This is a story about Johnie. Johnie has been in Glovo since the 2nd week of April 2020 and he loves his job because it provides for his needs: he is able to pay rent, pay school fees for Kyla his 5 year old daughter, and once in a while, he can take Julie, his beloved, out for dates.
One Monday last December, Johnie got an order on Glovo. It was from Chakula Cafe. As he was heading to Chakula Cafe to pick it up, the customer (Purity) called angrily and complained that Johnie was being slow. He was surprised, because when he got the order he did not waste time. Anyway, he assumed that Purity was just having a bad day, and went on to Chakula Cafe to pick the order. When he got to the store, the store attendant spoke quite harshly to him, claiming that the food had gone cold because of his slowness. Now Johnie was confused. But he continued on: he picked it up from the store, and took it to the customer. When he rang the doorbell of that 6th floor apartment in Parklands, Purity greeted him with very harsh words. She said harsh things about Johnie, and about Glovo in general. She was upset. Her order had taken 101 minutes to get to her, and she was really angry. She promised a bad rating, took the order, and banged the door. Johnie walked to the apartment lift a very confused man. As he got on his bike, another order came in, and as he went on with his work, kept asking himself what he had done wrong. As far as he was concerned, he had delivered his order diligently.
As you might expect, the following morning, his excellence score dropped by 4 points. That’s when his problems began. On Thursday when slots opened up, he could only book from 8PM in the night, and he only got 2 slots per day for the next week. Johnie was devastated. But he remembered where it all went wrong – that Chakula Cafe order on Monday! But he didn’t know why!
But I’ll tell you why.
That Chakula Cafe order that caused Johnie’s Excellence score to go down had a whole story behind it. The first rider who had been given that order was Alex. Alex had been on another order (from the Glovo Store) when the system decided to give him the Chakula Cafe order, but when he delivered his Glovo Store order to the customer, he decided not to mark the order as delivered on the app. He wanted to go to Sarit, so he decided he will end his Glovo Store order at Sarit. After he ended it 32 minutes later, he saw the Chakula Cafe order. He reassigned it because he doesn’t like Chakula Cafe. Last time they made him wait for the food for 15 minutes! He wasn’t going back there. So he reassigned. After he reassigned, the system looked for someone else to give that order. It got another rider, Mwas. Mwas worked just like Alex. He usually ended his orders many minutes after leaving the customer’s place, and he also did not like Chakula Cafe. So, the order wasted 40 minutes on Mwas. That’s a total of 72 minutes wasted. When Johnie got the order, he delivered it in just 29 minutes, and yet he got the bad rating. It pained him, and to be honest, it is not fair.
That is why in 2022, we are going to try to reduce this situation as much as possible. We know a couple of things: very many riders end their orders much later after they leave the customer, some waste time going to the store so that the “Is everything ok” system can take the order away, and some just reassign orders. So, we are going to be keen on these things. When you do these things, you affect the rider who will ultimately do the order. He receives the bad rating, and his excellence score goes down, and then he is not able to get slots. Eventually, he is unable to get his daily bread from Glovo, not because he is not working hard, but because his friends are not being his friends. So we will try make things a bit fairer by being keen on when you end your order, and whether you wait for the “Is everything Okay” system to take away the order. You will receive an SMS if we notice that you are doing any of these unfair things a bit too much, and then we can discuss how to help each other reduce this.
The goal: to create a fair Glovo for all, because our actions affect our fellow riders.
Happy 2022!
