How would you improve Uber?

1. Clarifying questions -
   1. Let me first understand the question better, so here by Uber you are referring to the Uber's primary service that it provides i.e. ride hailing? [Yes]
   2. Is there any specific country you have in mind? [No u can assume.] I'll consider India as it has the highest population, growing economy and still the ride hailing penetration is low so has lot of room to grow.
   3. Would like to understand what does improve mean here? is there some specific objective or goal u have in mind in which improvement is required? [No u can assume.]
      1. Though it has been in the market for quite some time, this is a highly competitive market with many country specific players (e.g in India - Ola, nammayatri, Rapido etc.) thus driving customer satisfaction that leads to increased usage can be taken as the goal.
   4. So basically just to reiterate we are trying to figure out what can be the improvement solutions/features for Uber India's ride hailing service that lead to increased customer satisfaction and ultimately driving more usage.
2. Let me describe the product little in detail so that we both are on the same page
   1. Ride hailing is "a service where a prospective passenger requests for a ride from one place to another and the service matches the request from a pool of drivers of vehicles available for hire based on many attributes (like driver rating, distance of the driver from the pickup location etc.) and optimizes for ride experience (includes time to reach the drop point, price, vehicle condition etc.) under some constraints like type of vehicle requested."
   2. Uber is an established player in this service providing multiple ride types like intra city, rentals (1-12 packages), inter city trips using variety of vehicles like hatchbacks, sedans, SUVs or even auto, motor bike rides.
   3. Uber vision is streamline how world moves/movement.

3. Now lets think a little about the different use groups that come in its ecosystem.
   1. Rider
      1. Daily commuters - employees who avail Uber from same point A to B on a regular basis in the week. Sizable chunk of users. Power consumers.
      2. Casual users - book one off ride to go to a friends's place, dining.
      3. Tourists/booking cabs for going from one place to other with lugage.
      4. Corporate users - usually going to the airport, visiting clients, clients visiting an office. Sophisticated users. but here the company is the decision maker and not the corporate user.
   2. Driver - individual driver or a operator who is operating set of vehicles and has its own drivers.
      1. Casual drivers - just trying to earn an extra buck.
      2. Drivers for whom this is their primary job - looking to complete as many rides as possible in the day with the aim of steady daily income.
4. Prioritized user group -
   1. Since we are focusing on usage and customer experience, I'll go for rider segment since we need to get their mindshare. They have too many apps on their phone and might not want to keep 2/3 ride sharing apps thus if we earn their confidence then we will get repeat usage from these riders whereas for drivers this is their primary job and thus they usually have 2-3 apps and depending on demand will accept bookings.
   2. Within riders, I'll focus on Tourists/airport pickup/drops since in this segment there are still many unorganized players and ride hailing penetration is less so can help in increasing app usage and also they are the most picky about experience since they are on a leisure trip so want everything to be perfect.

5. Now let me think of some of the pain points of this segment
   1. User is not certain whether he will get the cab or not due to last min. cancellations or conflict on payment optionInc. Till the time user sits in the cab there is doubt on whether cab will come or not. Now in a leisure trip, u might plan to reach a place like airport, station or amusement park where getting delayed might derail the plan and lead to unnecessary frustration when u are trying to enjoy. [Reach - high, impact - med since to some extend this use case being handled by booking in advance, priority cabs ]
   2. How to decide which cab to select, how to get the best cab so as to optimize the experience? [reach - high, impact - high]
      1. It is a long trip with lots of luggage and kids so u need space so u need to manually count number of people, luggage and now think which option fits u.. this might be little time consuming while u are trying to get down from plane etc
      2. I am looking for good clean cab, driver quality should also be high.
   3. It is a hassle to coordinate with the driver on a route to take. [impact - med, reach - med. not applicable for all cases. tourist might not know the route so they are ok to trust the driver. More relatable for a daily commute use case]
   4. Locating the car might sometimes be a concern in a new place. [impact - low, reach - low. mobile phone serves the purpose. U have drivers number to reach out and align on the pickup place]
6. now let me prioritize the pain points based on impact to the user and reach of the problem. Based on this criteria will prioritize b.
7. Let me note down some solutions to address these pain points
   1. Provide an option to key in number of passengers and luggage pieces before booking the ride so that while matching this criteria is taken into consideration. This will also require that for the car fleet, these details are attributed like whether car truck has CNG cylinder thus that space is not available or whether carrier is there or not. [cost - med, ux to be modified, impact - high]
   2. Provide user an option to view the car video - from inside, car truck space. This will help in gauging car quality as well. Drivers can be asked to upload a video once every week to keep the information updated. [cost - low, impact - high]
   3. While booking cab, enable users to provide NL input for these extra details and use AI to determine whether the cabs meet conditions based on type of engine, type of car. this can also include how old is the car -> to provide idea on car quality. [cost -high, matching algo will change to incorporate NL inputs, impact - high]
8. Prioritize soln.
   1. impact, cost to implement -> a and b
9. Trade off
   1. With this the hit rate to get a cab in first attempt might reduce so these should be optional filters.
10. Metrics
    1. Number of rides booked per month whether these additional options were filled in.
    2. Ride rating of rides that used these attributes v/s rides rating where these attributes were not used.
    3. Cancellation rate of rides used these attributes v/s cancellation rate post booking where these attributes were not used.

Uber is an application providing users with rides from point A to point B with live pricing. At the moment drivers can register their cars with Uber and start providing rides to passengers. 

are we focussing on app or web?  - app 

What do you mean by improvement? Like specific markets, countries, region or any metrics or any specific problem that needs to be solved - drop in no of rides per user (customers and not the drivers)

Is the drop in any particular geographic region - no 

Is the drop in any particular demographic segment - no 

So, I’m assuming the drop is in general overall irrespective of other factors on the application.

Is that ok with you - yes

My focus here would be retention as we are seeing a drop in the booking for ride per user 

User groups - 

1. Power users - they use the app frequently on a daily basis as they have to commute to the workplace, college students using for to and fro etc. 

2. Occasional users - regular party goers, shoppers, tourists and they travel maybe like once in a week or two weeks

3. Casual users - they use only once in while when they need to visit relatives or they do not have other options or they are travelling intercity 

In this I would like to focus on occasional users because they are the low hanging fruits who’s preferred choice to travel can be made as uber. The casual users are not going to use it so frequently so the occasional ones can be focussed on since they will lead to increase on more rides, revenue and their tendency to switch to some other mode can be reduced.

Pain Points for the user group chosen - 

1. They might need to make multiple trips to different places in a single day and are not able to plan their whole trip with uber 

2. They might want to visit specific places and know what the place has to offer, its reviews etc.

3. The safety can be an issue with passengers having luggage or who are new to the region or country

4. Driver accepts the ride and then asks the user to cancel it based on your destination or any other reason

I would prioritise in the order 3, 4, 1, 2 as the safety and experience of a user with the ride booking is really important while scheduling 

Solutions - 

1. We can provide an option to schedule multiple trips with different drivers or the same driver and cab and plan the whole journey, we can give an option as “Schedule your trip”

2. Uber can join hands with google and leverage google maps for information on different destination like tourist spots, eateries etc. and a direct option can be provided in right corner to schedule a trip with uber to that destination

3. An option to record a video clip in case of an incident and safety breach can be provided to the user and can be directly submitted to customer care of Uber which can be responded with immediate action.u

4. In such a scenario of a driver asking to cancel an option can be provided which says “look for other cabs” as the user has to currently enter all the details again and search a new cab altogether. This can solve for both 2 and 5 pain points.

Evaluating solutions - 

Based on the evaluation i would say we should go for low hanging fruits and hence with the maximum impact and lower effort to build it - 

i) video clip for safety 

ii)look for other cabs option to avoid time and effort

Some of success criteria i would like to measure is - 

1. Rise in number of rides per user of a weekly/monthly basis

2. Number of active users on platform - is there a rise or not 

3. Number of daily active users using the new features that we have introduced through CTA 

To summarise we looked at 

• Uber as a product and the areas where it needs improvement 

• We looked at the users of uber and chose occasional users as our TG 

• We looked at the pain points these users might have and prioritized few like safety and waiting time, ride cancellation and efforts 

• We looked at few solutions to the pain points and based on impact and effort to build we finalised our solution as video clip submission by users in emergency and look for other cabs option

Let’s follow the steps:
1. Describe the product
2. Clarify the scope of the question
3. Choose a metric
4. List the user groups and select yours
5. List and prioritize the use cases / pain points
6. List out your solutions
7. Evaluate solutions
8. Define metrics for measuring performance (Optional)
9. Summarize your answer

1. Describe the product
Uber nowadays is more of a logistics company lately. The Uber driver take passengers, parcel & food to their destination. They also offer UberFlex for drivers that don’t have cars of their own. They have big investments in autonomous vehicles innovations. They have a presence in many countries.

2. Clarify the scope of the question
What does improve mean?
Is it a concern in specific markets, countries, regions?
Is there a specific metric or problem that needs to be solved?

Talk about key metrics:
> # of customer rides dropping
> # of drivers being stagnant
> # of food deliveries stagnant
> Challenges with autonomous vehicles & how they can be improved
> Let’s look at breakdown by markets. It is possible that some markets are underperforming while others are thriving. Perhaps some markets need special attention due to competitive pressure.

3. Choose a metric
Let’s say the interviewer wants you to focus on:
> # of food deliveries stagnant in Bay Area over past 2 quarters

4. List the user groups and select yours
> Supply: Restaurants signing up.
> Demand: Customers ordering.
> Logistics: Drivers providing pickup/drop-off service

Let’s say for us the problem is of Supply. So more restaurants need to signup on platform.

5. List and prioritize the use cases / pain points
You will start to collect qualitative & Quantitive feedback about why restaurants are not signing up on the platform.

1> Signup & on-boarding process for restaurants is too complicated.
2> Marketing/Outreach investments in Bay Area might have to increase.
3> External Factors: We should also look at competitive pressure from companies such as EAT24 & DoorDash in Bay Area where UberEats might be falling behind. Maybe competitors are offering some incentives for signup that we should consider.
4> They get enough business already from competitors or foot traffic and they do not need any more business.
5> Internal marketing/outreach is weak

6. List out your solutions
1> Simplify the signup workflow for merchants by reducing fields to fill
2> Simplify the on-boarding workflow for merchants by allowing PDF file parser/import of menu items
3> Simplify image import from phone directly
4> Build a dashboard for restaurant owners that gives them step-by-step instructions on what to do next
5> Purchase/Contract with a third party solution/company that already has relationships with restaurants
6> Hire third party contractors to engage with restaurants and bring them on the platform
7> Hire for internal outreach team to reach out to more restaurants
8> Post an ad in newspaper/billboard/radio/TV inviting restaurants to signup with UberEats. Throw in some incentives.

7. Evaluate solutions
Solutions have to evaluated based on: Strategic fit, Impact vs Effort, ROI, Competitive Pressure. Best thing to do is to assign a score to each of the product ideas. These would then allow you to categorize your solutions against a simpler metric:
Must-have vs. Nice to Have

Based on these criteria the following would make it to the top of the list because these are good long term strategic initiatives that we should be investing in. Also, the time invested in these solutions would give us a benefit across the board in multiple regions. Effort would be low, and impact would be high (assuming that is a regular complaint from sellers that drop off during signup).

1> Simplify the signup workflow for merchants by reducing the number of fields to fill.
2> Simplify the on-boarding workflow for merchants by providing PDF parser for import of menu items.

Let’s say cumulative cost for these two ideas = 24 man months, with a 6 months duration.

Now if the problem is not in the product but in the acquisition pipeline they we would have invested in the ad campaigns first.

8. Define metrics for measuring performance (Optional)
Key metrics were defined earlier:
> Number of restaurants signing up each day/month/quarter should increase as per projections
> Number of orders should increase each day/month/quarter as per projections

9. Summarize your answer
The way to improve Uber Eats is :
> Focus: On supply side by bringing more restaurants to the platform
> Region: Bay Area
> By addressing problem: Signup is complicated & takes too much effort
> Solution: Reducing the number of fields to fill.
> Solution: Allowing PDF file parser for import of menu items.
> Duration: For a development period of 6 months
> Cost: At a cost of 4 developers man months. So 6*4 = 24 man months cost
> Expected Return/Goal: With the goal of acquiring another 1,000 restaurants on the platform.