How to “BOUNCE” back

Amused to see how the city of Bangalore has transformed in the past 2 years in terms of commute as I traveled from Hyderabad the previous weekend.

Being an outsider who landed there to meet some friends I was looking for some local transport, surprisingly there are a handful of options. Firstly, I took an electric bike — Yulu but couldn’t drive it for long as the battery was low, dropped it by a nearby Yulu zone.

There were Vogo bikes too but with a limitation of dropping it at another Vogo zone

Then these yellow bikes with a red logo randomly parked on the roadside which caught my eye — Bounce

Brief about Bounce

https://bounceshare.com/

Unlike the limitation of picking and dropping at designated places for Vogo and Yulu, Bounce bikes can be picked up and dropped at any location.

Here are my experiences of booking >10 bounces

User experience 1

• On day 1: I was inside my friend's flat trying to see nearby bounce bikes. Booked one and then walked till the bike. To my bad luck, there was no helmet when I opened seat of the bike, as I was an outsider who doesn’t have his own helmet I have to give up and this happened for the next five bikes
• Every time I book one bounce nearby so that I can reserve it upfront and then get disappointed to see there is no helmet (In India the helmet in gearless bikes is stored in the trunk below the seat), and as it was Bangalore where the traffic rules are too strict ( fine of >INR 1000 for riding without helmet), having tried enough and with no patience for more I booked a Rapido for commute

Problem statement: Users are unable to find helmet after booking Bounce

Effect: Users having a bad experience of interaction with Bounce and increased anxiety to find out if there is a helmet available or not

Experiment: We need to find a solution where we can intimate the user if there is a helmet present in the vehicle or not even before opening the trunk of the bike, we can try tagging a long thread to the helmet and then instruct the users to keep it hanging once they close the seat trunk

— This solves the problem only to users who book Bounce when they are near the bike

— Though there are discussions to user IoT we can try this out for phase 1

Update: Bounce has started showing an indication icon if the helmet is present or not now.

Metrics to measure:

1. R1 — The percentage of users who have booked the bike at the location (<2meters) vs R2— the percentage of users who booked the bike more than 2meters from it. If R1 is comparatively higher then we can implement this solution
2. The number of bikes that got canceled just after unlocking saying “no helmet” and see the percentage change after implementation of this experiment

User experience 2

• On day 2: This time my friend came to pick me up and I asked him to drop me at a nearby location where I can pick some bounce to ride and this time the tire was flat, I was disappointed at first and then moved on

Problem statement: Users are booking bikes which are Non-usable

— This scenario would happen as the person used before didn’t take good care of the bike or the bike was not serviceable after the previous user

Effect: Very little trust factor for the service as one would never know if the bike is serviceable or not even after booking one

Experiment: Along with other options why one is canceling the ride, we can give an option to users to mark it as “Non-usable” to the next user

Metrics to measure: M1 — Initially just tag the bikes which are marked as “Non-usable” by the users and M2 — take the count of bikes which got canceled multiple times in a row (>3 times) after it’s tagged as “Non-usable”. If M2/M1 percentage is high then we need not show the bikes on listing once it’s marked as “Non-usable”. Which save lots of time and the operations can be informed the earliest to take action

— The adverse effect of this would be many bikes being marked “Non-usable” and leading to business loss

User experience 3

• On day 2: After I finished meeting my best friend, he offered to ride me along until I find the nearest Bounce. As he was riding me around I couldn’t get the updated list of Bounce bikes available around me as the GPS update was too slow. So, we have to ride too slow and then keep on clicking the location icon to get the bikes nearby. In other words, Bounce can show more number of bikes than limiting it’s search to a radius as users who have availability to a short commute can book a Bounce far from the present location

Problem statement:

1. User wants to book a bounce which is far from his location
2. User need to get the updated list of Bounce bikes as one keeps on moving

— This might not on top of priority for Bounce team as mostly the users might be booking the bike staying at a location and then start traveling to a bike

Effect: Low number of bookings as one needs to travel too far to book a Bounce and bad user experience as the system doesn’t allow for bookings while moving

Experiment: Try showing more number of bikes available as the user zooms out of the map or try updating the GPS location frequently

— I would suggest to try out one of the above ideas at a time so that the data would be more accurate to measure user behavior

Metrics to measure:

1. The distance between the booking location and the Bounce bike location — If you find users booking Bounce bikes at a far off location then you have a new user segment
2. Two bikes booked within a short period of time which are far away (First one is a non-successful booking) — This gives more data if the above mentioned is a common user behavior or an anomaly, if the numbers are high then this needs to be prioritized

User experience 4 — Happy ending

• On day 4: After returning to Hyderabad this time I could successfully book a Bounce bike and I drove it happily to my home but to my surprise, I found an option that I would get a refund of INR 150/- for filling fuel of INR 100/- and guess what? the tank was full (Need to streamline the operations), I could have easily fuelled a different bike and could have uploaded the bill for refund. Didn’t do it though — just believe me.

Why did I go through the hard work of booking 10 bounces in 4 days just to get rejected 9 times but still try the 10th time?

• For me, it was price and convenience
• Three major things I consider as important for any industry change is transport, communication, and resources

Experiment: Reach out to your users who had at least 3 unsuccessful bookings before a successful booking and know the reasons why? if you have a fan base of the same then you have a product-market fit — Kudos

Other observations:

• I have had other experiences where the bike didn’t unlock by Bluetooth
• One time as there was no helmet and I wanted to cancel the ride, I couldn’t do it through the app
• Some of the bikes are within the private parking area
• Other time the bike was not present at the location showed on the app

Bounce — You guys have been trying hard to get the right things done and these are your initial days where you are still trying to figure things out and I know you will solve them soon. Keep up the great work