Home > How to completely take over a niche and how my local taxi firm is driving me mad

How to completely take over a niche and how my local taxi firm is driving me mad

I travel a lot, often times catching trains at the crack of dawn. So I rely on taxis to get me to the station in time for my train.

As it turns out, each time I book a taxi I get a bag of stress thrown in for free.

I’m not kidding.

When the sky is black, well before dawn, five minutes past the time I actually booked the taxi for, I’m standing at the roadside with my phone pressed to my ear, listening to the ring tone repeatedly as I run out of patience waiting for somebody at the local taxi firm to pick up the phone.

It’s become a running theme in my life, one that I don’t like one bit.

My local taxi firm is a joke, and I resent the fact that I depend on them because they are the only 24-hour service in town.

It’s a shame that their interpretation of the word ‘service’ means something entirely different from the dictionary meaning.

Not one morning goes by – when I have to wait for a taxi – that I don’t ring them.

What’s even more infuriating than waiting for a late taxi is ringing a phone that nobody picks up.

They do sometimes pick it up, though (bless them…) and invariably they tell me that the taxi is “just around the corner”.

In fact, come to think of it, the taxi is always just around the corner.

It’s a wonder then that it’s always bloody late…

In the past, I have actually arrived at the station late twice. Luckily for me on those two occasions, my train was running late (something about a rain drop on the tracks..)

And finally last week it all came to a head

My taxi was 10 minutes late and I was ringing repeatedly waiting for somebody to pick up.

Eventually somebody did, and I was told that my taxi was just around the…

That’s when I interjected and gave vent to some choice words about their service.

Sometimes, you just have to let somebody know how they make you feel.

Flowers didn’t quite cut it on this occasion, but that’s fine, because I wasn’t lost for words.

There is no reason why a taxi in a one-hourse town cannot ever arrive at my door on time at the crack of dawn, when the only other object to contend with on the road is a milk-float.

The fumbling buffoon on the other end finally admitted that they’d only just ‘got in to work, a bit late’ and that the problem was that the driver hadn’t been told about his pick up yet, because he needed to tell him.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

• The 24 hour service is not actually manned 24 hours…
• Drivers don’t get some of their pickups until somebody gets in first thing, and actually tell them..

My local taxi firm is a joke. Full stop.

Business takeaways

Shoddy service is one thing when there is competition. Your prospects will simply go to the competition and you won’t get the chance to upset people twice.

But when you’re the only one in town, you have a monopoly, and delivering a shoddy service is not going to win you loyal customers. They’ll put up with your service and resent you, and the moment a new competitor shows up, they’ll leave you.

Turning that around, if you’re entering a niche market and there is only one other competitor – and they don’t deliver a good service – you have an incredible opportunity to provide an excellent service and overwhelm the buyers in that market with excellence and quality, thus taking over  the entire niche literally overnight.

Anybody starting a taxi firm in my town, offering a decent, reliable 24 hour service, would completely take over the market. And guess who the happy early-mornign customers are going to call when they need a taxi during the day or evening? It won’t be the old taxi firm with the shoddy service…

Happy customers become repeat customers. Do things right and they’ll stay with you and recommend you to their friends. And that’s the most powerful form of marketing there is right now: personal recommendations from one person to another, within the same tribe.

Business tip: if your niche has few competitors – or even if there’s a limited number of buyers – you have an unprecedented opportunity to become the absolute best… because you have virtually no competition! And when you win over that small  fraction of the market, other fragments will follow as news of your excellence spread to other buyers in different segments of your niche.

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