{audio:0:00:00} I think a good place for you to start would be for you to provide some context of when you joined Grab in 2013.

{audio:0:00:10} Yes. My joining to Grab in 2013 is at that time in Thailand, there’s no ride hailing application at all. Only Grab and Easy Taxi was there. Just the two of us in the market trying to penetrate to the customers, as well as the drivers. We’ve been struggling trying to get the driver on board and later on, we’re trying to scale the business.

{audio:0:01:11} This was pretty early days when you joined, 2013. I think the business was founded in 2012. Was it still early days then in the growth of the business? What was the size of the business in terms of the growth rate, the number of drivers, the employees?

{audio:0:01:20} At that time, according to the research that Grab has been doing overall in the market, just for the quick note that at that time, we both, Grab and Easy Taxi, the competitor at that time, trying to penetrate into taxi market. Grab Car just like Uber wasn’t there yet. The idea was not there. We don’t think that we need it at that time. We have probably around 100,000 taxi drivers over the country. 80 percent of them are driving around in Bangkok. 80 percent of the 80 percent that is in Bangkok is active. Actually, driving on the street. We would think if we could hit 30 percent of the drivers that are driving in Bangkok, that would be first milestone for us to start scaling if we can hit that number at that time. Yes, that’s what we’re trying to do. First phase of launching a brand and the service in Bangkok is we’re trying to recruit the driver to the system. By that time, the number is swinging up and down because the service was not launched. We don’t have the real booking yet, but we need to have the driver on the system first.

{audio:0:03:18} What strategies did you use to recruit drivers at Grab?

{audio:0:03:24} The strategy that we used to recruit the driver is we have to go to the driver. Not inviting the driver to come to us because they have no idea what the application for taxi hailing is for. In Thailand, people are hailing at the roadside and bargain with the fair and stuff. The strategy that we use is, we go to the gas station. That time we go to the gas station because a lot of taxis are there. Sometimes they’re not filling their gas, but they just stop for a quick break. Doing that, we don’t need to find a place for a carpark for the driver to come to us. They already park there at the gas station. We are there. Then we prepare a training, a quick training method and materials for the driver. Before that, we need to have some old-fashioned way, like a piece of paper that we bring to the driver and show it to them, knocking on their window of the car and asking them if they would spend five minutes with us and recruit them. It’s quite fun at that time.

{audio:0:04:55} Walk me through the process, so you approach the gas station, there are drivers there having a break, do you approach them and pitch to them the idea of Grab or how does that work?

{audio:0:05:03} What we do is, we go there at the gas station, we setup a tent, putting our Grab Taxi brand. At that time, it was called Grab Taxi. Before we rebranded to Grab. We setup a tent as our command center there. A mobile spot for recruiting. We have around four to five salespersons, they’re not salespeople, they’re not selling anything, but they’re just selling the idea or recruiting a driver. They’re bringing a sheet of our work, showing the driver and pitch to them in one or two minutes of that pitching of inviting them, to get their attention. If they’re interested, you spend another three minutes, in total, five minutes, tell them the benefits of joining us. When you get their attention, we’ll bring them to the tent and we start training, everything, like a flipchart, a flip board. We show them what the application looked like. Then we’re asking them for the documents to recruit by taking the picture on the mobile phone and send the picture of the documents through some kind of line like WhatsApp chat program with the backend team at the office to put all of the information in the system. Then we need to show them the real-time, real job. We shoot the booking from the backend to the location. Specific note that this booking is for which driver, then that salesperson just accepts the job and then walks them through the process until the end. That’s how we activate the non-Grab taxi driver to be a Grab taxi driver in one place. Then they are allowed to run on the street.

{audio:0:07:13} You actually show them how it could work right there, right then with the technology that you had. Which is quite impressive for the taxi driver, I assume.

{audio:0:07:25} That is correct. The maturity of the driver is quite engaged with this thing, they’re quite excited. They didn’t know that. They just have the phone, the phone that they have can do this. They can join by using their mobile phone that they have.

{audio:0:07:46} What was the biggest challenge recruiting drivers this way?

{audio:0:07:55} The characteristic of the driver is different. Let’s say at that time we only had taxi driver, so the driver is non-tech people. Taxi driver in Thailand is non-tech people. Just before the time that Grab launched their service there. Some of them are farmers. They grow their crops and they have to wait for their crops to bear fruit. They come to the city and run the taxi. When the time comes, they just stop running, give the rental car back to the rental place and then go back and do their crops. That’s most of the taxi driver are that type of person. The challenges are they’re non-tech people. How would you explain technology to the non-tech people? That’s the challenge that we have to overcome. What we do and it’s more successful way is we visualize their benefits generated by the technology that we are introducing to them. That’s how we engage them. They come to drive because they need some income. The people work for money. We need to show them how they can make money through the platform. That’s the strategy that we use.

{audio:0:09:27} You focused on really the incremental earnings they can drive from the application, as well as being a taxi driver normally or would you pitch it to them as moving completely over to Grab?

{audio:0:09:42} Earning is one thing. The other thing is the kind of intangible concept, but something like safety and trackable because from time to time, we have news. We have a criminal on the street where they rob the taxi driver, which is the real news on the newspaper. People get scared and they want to protect themselves. We tell them that if they are running with us, then we are the platform who track everything, we know who is in your car, who will be in your car and if there’s something that happens, then we can give information right away. They can inform us from the platform and then we can find help. That’s something that we pitch them with the benefits that they would get, apart from earning. Earning attracts them the most.

{audio:0:10:50} Going through that onboarding process, were there any particularly sticky parts with the driver where you’re really trying to onboard them face-to-face at the gas station?

{audio:0:11:06} First, what we face a lot is the driver, they want to make more money through the platform. They don’t want to spend a lot of time listening to what the trainer has to say or the salesperson at the spot have to say. Sometimes they just are forgetting things. They don’t remember which button, how to press. They didn’t deliver the service as we expected because they didn’t remember, or they didn’t pay attention for the whole process. The whole process takes almost one hour for one session. Either one-to-one person or one to a group. Some of them are just picking up some other things. The process needs to be recapped and needs to be repeated from time to time. It’s so different. When we launched Grab Car, it’s quite another story because Grab Car, they are educated people. People like us, we’re educated, and we have a car. It’s just parked in the parking lot and we want to make money out of it. You just register your car and your mobile with the platform. Then you go out and running. Just like Uber. People are more expecting the best user experience out of the platform. More than just making a lot of money because we have other sources of income, but this is something we want to do, you have time and you want to convert it into some income.

{audio:0:12:56} They are two different types of people, right? Like you mentioned, you had the farmer, which is the registered taxi driver. They’re renting a taxi and have been a taxi driver for a certain period of time. Then the other people, the Grab Car situation, which is similar to Uber, it’s I have a car sitting there, I can earn money from this. Why don’t I just try to leverage this asset and drive it about in my free time?

{audio:0:13:24} What were the strategies you used with Grab Car to onboard drivers?

{audio:0:13:32} The way that we try to onboard Grab Car drivers, because they are educated people and they are capable of using the digital sales onboarding methods. What we do is, we try to use the opensource platform like a Google Form and at that time, we only have Google Form, so we ask them to come to the office and give them a proper training. When I say a proper training, it means we have a room, we put them into one room and then we tell them from A to Z of what they have to do, which button they have to press. Later on, it’s developed into all the products. When I say products, all of the applications, how to use things like that, it’s all in the video clip. Then we’re using the classroom to tell them the service they have to deliver. Tell them the benefits, which is changing from time to time. We let them in and then we tell them in the classroom what they will earn out of the platform. Yes, the rest of the process, that is only 20 percent in the classroom. 80 percent of it is self-registered.

{audio:0:14:55} This was just traditional digital marketing channels to get in front of that Grab Car driver.

{audio:0:15:00} That is correct, yes. They are more engaging into that.

{audio:0:15:05} Let’s fast-forward to 2014/2015 when you have Grab Car and Grab Taxi, how do you drive loyalty with the different types of drives you have?

{audio:0:15:20} When it comes to the loyalty, one thing that I already mentioned before is people drive for money. You want them to be loyal to you, there’s no real thing as loyalty in this business. They’re not going to die for you, they’re only going to work for money. What we use is we have to maintain a good income for them. We as a platform need to make sure that in one trip it’s really worth driving for them, or it’s got to be dynamic, like a short trip or long trip. In general, in average earning per day, it should be enough for them to maintain their daily earning expectations. Apart from the money side, then we need to give them a good community. Good community means you being a good listener. At the first stage of launching Grab Taxi in the market, we are trying to dominate the market by one-way communication. We give you money, you just drive. That’s it. It’s like lack of human touch, lack of relationship between the driver who is the backbone of the platform and the platform itself. I tried to create a community by using social media platforms. The first one that we used is Facebook. Actually, it’s the second one. The first one was Line group chat. Are you familiar with Line chat? Line chat is very popular in Thailand that people are using Line. Line is uncontrollable. You cannot control who is going to be in the group, who is adding who in the group, who’s saying what in the group. You cannot control the content. We’re looking for a better way for content management on this, which is Facebook group. At that time, Facebook page is similar.

{audio:0:17:42} You cannot prevent people to like your page. Facebook group is a closed group. You can search the group from the list, but you cannot automatically join, you need to be approved. We give questions to screen people to come into the group. The group is a space for the people to complain. At that time, there are no ears for the driver from the platform to hear about their pain and their needs, or their improvements that they request. I’m trying to create the space where they can throw everything in one place. Then developers or whoever are involved just go there and collect the feedback. Facebook group is not like a Facebook account. If they post, it’s going to go to the world. It’s not actually in the group. We can contain the impact. We can contain the damage, as well as we can remedy them, the person who needs help. That’s why we decided to use Facebook group. Then we started to expand that Facebook group into other activities, something like conditions program. We get the compliments from the customer or the users who use the service and they get impressed by the driver.

{audio:0:19:20} We announce that compliment in the group to everyone. People are more engaged to the group. They are becoming somebody in the group because they get to be announced. They get to be in the news and then we’re starting to do some CSR activities, like take them to the beach and get rid of some trash. Very traditional activity but something to get them to be on the news. We collaborate with the other external organizations that already provide the activity. We bring the driver to join them. They need audience, they have the activity, but they need audience. We just fulfilled that. It’s a win/win situation. We’re both, the organization and the platform, we both get the news out in the market. We use the news to announce back into a Facebook group to put people to be recognized. That’s one thing. Another thing is we use a clear path of career path. When I say this, I have to say that we’re not hiring these drivers as our own employee because they are the users in the platform. What we give them is, we give them a title. A title that means nothing to the outsiders, like non-Grab driver, but among Grab driver itself they become a VIP. We call a driver VIP and then if you can grow into CS VIP, which is a super VIP. We give them a career to grow. That’s how they want to convert their time to contribute into complete trip for the business and then to maintain in the platform and then to grow to be in the top and maintain to be at the top. That’s how we’re trying to create loyalty on the drivers’ side.

{audio:0:21:25} What does it mean to be a super VIP?

{audio:0:21:36} We segregate them in some few criteria, which is the number of trips that they have to make a month. The number of the average rating that they need to get from the customer and then the number of complaints that they should not exceed the limit from the customer. Then if you contribute more, then you are upgraded yourself from a normal member to be a VIP member. When you contribute even more than VIP, then you become a super VIP. When you become both, later one, we are adding special benefits, like signature benefits from Grab to them. Like they can get free tire car change. They need to buy a new tire, so they get a higher discount from SVIP and smaller discount for VIP and no discount for non-VIP. Something like that. It comes with non-monetary benefit.

{audio:0:22:40} That drove their loyalty to get recognition but also you got benefits on top of that from Grab.

{audio:0:22:51} What were the biggest complaints you had on the Facebook group?

{audio:0:22:56} The biggest complaints were all about the application, the system, the technology. Sometimes it’s unstable in terms of their connection with the internet, also their device processing. Also, another thing is a complaint about something that we can’t control at all, which is the customer behavior. The customer doesn’t want to wait. They want to book a car, but they want it now, like one to two minutes. Then when the car seems to be too far, they just cancel, while the driver is already on the way. Halfway to arrive to the pickup point, but when the booking is canceled, the driver gets – they have to deny the passenger along the roadside to go to the pickup point. Then when the booking was canceled, it’s a business opportunity loss on driver’s perspective. That’s the most complaint. The customer behavior. There will be some difficult customer, like the car is too stinky, the driver is not polite. The driving of the driver is not as expected. Not safe. It’s very subjective when you say not safe.

{audio:0:24:31} These were actually complaints from riders, not drivers?

{audio:0:24:37} The complaint from driver toward the customer.

{audio:0:24:40} The drivers were complaining about the person they’re picking up.

{audio:0:24:45} Yes. That’s how the driver complained on the Facebook group.

{audio:0:24:56} How did you solve some of these issues?

{audio:0:24:57} That’s a big question. How do you pin a cloud? Well, it’s not that hard to. It’s almost impossible to change the customer behavior, but it is possible that we change the driver’s perspective or mindset toward the service mind. It’s not that the driver doesn’t know what to do or what to think when they need to take the difficult customer. Sometimes conflicts don’t happen because the customer will just all of a sudden become difficult. It’s because the driver is doing something that provoke the difficult behavior of the customer that makes them complain. Something like the driver speaks too much. They’ll try to advertise the application out of the good will. Out of the good mind, but in the wrong way. My job is to recognize the good will. It also needs to give them the better way to do something like that. Facebook group allows you to do Facebook video clip and live. I have my team to do some kind of live training and tell them what to do when they want to promote their application. Just all of a sudden, we have a program from the marketing team for the driver to refer passenger.

{audio:0:26:47} We’re doing taxi, the taxi is to take the passenger who hails from the roadside. That is the non-Grab taxi, could be non-Grab taxi customer user. We want to use the opportunity for the customer to download the app. We ask the driver to promote that. Not just that you give them the idea, you just need to give the driver how to do it, too. Something like that. Sometimes we have to retrain the driver of the correct or the proper behavior that the driver should do in each context, like when they speak, what if the customer just gets angry or something else and throws it onto the driver? What way the driver should react? If they customer was a customer in a restaurant, there’s a way of telling the driver, it’s a restaurant. If you run the restaurant and the customer just being so angry from something else, but then complain about the food, you would not chase the customer out of the restaurant because you’re losing the business. The same thing that we’re trying to teach the driver. Driving a car is not a job, but it’s your business, so turning a job into a business. That’s how we’re trying to get the driver to take ownership of delivering a good service because without it, they’re losing their business.

{audio:0:28:38} What was the biggest challenge in changing that mindset of the driver from I’m just driving my car or a taxi here versus I’m actually a service business?

{audio:0:28:42} The challenge would be the driver have their own mind, they have their own thought. Some of the drivers are educated people. They don’t think that they are in the level of being just a driver for anyone. That’s how it’s difficult where the driver will listen to you, but they won’t agree to what all you’ve said for them to do. It’s a small portion that we could not control by giving them knowledge or education. We need to control them by policy.

{audio:0:29:42} Looking back at your time at Grab, what are the biggest take-aways for you in recruiting drivers? What are the key lessons you’ve learned?

{audio:0:29:56} Okay, this is a good question, actually. What I learned is, when I do recruit with the Grab taxi, the taxi driver is they want to have the community so bad because they’re from outside. They feel like an outsider all the time. When they are in Bangkok, they feel like an outsider. They need a community. If you can show or be their community, you create a good community for them. If one day somebody is coming up against a brand and says Grab taxi sucks, this driver is going to come and protect you because they don’t feel that the brand is the business, but it’s the community. It’s the family. It’s something that makes them become someone. That’s what I learned from doing with the taxi driver. From Grab Car, it’s another level of delivering an experience that you have to deliver as a platform to the users as a driver. My learning is whatever you think, you need to think of if it is scalable and is this going to provide a good experience out of the user? If not, it’s not and/or, it’s or. It has to be scalable. It has to come with a good experience. If two combined, then whatever you do with the platform, it’s going to very well scale in the market.

{audio:0:32:04} What about your biggest take-aways and lessons in driving retention of drivers?

{audio:0:32:07} My most important moment when I was there, when I was working in that field is when I drive as a taxi driver myself. I would say that you must wear the same shoes as them to understand what they want. If you want to retain them, or you want to understand their tension on the street, you need to be in their shoes. I spent a day, almost one day driving as a taxi driver. I never take passenger on the roadside, and I spend one day, take passenger from the application from the platform only. Then you never know. You see a lot that you don’t see when you plan it out in the office. Something like the time you have to spend on the road to go to the customer. Then you get cancel. You get to feel the feeling of disappointment. Also, you go to a very crowded place and then you couldn’t find the customer. The application is fine, bring the customer to the drier already. It’s the driver and the customer’s responsibility to find each other.

{audio:0:33:42} Who is going to expect who to find? The customer is like, “I’m going to be here, I booked. I pay my money. Your job, you take my money. You come find me.” Then the customer didn’t know that the place that they are is no parking, you’re not allowed to park. It’s not a pickup point. The driver needs to take the risk of asking the customer to cross the street. That’s a big issue. If I have to cross the street to get to your car, why would I need an application to book you to my position? That is something that you have to be with them, you have to be in their shoes in order to provide them the understanding. After that, I post my picture onto the group, like I drive as a taxi driver. Whatever I say, the attention is different. I get more attention and whatever I say, whatever they say to me, they tend to come to us more because now we try what they feel.

{audio:0:34:52} You actually gained respect for the drivers?

{audio:0:34:57} Yes, that’s what we get.

{audio:0:34:58} By walking in their shoes.

{audio:0:35:02} Can we explain the Go Bike business model, which is where the business you left from Grab to go to?

{audio:0:35:12} In Go Bike, their business model is different from Grab. To make you to see the picture. Grab grow their business vertically like this. Ride hailing. I have to say that at that time that I worked with Grab, there’s no Grab for here. There’s only transportation. You have a transportation and then you have taxi, you have car, you have bike, you have whatever car type. You only have one business, it’s transportation. Go Bike is different, it’s like this. There’s only one type of the car that is two wheels, the motorcycle. That’s why they call it Go Bike. Along the horizonal line, you will have a ride hailing transportation, you have a food delivery, you have courier, like express. It could be some other stuff. If you’re family with the application, Go Jet. Go Bike was reflecting Go Jet model in Thailand at the time. Right before Go Jet came in by themselves.

{audio:0:36:35} They competed with Grab on the bike side of things where they could obviously transport or give a ride to someone on the bike, whereas, Grab would do it in a car, so they competed with Grab in that sense, in the transportation industry.

{audio:0:36:51} Yes. All the services that they have in Go Bike, they already had at that time in Go Bike launch.

{audio:0:37:00} How were you recruiting bikers or drivers? How did you call them then?

{audio:0:37:05} You can call them bikers.

{audio:0:37:08} How did you recruit bikers?

{audio:0:37:13} Bikers, there are two types of bikers here. This is a tricky part here. We’re going to keep seeing this throughout the two-wheels market. One type of biker, we call them the win biker. Then the non-win biker. The definition is, there are two different types of places for two wheels to run on the street, which is the yellow plate. The yellow plate is the plate type where you can take passenger. If you don’t have the yellow plate, you’re going to have black plate. When I say black plate, it means a black font on a white screen. We call that black plate. You cannot take passengers. You can only take parcel delivery. That is by the regulation not the law, but by the regulation of the land and transport. There’s one smart guy, they’re just called the yellow plate driver as win driver.

{audio:0:38:25} Then when the business came, we just called them win biker just to engage people, because Thai people understand what win biker is. There’s win and non-win. This is two terms we’re going to use throughout the conversation for two wheels. Two wheels Thai recruitment, you have win biker and non-win. Win biker, they are condensed in one area, in one spot. If you look at if this is a map and you have an alley, this is going to be one win, two win. Each alley, they have their own win. In that spot of the win, you have a number of drivers staying there. It could be much; it could be less. It depends on their house location or whatever have to go there and then recruit them at the win station. For the non-win one, we do it like Grab Car thing. We bring them into the office, we train them, we recruit them, they sign all the documents at the office and then they go out and ride on the street.

{audio:0:40:00} Just taking a step back for a moment, it seems very important that you really segregate your drivers. For example, you spoke specifically of the taxi drivers versus the car drivers. The win bikers versus the non-win bikers. Is it important when you’re looking at drivers and retention and recruitment to really classify and segregate the type of person that you’re dealing with to really home in on a strategy that can work for them? In terms of when you approach recruitment and retention strategies, do you always start from the position of segregating the drivers into certain categories? Whether it’s win/non-win or Grab and taxi, do you go any further than that? Is that how you define them?

{audio:0:41:10} Further than that is not terminology of the persona of the people. It’s more into the business. We segregate down win, it’s either win or non-win driver, but there are one app driver or multiple app driver, or no app driver means they hate all the apps. Something like that. Apart from what I just mentioned, that’s all. The rest of the separation or the classification is just for us. It’s not changing their persona.

{audio:0:42:00} What were the biggest reasons that the bikers’ churn?

{audio:0:42:03} Churn. It’s either biker or driver churn, it’s because of the earning. It’s earning. Before we go to this factor of the earning that makes them churn, we have to understand that this platform can survive if only you can balance between demand and supply. As a platform because if you have lots of demand but no supply, then the demand is going to complain. They’re going to uninstall the app and make no bookings or use another app. If on the contrary, the supply is going to complain and then they uninstall the app and run for another app instead, that’s creating a lot of churn either to the demand or the supply. What we have to do is, we have to balance it. The way that we balance it, it’s not only that you can balance the fulfillment rate, like 100 booking with 100 supply. If you do that, then someone is going to start the churn. Do you want to guess who? It’s the driver because the driver cannot earn enough. If you have 100 booking and then you spread 100 booking into 100 drivers, then the driver is only going to get one trip per day.

{audio:0:43:38} Then that’s going to cost them a lot. They’re not earning enough. They’re going to have to start to look for another job. It’s not their fault. They have to survive; they have to look for another job. It’s the tricky part and it’s a lot of monitoring to do, if you need to find a balance, like if the demand is here and which level of supply is healthy? From the experience of working with the strategy team is 70 – 85 percent of the fulfillment rate. It’s a healthy one. The driver can survive, the customer will not complain much. They understand that sometimes they book, and they don’t get it, they just rebook again. The driver gets enough job. You need to give them more jobs. We’re monitoring the driver. We think of the earning of the driver with the trip, the complete trip per hour. If one hour, they can earn like one job. That is already good, but not the best. If you can make them two jobs in one hour with this traffic, with a lot of factors. The driver would earn a lot. If in one hour, they can make two jobs, they are willing to work longer. They’re willing to lengthen their working time to earn more money. That’s why churning is going to happen if even though you balance the supply and demand, but you didn’t think the part where the driver did not earn enough. A small portion that make them churn is the emotional stuff. Like, they don’t like the customer, they hate the staff who sometimes are losing the temper because the driver keeps calling them. Like when you go to the restaurant and the staff is just being rude to you, you won’t go back there again.

{audio:0:46:00} What was the average churn for Go Bike versus Grab?

{audio:0:42:05} They are kind of the same, five to ten percent month on month.

{audio:0:42:10} That’s a five to ten percent monthly churn rate, so you have to basically replenish five to ten percent of your drivers every month?

{audio:0:42:23} Yes, but we actually keep recruiting the driver every day. It doesn’t matter how big is the churn. The driver who drives a lot, they’re going to turn them up into VIP, a bigger tier. They’ll contribute more. The driver who contributes a lot, they keep contributing, no matter what circumstances. Our customer is growing too, so we need to grow the driver, as well. Then if the driver is not earning enough, it’s going to become an organic churn. If the driver is too big, like way too big, we need to either slow down on the recruitment or force churn the driver.

{audio:0:47:11} What were your key strategies to retain bikers at Go Bike?

{audio:0:47:18} I also use the same method there. Keep them feeling as a community as a brand. I crated another platform. I’m using the best practice that I’ve been experiencing from Grab and with the bike. I find that they have a different characteristic. In a way that there’s more violence. What I mean is, if you remember the map that I demonstrated to you as a win station, if you’re not win driver and then you take passenger in front of the win or the win knows and you do that. They could come to you and attack you because they have to fight a lot to be in that station. Let me give you a bit of context of becoming a win driver. If you want to be a win driver, yes, you need to have a bike, your own bike, it’s either your own bike or whoever bike it is, but it has to be a yellow plate. Then you need to have a win jacket. It’s an orange jacket that you have to wear where you can put your identification on this side and your identification on the backside here, so it’s going to be transparent to the passenger to see who you are in case you did something bad and then the passenger will remember that information and track you down.

{audio:0:49:07} It’s a regulation by the law, by transport. The thing is, here, the jacket that you have to wear, it was regulated by the transport that you have to wear it for the police to know that you are already registered as a member of the win station. The thing is, if I am the win driver and you want to be a win driver, too. Then you’re so desperate to be a win driver, so I steal this jacket, that is registered as my name to you. You can use that orange jacket and when I sell to you, I will sell you in the very higher price, like 100,000 baht, or in the city it could go up to 800,000 baht.  Then the more you come to the win station then you do installment back to the owner of this orange jacket. This becomes like a mafia system. The person who wants to become a win driver, they have to fight a lot to be in the spot. That’s how when Grab came in using the black plate, non-win to take passenger, there were protests all around the city around the win station. Or they go attack the non-win driver right away if they saw them coming in and taking their passenger away from their territory. The way that we try to retain win driver is we have to make sure that we understand the regulation. We could be a person or a pathway to convey their needs of their regulation or their pain to the government. Or best thing, if you can’t do any government collaboration, then you are the platform that follows this law. If your system can always allow the driver, the win biker only sees passenger’s job and the non-win biker not see passenger job, then that’s fine. That’s how the driver will come to you.

{audio:0:51:43} How would you compare the position of Get in the Thai market with Grab?

{audio:0:51:49} Now, Get is launching their service in Thailand as a food delivery app. Grab is also well-known in transportation for two years and still now. They are expanding their business into food delivery because transportation since Uber went into the stock market and then it’s not making money or making profit, there’s no pathway to profitability from transportation. Investors stopped looking to invest in transportation anymore. Food delivery is growing. It’s growing in the market and we come spot on for the investor to go, Get and Grab they are also food delivery app. Grab is scaling their business with corporate brands, restaurant, merchant. Get, they’re trying to capture the street food market merchants.

{audio:0:53:02} Is your role to really retain the food street market restaurants, or how do you look to retain the supply side of Get?

{audio:0:53:13} Still the driver. Just when you do food delivery, you have another player in your equation. Yes, the restaurant. Here we use the term of merchant because it could be restaurant, it could be something. Merchant is the one party that the platform can earn from. If I have a restaurant and you want to eat some food, you make the booking through the application and order the food that I provide. Then when you order, the order come to me and goes to the driver. The driver comes to the restaurant, picks up the food, and brings it to you. That’s a whole journey that you get the food. What you have to say? You have to pay. The customer pays the food price back to the driver because they pay for you first. Then you pay the food back to the driver. Then you pay the delivery fee, a small portion, which is ten to twenty baht. That’s it for customer. What the platform gets? Nothing from the customer.

{audio:0:54:48} The driver, they come to the restaurant and then the platform gives them job to earn the delivery fee of 20 baht from you. What the platform could get from the 20 baht. We charge five percent. Like, ten percent or fifteen percent. Then we only get 20 percent, like two baht out of every trip. When are we going to make profit or break even? That’s why merchant here, if Grab are the platform can make you as a customer order big amount of the order, the order value is very high. When me as a merchant gets the order from the platform, I have to pay back to the platform, like 25 percent or 30 percent back to the platform. The more the platform makes you order a lot for the big amount. Let’s say a big order or average order value, the basket size is big, the platform gets more. Here, you can see that this party is a gold mine for the platform to dig from the customer.

For me as a merchant, if I have to pay 30 percent to the platform, I’m going to charge that 30 percent back to the food order to you, to the customer. Customer would exceed higher price from the platform. So what? You want to be lazy. The customer wants to be lazy. You want to be at home and somebody to just bring the food to them. It’s fair enough. I’m willing to pay more, a little bit more to get the food to my doorstep. Especially at this situation where we have the virus crisis. Then I get the food price as I set the price, I should get. 30 percent that I have to pay to the platform, I push it back to you as a customer. That’s how platform earns from the platform.

{audio:0:57:00} So when we look at churn of the drivers or riders for food delivery, again, it focuses back to the hourly earn or the daily income for the driver?

{audio:0:57:16} It’s also we monitor it by hour. When the driver looks at their earning, they’re looking at a daily income. They look at how many baht they would get per job. How many trips they have to make to get to their target? Then there’s something more into their earning. It’s not just you pay them 20 baht and they can live with their life. Platform also pays a small portion to the driver to get to the minimum fair. Let’s say the driver like Get, they are giving the driver 35 baht at the start. No matter how much the driver earns from you, we pay you 35 baht on top of it. That’s a cost to the platform. The driver has to earn from that. Then this one is going to go away in one day. What’s going to come replace? It’s a mechanism that we call incentive. It’s like a commission but the way that we do is it’s not the percentage of how many trips you make and then you get the percentage of the total whatever came out of the booking. The number of the booking that they make, convert into a point system, then one trip, you get three points. Two trips, you get six points. Then you combine the points into the certain level of the points per day. Then you continue, you change the currency into baht currency by tier. That’s a mechanism. Once this one goes down, they can expand the number of baht they can earn.

{audio:0:59:16} How do the drivers think about whether they want to do the transportation trips, the rides or the food delivery trips? Do drivers do both and how do they choose which service to operate within?

{audio:0:59:34} As a platform, we don’t want the driver to choose because it hurts the business. If you have the supply who can select to do food only or transportation only, then you have a supply that you can control. We tell the driver that if we use a point system to come in place, if you take food delivery and then only food delivery cannot fulfill the point where you can get to this level to earn that amount. You need to be in line with the transportation to come in place.

{audio:1:00:20} That’s so you can control the supply.

{audio:1:00:26} What is your biggest challenge in driving loyalty and retention at Get?

{audio:1:00:32} At Get I would say it’s quite the same on the driver’s side because I never work on the merchant side, but on the driver’s side, it’s kind of the same. The thing that I learned more is the persona or the perspective of the driver, they developed into more to become like the promo hunter or the incentive hunter. Just that because we use a mechanism of incentives since Grab launched here. Go Bike uses the same thing to attract the driver to their platform. Then Get uses the same thing to get the attention or draw the driver to that platform. You’re doing that a lot; you transform the mindset of the driver to drive for incentives. The driver, they are more looking at the benefits that they would get from the platform. Now, we have full tender, we have linemen, we have Get, we have Grab. We used to have now application, we used to have Go Bike, now everything here, they are giving all of the incentives and the driver can apply to any other app. They can be all the drivers on all the app. Whoever gives the best incentive wins the driver. It’s challenging where if you have 100 drivers who drive for all the app, what will make them drive and spend eight hours of time driving for you only? Or not turn on the other app but looking at your app. We use another mechanism, lots of mechanisms on the monitoring side, also the system, the app itself to try to help the drive to get continuously job per job by job.

{audio:1:02:45} What have you learned about setting incentives for drivers that really works?

{audio:1:02:52} To be honest to you, I don’t like the incentive mechanism at all because you pay money for the driver to drive. Once you stop paying the money to the drive, they will not drive anymore. Incentive is a strategy for a quick win, but not a sustainable way to sustain the business. The way that we do the incentive there, we just try to be on par with the market. You can be a little bit higher, or a little bit lower on the incentive, but you need to have something else higher. Say, if you have benefit of health insurance, the coverage of the health insurance should be bigger but even though your incentive is smaller than Grab or another player, but then the benefits not only to the driver, but the benefit can be for the family too. It’s a play around thing. You’re shuffling things around to get the driver to understand. It depends on the ones that you have.

{audio:1:04:09} The incentive point system, that’s: I would do X amount of rides, I would get Y amount of points. Then the platform pays me cash as a driver? Is it a cash reward?

{audio:1:04:25} It becomes like if I enter between Grab, Get, all of the other players and just funding and paying for drivers to come on their platform.

{audio:1:04:35} The last question could be around what is a solution here then to really lock down drivers, to really make sure that all the drivers that you have really want to work for your platform? Does it come back to those points that you mention in community, in making people feel that they want to be a part of a community around your application?

{audio:1:05:00} I would say that the first thing that you have to think about is the earning first. That matters. Then the values of the application came later. Values mean the community, the recognitions, your perspective, that you make it visible to the driver. They see that you’re listening to them or you understand their pain or something like that come later. A sustainable way is to make sure that the platform generates incomes for the driver, as much as possible. That’s how you retain them with the platform.

{audio:1:05:43} I guess that’s why these companies have to raise so much capital to stay alive and pay for the drivers.

GrabTaxi: Driver Retention & Loyalty

Why driver earnings is the core KPI for all ride-hailing businesses

How Grab approached recruiting drivers for GrabCar and GrabTaxi

The importance of understanding the power of community to drivers

How to use incentives and loyalty schemes to drive loyalty with the supply side

Biggest lessons from recruiting and retaining drivers for Grab

GrabTaxi: Driver Retention & Loyalty

Former Head of Driver Retention at Grab and Current Head of Operational Support at GET

inpractise.com/articles/grab-driver-retention

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Executive Bio

Palm Leviwong

Former Head of Driver Retention at Grab and Current Head of Operational Support at GET

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GrabTaxi: Driver Retention & Loyalty(March 27, 2020)

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