To understand the concept of on-demand businesses, you may need to perform some retrospection into traditional industries. The customers acquire services of taxis, beauty salons, delivery and logistics, home services by either meeting the service provider in-person or through a phone call.
In contrast, an on-demand mobile app allows customers to seek services at their doorstep by scheduling through a smartphone. It takes only a few taps on phone to access the desired services instead of going through the hassle of calls.
The two primary stakeholders gain a significant advantage through on-demand services.
Consumers belong to around 15 distinct industries. They are able to save time previously consumed in finding and acquiring a service. Research from multiple credible agencies confirms that the on-demand services are far more cost-effective than their traditional parallels.
Take a moment to think of the time saved by Grub-hub by delivering you food or a carwash service at the location of your choice.
On-demand services enhance brand value by allowing companies to stay connected with their customers.
Apart from established traditional businesses, startups are also growing rapidly in this sector. In the ongoing decade, the most number of startup unicorn emerged as a result of on-demand boom.
There are more than 15 on-demand industries excluding the sub-categories in these industries. However, the app for each of these industries has more or less the same features with few exceptions. Thus, you can have a comprehensive app with all of the indispensable features and customize it as per your business needs.
Moreover, the app modules for customers and your service agents vary. Thus, you may require two distinct apps.
Following are some of the essential features of an on-demand app.
Personal Accounts:
Each of your agents and customers should have unique accounts. These accounts enable them to retrieve their history including previous rides and ratings.
Personal accounts also allow customers to learn more about their service agents and the other way round.
Booking and Task Scheduling:
The app should enable users to schedule service of their choice. For instance, seeking a food delivery service requires customers to choose a restaurant. Logistics service requires picking between normal and urgent services.
Similarly, taxi apps allow users to select the vehicle type. In case of Uber, there are multiple options including UberX, UberXL, and UberSUV among others.
The features of booking for others and scheduling for later time are vital ones. They provide more flexibility for users by increasing choices at their disposal.
While booking the ride, the software should provide fare and arrival time estimation. Once the customer books a service, one of your nearest idle agents should be able to accept the ride. The dispatching of a suitable agent by admin will follow the acceptance because, at times, more than one agent wants to provide the service.
Furthermore, the app should offer promotional codes, particularly to frequent customers. Referral codes are also significant to increase the user-base.
Status Reports and Notifications:
The scheduling and arrival happen in a matter of a few minutes. Thus, it is advisable that the app pings notifications to keep the customer and admin updated.
Apart from ride details, the app should also notify the customers about discounts through in-app messages and email.
One notable feature available in very few on-demand apps is the info about connection strength. Customers can view the signal strength of drivers so that they may know the reason if agent fails to respond.
Communications and Ride Info Modifications:
The app must ensure direct communication between service agents and customers. There should be multiple channels for communications including messaging and phone call.
The customers can change their booking details at any time. However, the app should also surcharge them if a modification occurs after a predefined time limit.
This modification feature should offer cancellation option too. As with the case of Grubhub, Uber, doctor on-demand, the app should favor customers by not charging them if the problem emerges at the service provider’s end.
Navigation and Tracking
Both navigation and agent tracking are among the most distinguished capabilities of on-demand services.
Navigation allows the drivers or agents to adopt the shortest route to a customer’s destination. This ability does not only cut the arrival time but the cost of operation as well. An effective app uses multiple algorithms with various checks to plan the route for agents.
Tracking allows the customers as well as monitoring staff to find the location of agents in real-time. This GPS-powered feature has an error margin of less than one meter.
The absence of both route planning and agent tracking features in traditional businesses is the primary reason for their disruption.
Payment and Feedback:
It is unwise to leave customers with the only payment options of hard cash. The presence of POS machines is also an inappropriate solution considering the extent of advancement.
Mobile app provides the portability allowing the drivers to generate a digital invoice. Besides, they also enable customers to pay via in-app wallet or through another digital currency mechanism.
Furthermore, on-demand app increases transparency by allowing the app users on both sides to register feedback. The action on complaints ensures improvement in services by barring the trouble causing agents and users from using the app.
The above is a brief about On-Demand Mobile Apps. Watch this space for more updates on the latest Trends in Technology.