The holidays at Uber were wild. Especially when something broke or a new rule change impacted drivers. That was the case my eighth month in, it was 2017, and a decision to gut a popular feature form the app forced drivers offline in droves.
Around that time, we had just begun experimenting with "guarantees," a new driver incentive that predicted how much a driver would earn for their first set of trips in a certain city. If they earned less than the guarantee, Uber paid them the difference between what was guaranteed and what was earned. Given it's Uber, and ride sharing is a tricky space, it was always fun working with legal to communicate this in a driver-friendly way that wasn't ridden with legalese.
I was in charge of rolling out a multi-touch campaign focused on drivers stuck in the funnel, drivers who hadn't taken a first trip, and drivers who had churned from the platform. We reached out to as many as possible via email, SMS, and in-app and offered them a new guarantee. As a result, we increased first trips by 32% and driver supply hours by 109% and quickly regained category position in top markets where drivers were impacted.
