For the past several years I’ve been advising many startups on their technology vision and strategy. Invariably, I would get pulled into their design meetings for their apps and would happily give my thoughts on the interface, flow and usability of the app. I would spend countless hours with the team on the consumer facing app and then I had an incident with an Ola driver and realized I was going about it all wrong.
A month ago I got into an Ola cab and when the driver tried to start the trip he couldn’t. Apparently, the language on the app had changed from English to Marathi and he couldn’t proceed further. The Ola driver handed me his phone to see if I could fix the language setting and I couldn’t. Instead, I some how started the trip and ended the trip in a span of two minutes.
The driver called Ola customer service for assistance but the guy on the other end was very rude to the driver. I took the phone and said it was not the drivers fault as the language setting had changed and there was no way to get to the menu option he was talking about. The call center agent was very nice to me and told me to hand the phone back to the driver. Again, the call center agent got very angry with the driver and asked him why he hit the buttons and instead should have called customer service first.
I’ve seen this scenario played out so many times and I’m not sure why I didn’t pick up on it earlier. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people complain about the Flipkart and Snapdeal seller panel. While their consumer facing website and apps are fine, the sellers that spend the most time on their websites are left using a sub-par product. On the other hand, I’ve heard rave reviews of Amazon’s seller panel which is expected since they have had 20 years of experience to perfect it.
Before my Ola experience I would rank in the order of importance the interfaces as 1. Consumer 2. field services agent (cleaner, driver, delivery person, beauticians, etc…) 3. call center agent. Now, I’ve completely flipped my thinking and reversed the order.
That Ola interaction made me realize that a lot of time is spent on the consumer facing app and very little time or thought on the call center agent interface or the field services app. Of course, the customer is king but if you don’t empower your employees and make their lives easier it makes it very tough for them to deliver the customer delight and 5 star rating that everyone is chasing.
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