Uber Carshare shifts gears for effective customer service

Uber Carshare, a leader in the domain of peer-to-peer car rental, began its journey as Car Next Door in 2013. From an Australian startup to being acquired by Uber in 2022, it’s been an exciting ride. With customer experience teams based in Australia, the Philippines, and soon North America, the company serves its patrons via phone, email, and chat, along with a help center on its app and website. Ailie McAleenan, content design lead at Uber Carshare, plays a role in shaping this customer experience. She explains, “Our content design team primarily focuses on transactional interactions with our customers. This includes working with our help center app, chat, and all emails we send to our customers.”

Uber Carshare has been using Zendesk for more than nine years. “It’s more than just a tool. It’s an integrated platform that aids in streamlining processes and fostering smooth communication,” McAleenan states. “This was my first experience using a solution where everything related to support is integrated into one platform. I’ve worked in several major organizations before and haven’t encountered something this seamless.”

Despite having smooth customer service operations, Uber Carshare wasn’t immune to growing pains. The rapid expansion of the business led to a steep increase in customer support needs. McAleenan recalls, “When I started, there were around 80 agents. Now, we’re up to about 140, with growth continuing weekly.” This called for an upgrade that could help manage the company’s burgeoning customer experience demands.

Unleashing full potential with Zendesk

Uber Carshare’s use of Zendesk extends beyond just the customer-facing facets. Internally, McAleenan has found value in getting employees up to speed quickly because many people were already familiar with Zendesk. This meant that it was quick to onboard new users and train people to try out new workflows when needed. “It’s really allowed our team to expand quickly over the years,” shares McAleenan.

Uber Carshare has leveraged Zendesk solutions to solve a variety of challenges to bolster its customer support function and improve its business. For example, the company takes a proactive approach in leveraging data for better decisions using Zendesk Explore. “We noticed a spike in ticket volumes after customers received emails from us upon making their first booking,” says McAleenan. “So we included links in the emails to useful articles from our help center, and that reduced ticket submissions by about 60 percent. Without the insight of ticket numbers, we wouldn’t have known to take action.”

Integrating and contextualizing support

To provide a more personal touch to customer support, Uber Carshare has enhanced the level of contextual help it offers. “There’s flexibility in reporting problems or making queries. For example, on our member site, a customer can start their query journey from the car they’ve booked and report an issue, or they can go to their account and submit a ticket,” says Amanda Grace Wall, chief product officer at Uber Carshare. “Using Zendesk, we’ve built dynamic forms to ask specific questions depending on the selected issue. By getting all the information upfront, we can resolve problems much faster for customers.”

Furthermore, the customer support team at Uber Carshare actively monitors the feedback on nearly 300 help center articles using Zendesk Guide, with a focus on improving one-touch ticket resolution. This has enabled the company to swiftly resolve thousands of tickets a month, with a median full resolution time of about 2.3 hours. “When customers order cars, they want to book and go. If we can meet that demand and solve queries fast enough, we will gain potential long-term customers,” adds McAleenan.

In addition to quick service, customers of Uber Carshare can also contact them via multiple channels. ”They can choose between a phone call or chat. The goal is to provide them with options most suitable to their needs,” shares McAleenan. As a result of speedy and comprehensive service, Uber Carshare has seen a customer satisfaction (CSAT) score of 78.7 percent. This underlines the effectiveness of the integrated Zendesk Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger, Support, and Chat.

Gearing up for growth

Uber Carshare’s ingenious use of Zendesk has led to the swift resolution of almost three million tickets since the company started using the platform. Now also available outside of Australia, Uber Carshare is set to continue its journey of growth with Zendesk. “We’re looking into chat automation right now. The goal is to surface relevant content even quicker to customers for one-touch tickets, and leave the more complex ones to agents,” shares McAleenan.

Speaking of the partnership with Zendesk, she adds, “Our teams within and outside of Australia have seamlessly worked with the ticketing system we have. Using Zendesk has given us the flexibility to try new things because we’re not nervous that a change is irreversible. It’s a platform that has grown with us, and will continue to do so for the future.”