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Would you trust a 3D self driving, luxury mini-bus for hire?

Not a month goes by without some advance in modern day technology hitting the news. Last month though, it was something that we were keen to discuss at length internally and maintain a relevance to our brand and service offering. This wasn’t a drone, a hovercraft or self driving Tesla that can do speeds of over 100mph, it was a self driving mini-bus.

Olli, a self driving car that ‘can be 3D printed in a matter of hours and will even talk to you’ had the press going wild at the prospect of travel being completely revolutionised. Would you trust a self driving minibus that’s been mass made, not in a factory or by hand, but using a 3D printer? We wouldn’t. Not yet, anyway. Just a few weeks after the Olli was recognised worldwide, a Tesla driver was involved in a fatal crash that Tesla’s autopilot feature failed to prevent. There are arguments to say that Tesla’s autopilot is considerably safer than a human driver due to the significant reduction of potential error; tiredness, road rage, distraction or intoxication are all things that a computer won’t succumb to.

Quality of Service

With that said, what about the quality of service? As a company that pride themselves on the one on one interaction we have with our customers and the rapport we’ve built up with our long term customers, it would be a shame to see that lost to what is essentially a robot.

A good example is Apple’s Siri, A revolutionary feature on the modern day smartphone that can accurately answer most generic questions that you throw at it and can even have some ‘banter’ with you that is of course very limited. An impressive gadget but, is it anything like a human? We’re afraid not.

A Respected Coach Company!

Since starting MET Coaches back in 1995, the world has changed so much and a lot of the time it’s not been for the better. The idea of good, old fashioned customer service and employees that give a lifetime of service to their company has long been forgotten. If road’s need tarmacing, there’s a machine that will do most of the work. If people need to order food in Mc Donald’s, it can now be done on a touch screen wall mounted device. If people are looking to travel abroad, a website online will no doubt do it for you. Our world is dominated by people looking to get things done as quickly and as cheaply as possible, where’s the emotion? If we want life to move fast and be cheap, then we might as well be robots because that doesn’t factor in the human’s ability to feel emotions both good and bad.

The trusted high street travel agent that would handle all of your travel needs is slowly disappearing from the high street. The need for a large workforce to manually lay a road or lay down grass on fields has been eliminated, the need to use humans to build cars or even drive them is being wiped away in front of us and yet we seem to just accept this as progress and move on. Yes, it’s much cheaper this way. Yes, it’s much faster this way. But, it’s not more fulfilling and certainly doesn’t put the future of the general public at the forefront of people’s minds. A website doesn’t enjoy planning you a perfect holiday like a human would, a computer doesn’t enjoy the roar of the engine or the handling of a car like a human does and a computer doesn’t have the same level of emotional capability that we do. Let’s go back to embracing the quality that humans bring to this earth and value the finer things in life; good service, one to one communication and long term relationships that can be acquired through business. All power to the geniuses that have managed to engineer something that can drive itself and even interact with a human, but let’s not lose sight of the people who built it, humans.

One thing’s for sure, you won’t be finding a robot driving a MET Coach or Minibus any time soon, or an automated answering service that takes your bookings. We define our service based on the values of good human customer service. You business is as personal to us as it is you and we want to maintain that level of personal contact throughout our dealings with you.