SEATTLE — Yellow Cab Seattle is vowing to win back its customers from Uber with a multi-million dollar overhaul.
“It’ll take some time but we do believe that we can come back,” general manager Amin Shifow said.
The company, which has about 800 full-time drivers and 2,000 drivers altogether, said it lost about 20 percent of its business by the end of 2014, mostly to Uber.
Yellow Cab has launched a new app that allows customers to store a credit card and pay with it, just like Uber.
It’s also tossing out ancient computers Shifow said are at least 20 years old and were running the first program available for taxi dispatch.
The next system, he said, will cut response times in half, to 5 or 6 minutes.
He said about 800 drivers participated in customer service training at South Seattle College and all drivers went through company-specific customer service training.
“It was a wake-up call that we needed and it worked very well,” he said.
Last year, a KIRO 7 investigation found taxi drivers refused short trips.
The city recorded 466 complaints against taxis in 2013.
In 2014, it recorded fewer than 290.
Uber riders were optimistic about the changes, especially to the Yellow Cab app.
“I think my biggest complaint now is … when you’re going to pay with a credit card, you get a lot of ‘tude and it’s just kind of an inconvenience,” Laura Libby said. “I would totally think about switching.”
But Uber said it's not standing still. It's launched uberPEDAL-- an option catering to cyclists.
“You can put your bike on the back of the car. We'll have a car that’s outfitted with a rack specifically for it,” Uber Seattle’s senior operations manager Bryce Bennett said.
It's also currently testing a car pooling program in Los Angeles and San Francisco to split the cost of your ride.
“You get matched with someone else along the route that you're going and also get dropped off within five minutes of it as well,” he said.
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