How would you increase the average Uber driver rating in your area from its current 4.5?

Clarifying Questions

1. When we say Uber Driver rating, is it the rating provided by the riders living in a certain area to the drivers who are picking up and dropping them off? - Yes
2. How long do we measure the average driver ratings - daily/weekly/monthly - Do it monthly to get a sense of the overall rating
3. Is 4.5 an aberration in terms of the rating, as in where does this locality stand in comparison to other localities in the city - It is somewhere in the middle
4. Do we know the reasons why users are giving bad ratings to certain drivers - there is no information

Structure of the response: Increasing the average rating can be done in multiple ways:

1. Increase the number of 5-star rides
2. Reduce the number of lower-rated rides
3. Convert badly rated rides to high rated ones

I will focus on reducing the number of lower-rated rides in the following approach:

1. Identify patterns for lower ratings
2. Explore further reasons why a certain issue could be happening.
3. Discuss a few solutions about how this problem could be solved
4. Prioritize the solutions in a certain order

Patterns for Lower Ratings

• Drivers who have consistently received lower ratings from the folks in this area
• If it is not driver-specific, I will further drill down to understand the reasons for lower ratings by various factors
  • Ride Length - Short rides or Long Rides
  • Ride Type - UberGo, UberX, UberXL etc
  • Car Type - Older cars vs Newer cars
  • Ride Time - Morning rides vs Evening rides - Yes
  • Ride by Day of the Week - Weekday vs Weekend Rides

Problem Evaluation - It has been noticed that morning rides are consistently getting lower ratings as compared to evening rides.

Common reasons why riders provide a poor rating:

1. Before Booking the Ride
   1. No cars available in the area
   2. Have to try multiple times to book a ride
2. Waiting for the Ride
   1. A mismatch between wait time estimate and actual time
   2. A mismatch between estimated ride length and actual length
   3. A high number of multi-contact rides
   4. Precision pick up
3. During the Ride
   1. Mismatch in predicted route and a new route
   2. High traffic leading to longer ride time
   3. Broken or Unsanitary Cars leading to poor ratings - Air conditioning could not be working
   4. Chatty drivers
4. After taking the Ride
   1. Precision Drops
   2. Issues with payments

These are the various reasons why this could take time, but I will consider the top reasons why this could be happening:

1. Multiple contact rides -
   1. Training the drivers to better use the app to see
   2. Termination of drivers if they have many multi-contact rides
2. Precision pick-ups - Adding more pick up points so that the drivers and riders can meet at the point easily. Notifying the user about the distance he or she needs to walk before taking the ride

Clarifying Questions

Are we aware of any existing problems based on customer or driver feedback due to which the rating is impacted? 

Is 4.5 already a decent rating according to Uber internal teams? or its not a good enough rating? There is scope for improvement although it is a good enough rating. 

Users and Market

Lets understand more about the market where I live. 

I stay in South Bangalore. 

• Most people here use Uber to commute to work or travel for leisure or other work. 
• Considerable people staying in these areas are from other cities and towns who live in Bangalore due to better work opportunities. Most of them do not know local languages.  
• These users spend a lot of time in traffic since Bangalore is overcrowded. It takes almost 1 hour to cover 10 kms. 
• Average journey is 45 mins.

Problems

• If the rider doesnt reach the destination on time according to expected time due to stoppages, they are bound give a lesser rating. 
• Often drivers find it difficult to communicate to riders due to language issues leading to bad user experience. 
• Often drivers dont really know alternate routes and end up using the most crowded and busy roads.
• Drivers and riders spend most amount of time in traffic so the users may get bored which can lead to bad experience. 
• Riders often change destination multiple times which lead to arguments between rider and driver severely impact the rider rating. 
• Drivers often drive very rash which can lead to drop in rating. 
• Often drivers dont listen to rider requests to drive in a specific manner, drop and pick at specific locations, take specific routes, stop at specific locations etc. 
• Often drivers dont keep their cabs clean. There is foul smelling in the cabs. 
• The condition of the cabs is also bad often.