You have been assigned as the manager to design an incentive structure to the drivers of a cab aggregator. How would design it?

Question: You have been assigned as the manager to design an incentive structure for the drivers of a cab aggregator? How would I design it?

 

Answer:

 

Assumptions: The Cab Aggregator is a functioning mobile APP with logistic capabilities. Agnostic to ios or Andriod. Goals Need to incentivize more drivers to join the platform and stay on the road for peak hours. The Goal behind designing this incentive is to increase revenue. Not redesigning the whole APP, focusing on adding elements of incentive on the driver dashboard. Assuming a driver dashboard already exists.

Structure:

As incentive structure has 2 stake primary stakeholders, the company and the drivers. So I will talk about possible uses cases for both. Then I will go over the uses cases for both stakeholders, come up with possible solutions and metrics that will help us determine if we are reaching the company goal. Talk about possible problems or tradeoffs and summarize my findings.

Gaining Clarity: The incentive structure needs to designed so that there are more drivers on the road and are available for peak hours. As I talk through this exercise I will keep these goals in mind.

Before I design the structure I want to understand the company goal behind this decision. Why does the company want to design an incentive structure? What's the vision.

Who does this incentive effect:

Cab AggregatingCompany

New Drivers( current riders) (drivers from competition)

Existing Drivers of the Cab Aggregator.

As I am tasked to design it for the drivers, I am going to keep this analysis focused on existing and new drivers.

Paint points/needs/ of existing drivers.

1. Existing Drivers wants to do routes that maximize revenue potential.

2.  Drivers driving for more then one cab aggregator need an easy way to prioritize which potential route they would be acceptable to drive if they get pinged for more then one route request esp during peak hours.

3. Drivers want a way to move forward in their career, they want to up a social ladder

4. Drivers want recognition from their peers and improve social standing

5. Drivers want quick payouts

6. Drivers want to know how much $ they will be making in a day/week/ monthly

7. Drivers want clarity of how much time they need to be on the road or working to make ends meet

8.  Drivers want to be able to better plan their route before they head for the shift.

9. Riders who are thinking of becoming drivers want to know how they can get on the platform

10. Drivers working for other competitors want to know if they work for this cab aggregator to supplement income

11. All drivers want to know if the cab aggregator will provide any help with car maintenance, loan car incase the current vehicle is indisposed.

12. Drivers want to use this opportunity to get a better car they can provide a premium experience to the customer and also ride a better car during off-hours.

13. Drivers want tips and tricks to maximize their tips and performance rating by the rider

14. Drivers want to know if the company will help them out to make up for lost wages during the downtime of sickness or family commitment.

Prioritize Use Cases: There are lots of use cases we can design for but I would design for the use case that meets our original goal of incentivizing drivers to join the platform and stay on the road during peak hours. To make this selection I would prioritize the use cases whether the solution can be meet the mental model of the user, intuitive, had the highest impact and implementation effort.

Based on that I would narrow down my use cases to

1. Maximize payout ( use case 5,6,7)

2. Maximize Perks ( use case 11.12.13)

 

3. Maximize Opportunity ( use case 3,4)

 

Based on this I would pick maximize payout as the most relevant use case. As it ties to the company goal of designing the incentive. They want more drivers on the road to do more routes so the company can improve market share and make more $.

Product Vision:

A Road Map to Success

Listing Solutions:

1. Goal tracker that allows the driver to enter the amount of $ he/she wants to make for the week and then starts a progress bar towards that goal. Gamification can be used to keep the driver on track with badges, " warrior" "trailblazer" "champ" to keep him/her motivated.

2. Payout maximizer: This gives the driver the option to get the payout based on a percentage cut scale. If the payout is sooner the cut would be more but if he/she doesn't take the payout for the month the cut from the company would be minimum.

3. Road warrior: This would give the driver a map of the city with pins of high density and the potential money he/she can make based on the events happening, people expected to visit that area that day, etc.

Of the 3 solutions, I would pick the Goal Tracker. As it has a high impact on driver experience ( hence moving the needle for an incentive) and has high value for the company, it will help maintain transparency and not will be medium effort to implement.

Tradeoffs: I would limit the release of this feature in cohorts of existing drivers and new drivers to see if there is an uptick of more drivers signing up and increase in time on the road. The A/B test will prove if the incentive structure and gamification actually worked or not.  The stats on daily goals achieved by drivers can also cause performance anxiety, as we have seen happening in similar long term goal-achieving incentives like weight loss.

Summary:

I was asked to create an incentive structure for drivers for a cab aggregator. We limited the scope by making it a feature on to an existing app as drivers are already using that medium to communicate to the aggregator. We identified who would be using the feature and the possible use cases around it. We decided to go for the Goal Tracker as the incentive for the driver. We prioritized our solution based on the impact created for the user, the impact it created on the company goal and the ease of implementation. We decided it would be best to release the feature in a limited release cohort between new and existing drivers to see if the origional goal of uptick in driver signups and driver availbitlity during peak time increased or remained the same. It would be improtant to seeif the incentive is causing a positive virality effect, or causing performance anxiety for the drivers.