Avego’s James Shields shares some of his insightful and sometimes bizarre opinions and analysis of technology, life and everything in between.
I was recently in the states on a road trip visiting clients, prospects and ridesharers. There’s nothing better than talking to people who use your app to get a sense of why they want this technology to work…on the flip side you also get a sense of their frustrations when it doesn’t.
One thing that came up again and again was – how do we get that initial engagement from commuters? Commuters need to get to work and they need to get there on time. How do we gain commuters’ confidence such that ridesharing becomes a viable option for getting them to work on time?
Ridesharing comes in many guises – carpooling, vanpooling, realtime, hitchiking. If you want to rideshare then there’s a flavour that will suit you. Despite how many ways there are to do it, there always seem to be more excuses not to do it, and I’ve heard loads of them:
– “I like my space in the car in the morning.”
– “What if I need my car during the day in work?”
– “How safe is it?”
– “It’s not going to be a good experience until I’m guaranteed that when I look for a lift that I will get a lift when I need one.”
– “Is it even legal?”
One of our customers in the Bay Area has a great metaphor for this. He calls these “hygiene factors”.
It’s like when you’ve got a guy in your workplace and he moans about everything. “My desk is too small”, “I need three screens and more memory in my laptop”, “We should get really good Coffee”. You can fix all the hygiene factors for him but that won’t turn him into a superstar employee. It just means he is slightly less dissatisfied for a while.
Avego’s challenge is not to fix all the RTR hygiene factors. Our challenge is to create a new clean commute model.
There are a load of excuses not to rideshare – we know that. For every excuse there’s a counter-argument – we know that too. But, it’s counter-productive to come up with a rebuttal to every excuse because, to be honest, if I wanted to debate, I’d join a high-school debate team.
At Avego, we don’t want to debate, we want to change people’s lives.
The excuses, the counter-arguments, the rebuttal just don’t matter. What matters is that someone, somewhere is going to crack this nut. However they do it. And when that happens ridesharing will just be like getting the bus or the metro. It’s just going to be another transit option, another way to get to work or around the city.
So, how do you crack that nut?
Good question. And no-one has the answer right now. There are lots of people with theories. The academic approach involving largely desk-based research into how many drivers you need. The marketing approach – if enough people know about this then it just makes sense that they will do this.
The technology approach that is just trying to find that solution that hits the sweet spot. And the societal, behavioural, engagement approach – we need to convince people to change their behaviour, engage them in a more real way and they will use this type of transit as a matter of habit.
So which is it? All these approaches are valid in one way or another. What problem should we try to solve?
There are as many strategies as there are excuses and as many excuses as there are companies trying to do some form of shared transport. We can’t spend all our time trying to please everyone. We’re not going to take away all the hygeine factors. So, what do we do?
We could (and at times we do) think ourselves around in circles about technology and markets and engagement strategies and achieving critical mass. Actually, the problem may be a lot simpler than that.
I got a mail from Audrey (one of our awesome pilot coordinators in Avego) the other day. Amongst other things, Audrey manages our internal pilot for Avego staff. . So, our internal trial is based between Kinsale and Cork, where our head office is. Ten of our staff live in this little town and commute to Cork every day.
Anyway, every day Audrey sends a mail out to everyone in the company reporting progress on the trial. Last week she added a personal observation of her ridesharing experience.
“This week, I have shared my empty seats with 4 different people on 6 rides. None of those people travelled to and from work with me, they mixed it up (came with me and left with somebody else and vice versa). All of the Kinsale drivers have at some point been riders, This small cohort of 10 Kinsale commuters is enough to provide flexibility and reliability.”
So, by putting boots on the ground and doing something we have found that 10 people is enough to form a vibrant and successful community of carpoolers, with a variety of carpool options and times. How cool is that?
So, the question….How do we solve the critical mass problem? We (technologists) don’t. It’ll be solved by people. One small group at a time. Doing the simplest thing that that group can do to solve the problem for themselves. We (technologists) need to make it as easy as possible for them to do that. That’s how you solve the critical mass problem.