Did Barney Fife create
these after order surveys?
these after order surveys?
"Because today's eight-year-olds are tomorrow's teenagers."
Oh Boy, the surveys
An absolute mess
This is where it starts getting long folks, but understanding the mindset of your driver is VITAL
Because we are independent contractors, it's important to understand the business decisions your driver makes daily
Good Doordash drivers sometimes have no choice but to leave our Yuba / Sutter County zone
And go deliver in larger metropolitan areas like Sac, or the Bay area
Because the survey system is Sooooooo punitive
Customers misunderstanding the survey system, and giving drivers ratings they may not even deserve. Drags their overall customer rating below a 4.7
At that point they can no longer qualify for the top dasher program, which allows you to sign on whenever you want. Which allows you to deliver all day, so you can actually make some money. You're forced to sign up for a very few number of time slots, a week in advance. In an isolated and sometimes slow zone like Yuba / Sutter. If you're not in the top dasher program, it can be really hard to make any money up here. Because yes from 2pm to 4 pm its super slow, so you can't really schedule for that time slot. But you may score 2 orders during that time period that have FAT TIPS. Which make up for the lunch rush, when yes it's busy. But people don't tip very well during lunch rush. You can make as much money, sometimes more. On stray slow period orders with fat tips, than you did during the whole lunch rush.
There's no substitute for customers talking face to face with drivers to ask "what happened, why did it take so long"
But in this no contact world we live in now
Where we rarely see our customers face to face
Yes 100% there has to be a survey, the problem is creating one that's fair and effective
Maybe we can show customers how to use the current ones more effectively
That's actually my long term goal here
The Instacart and Doordash surveys, in my opinion are the most problematic if the goal is improving customer service
Sometimes drivers get blamed for problems caused by the app
Instacart will send us your order an hour early, so it arrives an hour before you even get home
Sometimes restaurants gets blamed for problems caused by the driver
Sometimes drivers get blamed for a problem, actually caused by another driver
Customers don't understand how punitive some of the surveys are. Because their actual problem will likely happen again. Because the surveys suck for addressing problems, since they block your negative comments from us
Many of the issues that come up, it's almost impossible to actually pin point who was at fault
So the blame just gets put on the driver
#1 We already talked about how they block your negative comments
#2 - Bad Ratings Stick Way Too Long
A bad rating only falls off, after the next 100 customers give you a better rating than whatever your lowest is. The problem with this? happy customers don't usually take time to do surveys. So you might need to complete more than 500 delivery's, just to clear one bad rating.
When you have a Doordasher, or Instacarter that you like. The best thing you can do for them is give them that 5 star. And understand a 4 star is not a helpful rating. It drags your score down a little bit.
#3 Customers will rate drivers too harshly, for minor but still annoying problems. Or for things the driver has no control over, or wasn't even there fault.
Customers sometimes think we work at the restaurants, and have control over how orders are made
We don't
Drivers have no way of making sure it was prepared Vegan style, Or there's extra pickles on the burger
Sometimes a driver before us accepted, then unassigned the delivery. They may have gotten to the restaurant, waited 20 minutes and the order still isn't ready. So they leave, and it gets offered to another driver. The new driver has no idea what's already happened. The order is already 25 - 30 minutes behind, and the driver has no clue.
Not like the restaurant is going to tell the new driver of the delays. Because then that driver might be like, forget that
#3 Customer problems are not explained
Going after Doordash for a second here, even though they are my favorite to contract for. Out of the 4 major delivery apps that are out there
Those little thumbs up, or thumbs down customers can give us. Do nothing to help us figure out how to improve our service
And it seems like this is done purposely, to persuade drivers to accept the extra delivery's they send us. The ones that tend to make our first delivery late
These are the 4 thumbs up/down categories
#Communication
#Friendliness
#Order Handling
#Followed Delivery Instructions
How completely useless for improving upon a bad service experience
#Communication
85% of customers never respond to the text messages we send them. If you ordered through your P.C. your not even going to know the texts exist. Some orders get forwarded to the app company by the restaurant. So the customer isn't even aware a 3rd party delivery service is delivering. Actually 4th party because drivers are their own business. So the driver doesn't even have a communication link to the customer. So how can we even "communicate" with them
95% of delivery's are the contactless type, so we never even see you
Communication category - Pretty much useless
#Friendliness
Customers don't even respond to our texts, and we almost never see you at the door
Friendliness category - Pretty much useless
#Order Handling
This is what would "technically" cover issues like delivery times, and food temperature. Which are two of the biggest complaints of customers. But hows a driver suppose to decipher which one was your actual problem? Many drivers may not even think delivery time issues are be represented in this category. Because there is no available information from the company, about what they even consider this category to represent
Order Handling category - pretty much a fail
#Followed Delivery Instructions
98% of customers don't even leave us delivery instructions in the first place. And 2 out of 10,000 delivery's I got a thumbs down for this category. There was no information given to me by the app, as to what the delivery instructions in question actually we're. No way to verify if those instructions even came across my screen, the apps do glitch
No way to review if the instructions given we're even things within my control
And it's still totally possible I just missed them. Many drivers push that 12 hour limit we are allowed to deliver for. And some push it by contracting for multiple apps, so they may deliver 16 hours a day. I don't do that, but hey even after 11 hours you might miss an instruction.
But it would be nice to know what that instruction was. In case you do have a bad habit you were unaware of. Then you can change the habit to make service better.
So again Followed Delivery Instructions - pretty much a fail
Not sure if I'm done with this section
Maybe check back in