How would you improve the driver pickup experience on Uber?

Product Definition

Uber's driver pickup experience refers to the process from when a driver accepts a ride to when they arrive at the passenger's location. A smooth pickup experience ensures faster rides, better ratings, and improved efficiency.

Clarifying Questions

1. Are we looking to improve Ride business or Freight business? - Ride
2. Which geography? - Globally
3. Urban vs. Suburban pickups? - Both

User Personas

1. Passengers: Professionals (regular commuter to office), Casual riders, and Tourists
2. Drivers
3. Uber

Benefits to Personas

1. Passengers: Less waiting time, better driver coordination
2. Drivers: Reduced cancellations, optimized navigation, increased earnings
3. Uber: Improved efficiency, higher customer satisfaction, better driver retention

Driver’s Pain Points

1. Longer wait times for pickup after arriving at the location
2. Navigation/Unclear pickup locations
3. Pickup requested in narrow pathways, resulting in manoeuvring issues
4. Cancellations after arrival
5. Traffic congestion & delays
6. Poor driver-passenger communication
7. Rude customer behavior

List Solutions (Product Features)

1.     AI to Improve location accuracy & routing

2.     AI to pre-empt traffic congestion and suggest driver-friendly routes

3.     Augmented Reality (AR) Wayfinding for Passengers

4.     Cooling period (for 3 minutes) after arrival and if pick-up gets delayed charge customers incrementally (for every minute delayed) for late pickup and auto-cancel ride after long-wait times (say 15 minutes)

5.     Penalize customers for cancelled rides and keep track of this. If it exceeds beyond a particular number in a month, suspend user account for a week   

6.     Enhance Driver-Passenger Communication: Real-Time Status Updates (notify passengers if the driver is stuck in traffic), One-Tap Quick Messages (Pre-set texts like "I’m here!" or "Meet me at the entrance”)

7.     Incentivize Multi-Rider Pickups (for shared rides)

8.     Improved ratings sections: segregate ratings into different segments such as On-time pickup, Location Accuracy, Navigation, Customer behavior etc.

Prioritize Solutions (Value vs. Effort)

1.     High Priority (High Impact, Low Effort): Number 4, 5, 6, and 8 from the above list

2.     Medium Priority (High Impact, Higher Effort): Number 1, 2, and 7 from the above list

3.     Low Priority (High Effort, Uncertain ROI): Number 3 from the above list

Success Metrics

1. Pickup Time Reduction (average minutes per ride)
2. Cancellation Rate (%)
3. Driver Ratings
4. ETAs vs. Actual Pickup Time Difference

Summary

Uber should focus on AI-driven pickup locations, better driver-rider coordination, and reducing cancellations for a faster, smoother, and more efficient pickup experience.

A: What do you mean by improvement in pickup experience? Are there specific metrics we are targeting ?

Say for example : we want to increase the NPS of drivers on uber.  I am assuming NPS can be measured for driver experience. 

Can you think of any other metrics: I think other metrics could be cancellation of uber rides when the driver was already in the vicinity of the customer location. I am assuming most of the time cancellation happens as the driver is not able to locate the customers and out of frustration the customer ends up cancelling the rides.

Sounds good to me.

Cool so I will take the cancellation metrics as my north star metrics and goal would be to bring down the cancellation at the customer locations. 

There could be multiple reasons but we can assume that delay in locating customers is the biggest challenge

Before I dive in further I want to ask one thing, since uber is available at airports which are more of a queue based system then there are cinemas,  hotels etc where there are designated pick up points and third is on demand ride where user could at home, market or elsewhere and books uber ride for commute. 

I think looking at the pain point it make sense to focus on the third use case.

Now before I get into solutions I would like to understand the pain point associated to pick up experience but before that let’s quickly dive into the booking and pick up journey,

Booking journey 

1. User opens uber app and types for pick up point.

2. Pick up point get auto filled if its common location

3. Other case user needs to type and uber suggest the nearest option to pick

4. User confirms and this goes for driver for acceptance

Pickup journey

1. When driver accepts a ride , there is customer location mentioned to it. Driver follows the uber maps and reached nearby location. 

2. However driver is not able to locate the customer 

3. Calls customers for the accurate location or some landmark

4. Customer shares landmark as per his understanding like nearby pharmacy 

5. This happens couple of times

6. One of driver of customer gets frustrated by the experience and cancels the ride

In order to address this we first need to understand the pain points 

Pain point of booking ride that results into poor pickup experience

1. While typing the pick up location the map picks incorrectly, and at times users fail to notice this .

2. No option to add a voice note while typing the pickup location

3. No option to add landmark information

4. No option for users to verify the pickup via image validation

Pain points while picking 

1. Many a time user adds note for pickup but its font is small and can be in different language  hence hard for driver to read and process

2. No image of the pickup point for validation

3. Difficult to identify the rider even if they are nearby especially in a crowded place

4. They need to be on call while trying to locate the rider which is always a distraction

Possible Solution