Don’t Talk to Me— Thoughts about the Riders experience in a Grab Car
Disclaimer: This article represents my own thoughts and does not reflect any other organisation.
The Context
I’m waiting in a cafe for my girlfriend to arrive for our morning coffee, and as she drops into the seat next to me, she says:
I gave my Grab Driver an extra tip cause he was quiet for the entire trip LOL
I was stumped, thinking I was the oddball that got carsick and felt guilty for not wanting to chat with my nice driver. So putting my Experience Designer hat on I asked her, why she felt it was worthwhile giving him a tip for simply keeping silent? She answered:
I’m very practical, all I want in a driver is for them to get me to my destination quickly and efficiently. I find that when they start chatting, they don’t really concentrate on the road and are really slow AND I have to make conversation with someone I don’t know when I just want to shut my brain off for a while.
I really wondered if more people felt this way, so I took to social media to ask around and do some desk research to understand this topic a little better.
The Goal
There were two things I wanted to understand:
1. Do people prefer silent rides in cabs?
2. If so, how do we provide a solution/platform to get riders and drivers on the same page and improve rider experience?
Did people actually feel more comfortable with a silent trip?
Out of 12 people who responded, all 12 said that they prefer a silent trip!
This is definitely not a new insight that Grab doesn’t know about; based on the article created by them: https://www.grab.com/sg/blog/driver/car/small-talk-101-a-damn-useful-grab-drivers-guide-to-solid-conversations/
However, the issue here is that it is clearly not being actively pursued in their design. The article outlines that there are various kinds of riders but seems to encourage drivers to make conversations for better ratings — leaving it up to the driver to decide how he or she should set the tone of the ride.
So the next question here is; how do you get a driver to stop chatting with you if he tries to start a conversation?
Most people felt guilty for telling their driver that they want to stay silent, so they try to use other methods to stop them from talking.
So, how do we prevent this awkward paiseh(guilty) situation from happening in the first place?
If most people are saying they have to use different methods to keep their driver quiet so as not to make their driver feel bad, why not provide an avenue for users to indicate that they prefer a quiet ride to their driver.
Current State
Grab provides a kebab menu where users can send a message to your driver — so the user flow would look a little like this:
This solution only optimises the experience for the grab driver to receive notes from the rider however, from the rider's perspective, the main goal here would not be about the quality of the ride but if they can get a car in a decent amount of time and at the decent price.
Potential Solution
The solution needs to be simple enough for the riders to be able to provide an indicator to the driver as to whether he should start a conversation or not, without any information overload.
The introduction of a simple choice of Open to Chit-Chat vs No Chit-Chat Please would be a simple enough solution to tell the driver that you’d rather have some quiet time
Conclusion
Ideally with this solution, it provides the rider an opportunity to easily set the tone of their ride. I have not interviewed drivers about this but I’m interested in finding out how drivers feel about making conversation with riders.
Agree? Disagree? — Let’s have a chat!
📨 marie@reassemble.io
