What do you get when you meet an Uber driver who is a huge Star Wars fan?
You get an hour-long ride filled with awesome lessons in customer centricity.
Two ride cancellations, fares rising by the minute and a fifteen-minute long wait amidst a chaotic traffic jam in the not-very-forgiving Chennai weather — not exactly a situation that puts a smile on anyone’s face.
It’s the end of a long day, and having been rendered literally cashless courtesy the recent demonetisation, I had no choice but to hail an Uber for the ride back home. In desperation, I fired up the app for the third time, and this time I have a driver, let’s call him ‘M’ for convenience, with a rating of 4.9 stars about 5 minutes away from my pickup location. A rating of a near-perfect 4.9 stars is usually a good sign, so I thank my stars. At this point in time, I’d usually mentally rehearse the phone conversation that I’d need to have with my Uber driver to explain my pickup location. But this time, for a change, even before I can dream of doing that, my Uber driver calls. He speaks in an impeccable manner, reminiscent of Cadbury from Richie Rich (‘90s kids would remember this).
M politely asks if I’d be willing to cross the road, stating that it would save us a lot of time and I willingly agree. Heck, I’d do (almost) anything that was asked of me, if I was asked in that Cadbury-esque manner. I’m taken aback by the phone call, I’m in a slight state of disbelief.
Soon enough, M drives up in a shiny new Hyundai. M doesn’t look like the average-Joe Uber driver - M is in his mid-40s, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose, dressed in a crisp white shirt with sleeves rolled-up and a pair of Levis. I’m reminded of this particular YouTube video of an act by Sapan Verma, a standup comedian:
A few minutes into the ride, I noticed something very interesting. Something that would form the basis of this very piece. I noticed that M had an R2D2 USB drive plugged into the car’s stereo system.
Now, I‘m not usually the type of person who’d make small-talk, but this little USB drive that brought out the Star Wars fanboy in me, served as the perfect ice-breaker. I learned that M is an aeronautical engineer and an additional cockpit member by profession who works for a leading Indian airline, who also happens to have a penchant for automobiles. M owns and operates a small fleet of taxis that run on the Uber platform. That begs the question, Why was M driving an Uber on a Friday evening through crazy traffic, when he could have been cocooned in the comfort of his couch, perhaps watching Rogue One?
His answer was simple — a reality check. Every once-in-a-while, M drives one of his taxis to get a better understanding of the typical Uber customer base. Acquiring first-hand knowledge about his typical customers enables M to train his drivers better in order to ensure that they are always up to speed with customer demands. In doing so, M not only acquires knowledge about his customers, but also gains crucial knowledge about the working conditions of his taxi drivers and thus, he is able to ensure that they aren’t gaming the system and that they are being treated fairly. M also ensures that his fleet is always in top-notch condition both cosmetically and mechanically. This ensures that M’s drivers have consistently higher ratings and more importantly, that the customers are a consistently happy lot. I’m not really sure how Uber’s driver-rider matching algorithm works, but if what I’ve managed to learn from trawling pages of Google search results is true, then there is a correlation between riders being matched to drivers with a higher rating. Either way, having a higher rating always helps. Anyway, getting back to the point, M’s way of working is perhaps a small yet, wonderful demonstration of a customer-centric act.
In my 18 month long stint at Freshdesk, (if you’ve been living under a rock, Freshdesk is India’s fastest growing customer engagement startup) perhaps one of the biggest takeaways for me has been on how to build a great company — one that builds some really great products, but more importantly one that prides itself on its culture, people and has customer centricity at its heart. Personally, Star Wars and Uber are two brands I absolutely adore. Star Wars — because it is a near-perfect, textbook example of building an instantly recognizable brand that has stood the test of time and Uber for its constant innovation and stellar customer service.
In the one hour that M and I spent together, we spoke about a variety of topics ranging from Star Wars trivia to marathon running tips, the biggest takeaways for me however, would be the correlation between Star Wars and developing a brand that is truly customer centric. The conversation is summed up in the following paragraphs.
For about 40 odd years, Star Wars has captured the imaginations of millions of people across the globe. From a rudimentary sci-fi film with a relatively low budget of $11 million, Star Wars has come a really long way to become one of the world’s most recognizable and profitable brands.
At it’s heart, Star Wars is actually quite a simple story on the age-old premise of good versus evil. It is conceptually pretty much the same story, yet year after year, we are introduced to jaw-dropping movies, snazzier video games and drool-worthy merchandise and the cash registers never stop ringing. Think about it, it’s incredible how the brand hasn’t ever ticked-off customers and has in fact garnered an exponentially growing fanbase over a period of nearly 40 years. So, in essence what Star Wars has showcased here is an important lesson on how to keep customers coming back for more, even though the “more” here is pretty much the same thing that you’ve been peddling all along.
When Luke Skywalker trains with Master Yoda in the swamps of Dagobah, and Skywalker gradually becomes more adept in the use of the force, we can find a parallel to customer service: the value of training. While customer service can’t always fix every problem, it is imperative that every problem that can be fixed, should be fixed ASAP. And just as in M’s case, the training leads to better quality of service and consistency. Do, or do not, as the Jedi Master Yoda once said, there is no try.
There are a lot of businesses out there that have stood the test of time. Some of them survive on the basis of limited or no competition, the rest survive because they provide stellar customer service. There is however, almost always a risk of losing customers. In fact, 78% of customers have bailed out of making an intended purchase because of a poor customer experience and unlike Star Wars fans who were a fairly vocal bunch and voiced their disdain for the 1999–2005 Star Wars prequels, businesses typically hear from only 4% of their dissatisfied customers. The period from 1999 to 2005 also saw the rise in internet penetration, something that brought about a paradigm shift in the way businesses communicated with customers. When you make a blunder now, it can reach social media and get shared and re-shared in a matter of minutes.
In the case of Star Wars prequels from 1999–2005, the brand seemed to soldier on from strength to strength despite the disdain from the original set of Star Wars fans. This is where we see the genius entrepreneur in George Lucas. While the movies were questionable, the empire unloaded truck loads of drool-worthy Star Wars merchandise. The merchandise was instantly (and continues to be) lapped up and the Star Wars brand was suddenly worth millions. The prequels, in essence, were giant commercials for Star Wars merchandise and were a key part in the brand building exercise.
What people don’t often acknowledge is that, perhaps, for every Star Wars fan who walked out after being disappointed after a prequel, maybe or four or five new Star Wars fans picked up merchandise. So, conventionally the prequels may not have been successful, but when viewed through the lens of brand building, you’d see otherwise. And this is an important lesson for brands — playing to your strengths. While one part of your brand/ service may not match up to the best, working on your strengths and pitching them as differentiators may increase your chances of succeeding.
For once I wished that there was more traffic, or that the route was longer, but that was not be. As I hopped out of the taxi, M and I predictably ended the ride by quoting Obi-wan Kenobi, “Good bye, old friend. May the Force be with you.”
Sometimes, the best lessons come from the most unexpected sources, you just have to keep looking. In this case, it came by bringing together the best of my two favourite worlds — Uber and Star Wars.
Originally published on LinkedIn.
