BAT.TAXI: Why Isn't There a CRM Built for Cabbies?

For licensed London Hackney drivers. UK-only.

"CRM" is one of those words you'd have heard, but probably didn't know what it meant until you looked it up (well, that's what I first did).

Anyway, if you type "CRM" into Google, it's marketing-speak — it stands for "Customer Relationship Management" — used by dentists, sales managers, insurance brokers, and the kind of person who calls a conversation a "touchpoint".

You, me — we did the Knowledge, and the only marketing-speak we ever needed was "Where To, Guv?" ("WTG") — because all we needed to know was where our customer was going, then we'd take them there.

Whilst the "WTG" served the trade well for hundreds of years, changes in technology and customer behaviour have meant there are fewer WTG customers — simply because they're using technology more and more.

So how does an independent, self-employed "WTG" cabbie turn themselves into a modern, 21st-century taxi service — one that gives every one of their customers the same service the taxi apps provide, but where the driver is in control of the Customer Relationship Management, not the apps? Look no further.

BAT.TAXI gives every driver their own taxi app with a built-in CRM tool that remembers your customers. What they last booked. When they last rode with you. How to reach them. Which of them tip well, which of them are always late, which of them you'd happily take to Heathrow at 4 AM and which you'd really rather not. That's how to modernise a taxi service and give your customers what they really want.

You probably already keep some of this in your head. A handful in your phone. A few notes scribbled on the back of a receipt pad. The question this post is about is: why isn't there a real one for cabbies — yours, not the apps'?

As stated above — there is one now. This post is about it.

Where your customer data actually lives — and who pays who

Before BAT.TAXI there was no "taxi driver CRM" built for the cabbie because, for the last fifteen years, the taxi apps have been the de facto CRM for the trade. Every fare you do via an app puts a customer in their database, not yours. Every fare you do via an app pays the app a commission — around 29% on average on the leading UK ride-hail platform per Oxford / Worker Info Exchange research from June 2025, with rates exceeding 50% in some cases — and the app keeps the customer record forever.

That's a CRM, but until now it belonged to somebody else.

The Google search results bear it out. Type "taxi driver CRM" and the first page is software built for fleet operators, app platforms, ride-hail businesses — anyone whose customer is the company, not the cabbie. The driver is a user account inside the system. The customer records belong to whoever's holding the data. A driver leaving doesn't take anything with them. The platform reassigns the customer to whoever's next.

That's not a CRM for the cabbie. That's a CRM for the platform — with the cabbie listed as a resource.

The platforms aren't doing anything wrong by their own standards. Their business model depends on owning the customer relationship; they couldn't hand it back to the cabbie without dismantling the value they extract. That's how the modern taxi-app industry has been built since around 2010. And it's why the "taxi driver CRM" search returns nothing actually for the cabbie.

What changes when the cabbie is the customer

BAT.TAXI is built around a single inversion: the licensed cabbie is the customer. The platform is the agent. (HMRC's own VAT manual VTAXPER77100 already frames the legal relationship this way — "cab firms can act as agents for drivers". We just built software that matches.)

And it's a pre-book only service — minimum one-hour lead time between booking and pickup. That's the structural reason any of the below works: the lead time is what makes it possible for the cabbie to actually be there for the customer, or to arrange a Co Driver who can. Without it, the whole Driver-As-Agent model collapses (a cabbie can't be in two places at once). The model has been manually proven for eighteen months before the platform launched; this isn't a hypothesis.

That sounds abstract. What it means in practice:

• You sign up with your own account. Not a seat in someone else's account.
• Every customer you invite is on your list. Not the firm's list. Not BAT.TAXI's list (we'll come back to that). Yours.
• Every job you do gets logged against your customer. You can see this. You can search it. You can sort it.
• Your data exports. Spreadsheet, CSV, whatever you want — the entire record of every customer, every quote, every booking and every agreed fare.
• And the proof point: cascade deletion. If you ever leave BAT.TAXI, your customer book — every contact and all booking history — is cascade-deleted from the system, and your passengers are notified. We don't keep your customer book, we don't sell it, we don't poach it. It's irreversible — so export your records first; keeping records for your licensing authority is your responsibility, not ours. Walk out and your customers walk out with you.

That last point is the structural test of whether a system is really yours or really theirs. Every taxi app keeps the customer data when the driver stops using the app — because the data was always theirs. We delete it — because it was always yours. Different category of product.

How the BAT.TAXI dashboard actually works as your CRM

You don't need to know CRM jargon to use it. The dashboard is built around the four things a cabbie actually does — fielding the message, quoting the job, doing the work, and remembering the customer next time.

The message centre is your inbox for every customer interaction. Quote requests, confirmations, follow-ups, the "are you free Friday?" message from a regular. One feed, threaded by customer.

The customer record is what most cabbies have only ever kept in their head. A row per customer. Name. How they came to you (which QR code, which invite). What they've booked. The fares you agreed. Their preferred pickup.

The ratings and feedback system lets your customer rate you — and rate any Co Driver who covers a redirected job for you, so you can see how well your customer was looked after (the Co Driver doesn't see it). The kind of feedback the apps keep for themselves — here it's yours.

The Co Driver redirect is your safety net for when you can't take a job. When a regular messages you while you're on holiday, at a hospital appointment, or simply asleep, you choose to offer the job out to a trusted Co Driver in your network — completed on your terms, same price, same conditions. The customer is served. The relationship stays yours.

The pause-invites feature is the bit that makes scaling sustainable. When your book is full enough, you turn the inbound invites off. Existing regulars keep messaging you; new sign-ups stop. You're never in the position of having to disappoint someone because word got out.

This is what "CRM for the cabbie" actually means. Not enterprise software with five hundred features you'll never touch. The same handful of things you already do — built into a tool that remembers them properly.

Side-by-side: the taxi apps' CRM vs the cabbie's CRM

A quick comparison. This is the difference that matters.

The last row is what makes every other row true. Whichever party pays for the software is the party the product serves. The taxi apps were paid for by venture capital chasing platform economics; BAT.TAXI is paid for by the cabbie. The products work for whoever's holding the cheque.

Data ownership, GDPR, and what we actually do with the records

Worth being plain about this, because cabbies have heard a lot of vague software-vendor language about "your data" over the years.

Under UK GDPR, when you collect a passenger's contact details to deliver them a quote and a ride, you are the data controller. BAT.TAXI is the data processor — we hold the data on your behalf so the system works. You decide how long it's kept and whether a particular customer should be deleted. We don't sell it. We don't profile it. We don't aggregate it into a marketplace pool. We don't share it with other cabbies. None of it goes anywhere except your account.

If a customer ever asks you to delete their data (which is their GDPR right), the system has a one-tap delete. If you ever close your BAT.TAXI account, that same cascade delete clears your entire list — after a 48-hour window in which you can cancel — the technical proof that the data was always yours.

This isn't a marketing claim. It's how the product is built.

Why this matters before driverless arrives

Brief detour, but worth flagging — and the Waymo post covers it in depth.

In a driverless future, the journeys that still need a human cabbie are the ones with a relationship attached. The wheelchair regular. The hospital regular. The 4 AM Heathrow regular. The post-night-shift nurse you've picked up for two years. Those aren't relationships an algorithm can build — but they are relationships an algorithm can steal, if you don't have them on a list that's yours.

A CRM that's actually yours — yours when you join, yours when you leave — is the prep for that change. Without it, the asset that survives Waymo doesn't belong to you.

What it costs

Same two options as the rest of the BAT.TAXI platform. The CRM features above are the full BAT.TAXI platform — they're not a separate "CRM add-on".

• Platform Only: £4.99 a month - cancel anytime, or £39.99/year. UK rollout cities + international. Digital only.
• Driver Pack (London-only soft launch): £99 first year (marketing pack + platform included free); £39.99/year from Year 2. Includes everything in Platform Only plus the physical in-cab marketing materials and the Airport Pricing dashboard feature. (Read about the Driver Pack.)

For context, the taxi apps take around 29% in commission on average per fare on the leading UK ride-hail platform (Oxford / Worker Info Exchange, June 2025) — with some fares attracting over 50%. That's the bill you pay for the apps to hold your customer database. BAT.TAXI is the bill you pay to have your own database — £4.99 a month, cancel anytime — flat, no matter how many customers, ten or one thousand. And it cuts both ways: every customer you sign up gets their own app to book you, linked only to you (no other driver is ever connected to your customers), the passenger app is free to them, and you can add as many as you like for the same flat fee.

FAQ

What's a CRM in plain English? A system that remembers your customers. What they've booked, when, the fare you agreed, how to reach them. Not specific to taxi work — every business that has repeat customers uses one. Most cabbies have been doing the same thing in their head and their phone for years; BAT.TAXI is the proper version of that.

Do I need to be technical to use it? No. If you can use WhatsApp and a calendar, you can use the BAT.TAXI dashboard. There's an info button on every function for when you want a quick explainer.

Can I export my customer list? Yes. Anytime. CSV or spreadsheet. The full record of every customer, every booking, every agreed fare.

What happens to the data if I cancel BAT.TAXI? When you close your account, your customer book — every contact and all booking history — is permanently deleted and can't be recovered. (You get a 48-hour window to cancel first.) We don't keep your customer book — the only thing we retain is the minimal information the law requires, never used commercially and only ever disclosed on an official, documented request from the licensing authority or law enforcement. So export all your records using the download feature in your driver app before you close — keeping them is your responsibility, not ours.

What about GDPR? You're the data controller. We're the processor. We don't sell, profile, aggregate, or share the data with anyone — including other cabbies. Each customer has a one-tap delete right that you can action from the dashboard, or that we'll handle if the customer contacts us directly.

How is this different from just keeping customers in WhatsApp? WhatsApp is your inbox. BAT.TAXI is your inbox plus a proper booking record (TfL-compliant for pre-booked work), plus a customer profile with booking history, plus the Co Driver fallback, plus airport quoting, plus invite QR codes, plus the pause feature, plus the ratings system, plus the cascade-delete promise. WhatsApp on its own can't generate a booking record TfL would accept.

Is there a free trial? The Platform Only tier is £4.99 month-to-month — cancel any time. That's the trial equivalent. You can be live the same day you sign up, and walk away after 30 days having spent under a fiver if it isn't for you.

What if a customer asks to be removed entirely? One-tap removal in the dashboard, with a 48-hour window to undo it if it was a mistake. After that their personal details are permanently deleted; only anonymised booking history is kept for your own records. GDPR compliant.

Ready to own your customers — properly, in a system built for you? Join the London Taxi pre-launch waiting list →

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