London minicab firm Addison Lee is on target to take £20m in bookings through its iPhone app in 2011, having received £1.4m through the app in June alone.
Bookings through its iPhone app now account for around 11% of Addison Lee’s total bookings, with more than 47,000 people having used it. Since its launch in January 2011, the app has achieved more than 70,000 downloads and brought in £10m worth of bookings, the company claims.
With a turnover of £80m, the iPhone app has added 20% to the bottom line in just six months.
Addison Lee IT director Peter Ingram said: “Most customers now use smartphones with GPS and we have seen a huge surge in demand for mobile app bookings. We have recently been testing our Blackberry and Android apps and getting very positive feedback from customers via Twitter, so we are confident that both new versions of the iPhone app will be a big success.”
The app allows users to enter their address via the phone’s GPS, which integrates with Google Maps and the taxi firm’s booking and despatch system to provide address verification, instant pricing quotes and allocates jobs to drivers.
“Around 99% of our iPhone bookings go through the system in an entirely automated process. The first human contact we have with the customer is when the driver says ‘Hello’ and opens the door for the passenger,” said Ingram.
