Have you heard the latest news on UBER?
Now you might be wondering which one…
The truth is that this company has brought a revolution in the taxi industry all across the world and it keeps on disrupting the conventional job and services markets with yet new and unexpected developments. Take for example their upcoming driverless car program or the announcement of them having a NASA engineer working on a flying vehicle project.
If you’re wondering how Uber has become the powerful company that we see today, then we need to take a look at its business model.
First, we know that is built on a “sharing economy” model which is a hybrid type of peer-to-peer exchange facilitated via community-based online services. It might come as a surprise, but this economic phenomenon is popularly known as Uberization (!).
Second, without going further into details, the point of this model is that it enhances the customer’s experience through a number of very simple and intuitive measures to reduce customer effort at a minimum. I will only point out a few:
1. With a simple tap on their smartphone, customers have a cab arrive at their location in the minimum possible time.
2. Easily choose between the types of experiences they want: Uber X, Uber Black, Uber Taxi, Uber SUV, boats, helicopters, and even a motorcycle (in Paris)!
3. The customer can track the driver as he arrives to his location.
4. Easy payment procedure handled by Uber.
5. No need to wait for a taxi for long times.
6. Free rides on certain occasions and discounts from time to time.
7. Prices lesser than the normal taxi fares which results in a smaller financial effort for the customer.
So, at a glance an Uber experience is overall quite low on the effort expended by the customer and this contributes, we think, a great deal to the company’s success. Had their business model generated more friction, it surely wouldn’t have been as fast adopted in no less than 60 countries around the world!
How do you think your company would score on a Customer Effort scale?
If you are ready to find out the real answer to this question, then you should try our Effort Assessment Score (EAS) – a tool that measures effort on 4 different dimensions: Physical, Cognitive, Time and Emotional.
If you are interested in finding out more about our tool, don’t hesitate to contact us at office@eascore.com or visit eascore.com
