The emergence of Ola & Uber made one question why own a second car - and in many cases, why own a car. Both companies replaced the need to go out and hail a cab with a click on the phone. While the services are no doubt amazing, here are a few things I’d like to see them do to improve the experience even further. I’m sure I’m only one of many users who has suggestions. I'd love for others to add to this in the comments.

1. Please teach drivers to NOT have to call to get to the destination. That is the single biggest complaint all of us have. Incentivize them, motivate them, train them & penalize them. Nobody enjoys picking up a customer who is already pissed off. 

2. Privacy – embed calling out feature over IP (like WhatsApp calling) and not need to share my number with the driver and vice-versa. Voice-based calling should only be the backup. This will let you track whether the driver is actually using the GPS or calling and harassing the customer - also lets you record the calls for training and improvement purposes.

[BOTH HAVE SINCE IMPLEMENTED THIS FEATURE]

3. When no cars are available, log my request - alert me when cars are available over the next n (say 15 minutes) and book them for me automatically. Put my request in a Queue – take luck out of the equation. Just because no cars are available, doesn’t mean I don’t have to go someplace. Use your knowledge of where other cars are going to realize that a ride could soon become available - helps the driver & me.

[LOOKS LIKE UBER HAS SINCE IMPLEMENTED THIS FEATURE]

4. Deep calendar integration – what if you could (with my permission) pick up the location of my next meeting, compute drive time, alert me that cars are going to be in short-supply or traffic is bad today & allow me to book with one click.

5. Save my preferences – just tell me that the cheapest car available is Uber Black – why should I have to check 3 times?

6. Follow a ride – via the app – not in the browser. Deep Linking has been around for ages. When I do have the app, please send me a push notification to follow a friend - open it in the app. Allow me to call the driver if my friend needs me to speak to them.

7. Experiment more with pricing – not just by kilometers.

• How about 200 rupees, anywhere in BLR from 10am to 4pm?
• How about buy 10 rides in advance and get 2 for free?
• How about gift a ride?

8. Repeat customers could be treated with a lot more respect. How about a Post-paid model – you know my home, you know I have a credit-card, you know I've used your service 100's of times. If you know so much more about me – trust me! Let me make a weekly payment. There’s simply no need to hit my credit card after every ride – especially with the OTP mess in India.

9. Did I mention "intelligent" ride pooling? If you see 5 cars from my apartment complex in Whitefield at 7:30 am and heading to Koramangala every day don’t you have the opportunity to prompt the 5 of us with an option to ride-share?

10. SAFETY please – ensure seatbelts with a no-belt, no-charge policy. Its important for you as well to not have any risk of accidents and injury.

11. When you get dropped off at a destination, ask a question "Thanks for riding with us - will you be requiring your next car at this location?"

12. Integration with flight information so you can predict when I'm landing and keep a car ready for me at the Airport.

13. Integrate with Event Management systems to predict demand when an event is getting over - more drivers will try and hangout in that area at that time.

This might sound like a whining customer - but on the contrary, I love your service. I want to use it more and more - and such features would make the service more endearing to the core customer. After all I only think of you when I want to go someplace - not for Cakes or Vegetables or WiFi!

Kudos for getting this far – hope you can delight us further! Comments welcome!

About the Author - 

Sanjay Swamy is an Entrepreneur & Early-Stage Fintech Investor! #DigitalPayments & #Financial Services Fanatic! #IndiaStack_Evangelist!

This article was originally published on Linkedin