Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Five Star Passenger



Uber have come up with a fantastic system to proactively use the star ratings we give to our service provider. If an Uber driver doesn’t maintain an average 4.6 star rating then they will be deactivated. As a passenger this means that you have a powerful responsibility to provide accurate feedback for your driver if you’re not going to give them 5 stars as their livelihood depends on your rating. To date I’ve given all my drivers 5 stars except for one who I gave 4 stars because he couldn’t find me or direct me to him and it took 15 minutes for us to connect.

Today I learned that customers also have a star rating and the driver assigns stars to how you were as a passenger. I have no idea what they base this on. Your conversation? There’s not that much to go on… My driver told me that when the ride popped up on his screen it showed him that I am a 5 star customer at Uber. I have arrived!

On an Alaska Airlines flight from Phoenix to Seattle today I sat between two delightful people. One is a Flight EMT for the DoD and the other is a mother of four. It occurred to me that after a flight the airline should send you the same request that Uber does which is to rate your fellow passengers on a scale of 1 to 5.

Using that information the airlines could seat all the 1 star problem passengers next to each other so that they can be miserable and unpleasant to each other together. The 5 star passengers (yes of course I’d be one of them) would then also be seated together to have polite, reserved conversation about the weather at your destination.