keep us on our toes.

People forget almost 60 percent of our journeys are for customers in the personal journey space. For us it’s about packaging up our strengths and making sure that people enjoy the difference in service and professionalism.

There’s enough of the industry for everybody to succeed and we’re excited to lock horns with them and review what we can do.

We’ve seen a lot of price competition lately. Is this a race to the bottom?

The problem with the bottom is that, well, it’s the bottom. If we can be more competitive on price we will of course review options. It’s a free market and we must be at least competitive.

This story originally appeared on Tech City News. Copyright 2014