How a small team in Hyderabad listens to, addresses SOS complaints

If you are riding an Uber cab and decide to raise a ‘ticket’ (or complaint) on an accident or an altercation with the driver or sounds an urgent or not so urgent safety issue, one among the 300-member team, backed by technology tools, would attend to it.

The safety response CoE is part of Uber’s bigger tech CoE which houses 1,100 employees taking care of issues such as maps.

Apart from English, Hindi, Bengali, the Uber staff would converse in six other major regional languages in three shifts. A social media team would vet and replies to the complaints or feedbackon social media, when users post them by tagging Uber.

For example, an Uber rider Murali (name changed) has hurt his leg as the Uber Moto two-wheeler he is taking ride on involved in an accident and he would ‘report’ it using the in-app reporting facility. The safety response team swings into action, calls up the rider, checks on him. A similar call would go to the driver to get his version. This information will be extrapolated by the information generated by the GPS tracking of the vehicle in question.

Simultaneously, the ‘rating’ of both the rider and driver would quickly be checked to quickly qualify their respective versions.

The driver’s account will be put on hold till the ‘accident’ complaint is resolved and the vehicle passes through a check by ‘Partner Seva Kendra’. Post verification, the account will be revoked immediately or suspended depending on the seriousness of the incident.

“We will inform the rider about an insurance scheme that he is covered under. The drivers too are covered,” Prasoon Jha, Head of Crisis Management at Uber’s Centre of Excellence here, has said.

The drivers and riders are covered for medical insurance of Rs 5 lakh, without them having to pay any premium.

In a guided tour of the CoE, he explains how different teams, speaking nine languages, attend to the queries, complaints and feedback from its riders in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The response would depend on the seriousness of the safety concern, the more serious ones are attended to within one hour, and others under six hours.

“All of the complaints or feedback is acknowledged and get a reply,” Prasun says.

He, however, refused to number of complaints or queries that the cab aggregator registers in a day.

The firm also evades a query whether it would launch a dedicated number to let users report incidents over a phone instead of the in-app service.

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