Lessons from Uber’s CEO as he becomes a driver
Revenue Operations is about the buyer not the seller.
Your customers will spend 83% of their buying process without anyone from your sales team involved (Gartner) - so its essential that as a leader you understand what their experience involves.
Last week The Wall Street Journal published an insightful piece about Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of ride hailing and food delivering Uber - What Happened when Uber’s CEO Started Driving for Uber
Photo source: The Wall Street Journal
Dara has been CEO of Uber since 2017 - picking up a troubled business from previous CEO Travis Kalanick, and then having to navigate the marketplace through a pandemic when every rider disappeared from the platform overnight.
On exiting the pandemic, the riders came back to the platform strongly - but the drivers did not. Uber now faced challenges of increasing wait times and fees for riders that diminished the value using the platform at all.
Until recently Uber had mainly focused its development around the rider experience - believing that the driver experience, whilst important, was not limiting the number of drivers on the platform.
That had to change.
Dara signed up as a driver under the alias “Dave K”, purchased a secondhand grey Tesla, and started accepting trips.
Over the course of more than 100 trips (delivering people and food) Dara uncovered a number of issues.
A complicated sign up process “the experience was pretty clunky”
Navigating restaurants to pick up food was a challenge
The app combined deliveries with no warning
Customers baited with large tips that were then reduced
Drivers unable to see a destination before accepting a trip
And the list goes on.
Many of these ‘features’ would have made sense in the office - an algorithm working to optimise the experience for the rider or eater.
But in the moment for the driver, a poor experience, and one that would reduce their motivation to keep working on the platform.
Dara created a Google Sheet with all his findings, tagging relevant team members with screenshots of the issues, and today Uber is working hard to provide the best driver experience for any of the ride hailing and food delivery platforms.
CRO’s - be Dara.
You don’t need to be the CEO of Uber to do this.
In a leadership role get out of the office, get into the mind of your buyer and experience their journey.
How do they research the problems that they face?
How do they uncover possible solutions?
When they find your company what is the experience like?
How do you solve their buying challenges as they progress?
With most clients we quickly build a list of simple fixes to make the buyer’s experience a better one.
Remember, this is about you being the buyer - not interviewing some happy customers to tell you what they think you want to hear.
I recommend reading the full WSJ article - I’m confident that you’ll be inspired and start thinking about becoming one of your own customers!
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Whenever you are ready, there are two ways that I can help you accelerate your revenue.
Buyer Experience Audit - I’ll impersonate a buyer researching your segment and company and let you know what I find. Ideal for planning your Revenue Operations strategy.
RevOps Impact Playbooks - I’ll help you implement one or more tactical processes across your revenue teams - content, referrals, testimonials, adoption and more.