Greetings (and all protocol observed)

To SANTACO, the invitation by the South African Commuter Organisation serves just as another platform for us to express our principle position on customer care since the SANTACO presidential call on this matter in 2006.

We have lobbied our provinces and taxi operators countrywide to drastically re-look customer treatment and put in place measures that would express our appreciation of our customers, their loyalty and continued support to mention but a few. But allow me briefly Programme Director… to cite our history as a business and its impact on society.

The taxi industry was initiated as a community service to the black who came from poor background and could not afford the expensive but state subsidized bus and to some extend train modes to ferry them to their various destinations. The industry grow from that point as a result for higher demand for such a unique service that provided also convenience – something which neither the bus not rail could give even now. This also created divisions within this black owned sector and led to taxi groupings leading with different interests and objectives. In 2001 though, through a consultative forum the South African National Taxi Council otherwise known as SANTACO was formed. This formation of SANTACO as the principle mouthpiece of the taxi industry, was aimed at bringing all taxi formations under one roof to speak with one voice and one mind. To date, we have made strides to realizing this fundamental reason. But SANTACO also as the supreme body governing taxi business, has to ensure business growth and sustenance and we believe this achievable through developing good customer relations and projecting the taxi industry as a reliable and affordable mass transportation service that provides comfort and value for money to the client. Back to my point customer care;

It is for this reason that we as SANTACO openly supported the taxi recapitalization programme and further lobbied taxi operators countrywide to follow suit. In the press statement that we subsequently issued, we stated that this support was for the benefit of the taxi user who in this case was you the commuter. Our reason is that, we need as a business to continuously improve our service to ensure that the customer realize value for their money. This is the first part of our customer care strategy that we have developed. The second part is what is generally called customer relations management. SANTACO has redefined this to what is called “A shared customer depression” which simply means that we share customer frustrations and problems but equally we wish for our customers to help us in addressing these impediments taking note of the very history of the taxi industry I have mentioned here earlier. I say this purely because during such transitional phases, customer care never struck the taxi business and therefore commuters continued to experience ill treatment, frustrations and exposed to all sorts of derogatory situations.

Though we are taking a paradigm shift on this matter, we have since, called upon operators and drivers alike to smoothly change their attitude towards the commuter to see him/her as the main person who makes the taxi business grow.

Once we have thoroughly engaged with provinces and developed action plans with time lines, we hope to see more periodic interactions with commuters through person to person and questionnaires that will continuously influence our project plan towards realizing a satisfactory customer service. The planned customer contact centre, will collect queries, distribute and manage them efficiently to ensure they reach exact locations where challenges or problems exist will be installed. This will help to track areas of problems, improved customer service, other areas that may require different interventions and so on. It will create for us a better platform between the taxi industry and the commuters either through individuals or your South African Commuter Organisation. But further, training on driving, communication, first aid, etc are other considered measures to enhance our service because we believe that customer service go beyond just transportation and fare collection.

The Brandhouse driver competition is but just one move that we fully endorse through which we can source customer feelings of our drivers and how those considered the best really relate to commuters. This, briefly without really tabling a detailed document, is among other matters that are in the pipeline to revive customer values and instill better communication relations between them and us as a service provider.

I therefore believe that our commuters and SACO will support us greatly in our course to realize this through meaningful participation of projects and programmes that will be rolled in their localities. Remember that, we can only do what we have been told by you through these campaigns and any other thing may miss the mark of what we aim to achieve. This is your responsibility much as it is ours. So in support of who SACO represent, we a re saying real partnership between has started and should go beyond events like these. This will help us reassess our relations and the benefit is must hold for the commuter who uses a taxi every day for every trip s/he takes

Thank you.