The story of one personal account that helped us make 15,000 couriers and pickers a little happier

When we see a service, we immediately rush to evaluate how convenient and useful it is. In the case of SberMarket, the client needs a clear interface, an extensive catalog of goods, all delivery details, different payment systems, and so on. So the service fulfills its function, and the user is satisfied with the service.

The easiest way is to look at the product in this way, that is, through the eyes of the client. But the product always has a downside: the tasks of the business, employees, partners.

In September 2020, we assembled a cross-functional team of developers, analysts, designers, accountants and the back office and focused on the invisible side of SberMarket: a personal account for couriers and order pickers. We made it from scratch in 3 months.

I’ll tell you what product approaches we used in development, how a personal account helped us, and how a good application can make 15,000 operational workers happier (even without raising rewards).

IT solution instead of a granary book

SberMarket delivers products from store shelves. Pickers collect the order, and couriers take it home at a convenient two-hour interval. The entire team of “fields” are self-employed partners of the service.

In each store that is connected to the SberMarket, several such partners are on duty at once, headed by a “senior store” – a supervisor. Prior to the personal account, it was the supervisor who served as an inbound window for all requests and problems that the collectors or couriers encountered in the course of work.

What do partners want to know?

  • How much they earned yesterday and how much they will receive in the near future.
  • What the client thinks about their work.
  • The number of their orders.
  • Its build speed.
  • Personal rating, which is formed from user ratings. Based on the rating, the premium and bonuses are calculated.

Previously, before paying the remuneration, the supervisor checked the data in the system with the opinion of collectors and couriers. Does it all fit together? You have so many orders in the system – have you forgotten any? Partners looked in their notebooks or phone notes, confirmed statistics and received payments.

This is the Middle Ages. A modern online service doesn’t have to work with granary books. In addition, it is difficult for a store senior to answer the same questions, simultaneously onboard newcomers and draw up shift schedules.

To help the supervisor our own “911 line” worked – an internal mail to support partners. They wrote there with questions that the supervisor suddenly could not solve. But the efficiency of this channel was extremely low: every day thousands of letters fell there, which managers did not have enough time to rake.

When we began to study the problem, it turned out that the partners were already trying to solve it in different ways, albeit in a very crutch. The partners themselves organized groups in messengers, where supervisors regularly shared the results of the shifts.

We realized that we can’t go on like this. It is necessary to give people a convenient personal account for work.

What does he look like

This is a section in an existing application, where orders from customers fell to partners. There are three main screens: the main page, the list of orders and the list of items in the order.

What’s on the main: information about the change, personal statistics (average score, number of orders or items, percentage of cancellations or replacements of goods in an order, and so on), the last evaluated order with a comment from the client, the amount of money earned for the selected period, the “report error ”with instructions and a link to the tip service, if they are connected.

What’s on the order list screen: list of orders for the selected period, order card with a number, rating and comment from the client, the amount of earned funds, the ability to fall into the order and push notifications about useful comments from the client.

What’s on the screen of items in the order: product and item cards in assembly or delivery plus order information button, customer info, order weight, time slot, and so on.

The personal account helped us to reduce the workload on supervisors by 15%. Now all the answers are in the LC. With remuneration payments, it also became easier: from a streaming reconciliation system, we came to a claim system.

In fact, we have automated all payments. Now the supervisor is approached only in controversial situations – just when the partners have any complaints.

How a personal account helps business

We sawed the LC, focusing not only on the needs of partners, but also on the tasks of the operational department. At this time, SberMarket was preparing to switch to a weekly payment system. Without an IT solution, the workload on the supervisor would have grown exponentially. In addition, we had to competently notify all partners that now their reward will come to the card more often.

Now the personal account solves several tasks at once:

  • “Legalization” of existing crutches. All the necessary functionality is now in one place.
  • Increased trust in SberMarket among partners. When the service provides transparent analytics on orders, people see and know that no part of their work will be lost. They are calmer – they work better and more willingly.
  • Strengthening the client-partner relationship. In LC, collectors see comments from customers: “Well done, everything is fine.” Or vice versa: “Well, they brought the wrong chocolate.” Previously, this information could only reach partners through a supervisor. Now collectors and couriers can see their points of growth, can work on bugs or enjoy positive feedback.
  • Transparency and visibility of work results. How much I collected, how much I earned, how quickly I drove it – now all the details are available at any time.
  • Increased motivation. Partners saw that their work brings joy to someone, and even getting to know regular customers. This can give a better and more personalized service.
  • A platform for experiments. What if we want to try to pay the reward not every week, but every day? In your personal account, we can quickly tell you about the changes. Previously, any news was announced by the supervisor.
  • The right functionality for hiring flexible partners. Now we have about 15 thousand pickers and couriers. Most work on a fixed schedule. But there are also those who want to work irregularly and for a couple of hours a day. A personal account helps to keep in touch with such partners and not lose sight of them, since they communicate with the supervisor much less often than others.
  • One window for any questions. We are constantly increasing the number of partners. It is difficult to communicate with thousands of people, therefore LC is intended to become a convenient single channel of communication. There you can find out, ask and understand any question without burdening the supervisor.

How we found all the “pains”

In our work, we used several product approaches: UX tests, small surveys on a loyal group of partners, and a large survey for 6 thousand couriers and collectors at the end. They also collected requirements and feedback from accounting, lawyers and the information security department, studied competitors and conducted a huge study of internal processes. The personal account turned out to be a cross-domain task, so it was necessary to take into account the opinion of all participants.

Product managers advice: invest more time in UX tests, surveys, and research. With quality work, they take as much time as a full-fledged feature. But they give a cool result. Unknown variables often come up during conversations with respondents, and initially the highest priority tasks may be less demanded by end users.

We did two UX tests – before starting work and after rolling out the first version. We got some insights:

  1. Affiliates want to see customer ratings more than rewards.

    Here we have a badly torn template. We thought we were doing LC for the sake of showing personal statistics (average grade, rewards, number of orders), but UX tests and surveys showed that we were wrong. Therefore, we first started working on displaying user ratings and comments for each order. Then we added statistics.

  2. Partners want to see the tip and whoever left it.

    After the first MVP, we put together a second UX test, made a large survey and found out what else couriers and collectors are missing. It turned out that they wanted to see a tip in their personal account: the amount for the order and the addressee. The tip mechanic was implemented on a third-party service. To watch their tea, the partner had to log in in a different place each time. We quickly added this function to the LC – even development was not required here.

  3. The order number does not tell the partners anything: you need a list of positions or addresses.

    Okay, everyone sees customer reviews, tips, and ratings. And how to understand which order you were thanked for? It turned out that collectors associate the order with specific items: “ah, this is the one who bought 100 kinder surprises!” For couriers, the recognition factor is addresses. Therefore, we have added the ability to “fail” in the card of any order, to see positions and other information.

What now

We quickly saw that 80% of partners visit the LC several times per shift. This exceeded our expectations. The cabinet works for the gamification of labor: people are interested in seeing their progress, it motivates them.

In the process of work, we formed a backlog and understood how to develop the cabinet further. Soon it will become a single tool for interacting with a partner – from recruiting to training and coming to a shift.

Next, we plan to scale the LC to other roles. For example, for universal partners: these are assemblers who deliver the order themselves.

Supervisors also need their own platform to keep track of the operational status of the store and spot problems in time. Convenient IT solutions will help to minimize the routine and leave people only those tasks where they cannot do without a person.

When you use any service (from a taxi, cleaning, delivery and anything else) – think about what it consists of inside?

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