Journey of an iPhone lost in an Ola Cab

A couple of days ago, my wife accidentally left her iPhone in the back-seat of an Ola Cab during a trip to Malleshwaram. She realized the mistake after alighting and immediately borrowed a friend’s phone to try and call her phone. She then called me to convey the message.

I logged into the Ola App and called the driver’s number, who responded immediately. He said he could locate the phone in the cab and had it is with him. I asked him if he could go back to the drop-point and hand it back to my wife. The driver indicated that he already had another ola-booking and had to take a passenger to Koramangala. He said he would be returning to North Bangalore later in the evening and could return the phone back to us.

I also did a quick “find iphone” to verify it was live and where the driver said he was. At this point, I was reassured that

• The phone was not lost
• The driver admitted he had the phone and would eventually have to return it

I continued to track the phone during the day - from Malleshwaram to Banshankari, on to Electronic City, then to Sahakar Nagar, Hebbal to Banaswadi.

Later that evening, I called the driver who said he was in Nagvara area and if I could come there to pick-up the phone. It was well after 8 PM and I realized that although I knew the way to Banaswadi, I wasn’t very familiar with the neighborhood; and it would take at least an hour in traffic to get there. I requested him to stop by the next morning, and I would compensate him for the trip. 

I called the driver the early next morning, but he didn’t take the call. I continued to call him during the day and his number was switched off.  “find iphone” showed that our iPhone hadn’t moved from the location in Banaswadi though the battery was starting to run low.

I logged into Ola App to see if their customer service could help. Under contact-us, left item in the cab option, their message is simple: 

“You can view the driver details below on the screen. Please call the driver and arrange for a pickup of the belonging at a convenient location. If driver was unable to help you with your belonging, we request you to lodge a police complaint. We will cooperate in the investigation and provide the required assistance in recovering your belonging.”

I also called their customer care number and talked to an agent who reiterated the message. He said that since it was over 24 hours since I had “lost” the phone, I should file a First Information Report (FIR), after which their back-office folks would help in the investigation. On googling about similar cases, people had posted their experiences about filing a FIR with the police; hence, I wanted to do so as a last resort only since:

• The phone was technically not “lost” since the driver admitted he had it. 
• As many of us in India realize, it is more than a bit of a hassle to file an FIR
• Finding the appropriate police station to file the report would be a bit of a runaround: Would I have to file the report at Malleshwaram where the trip ended, or SanjayNagar, where the trip began, or somewhere, where the driver lived?
• Getting the Police involved too early might put the driver on the defensive
• I would also have to “cooperate” with the Police to eventually close the case

I decided to adopt a wait-and-watch for yet another day. I was willing to give the driver the benefit-of-doubt, especially since Ola and cab drivers do take on multiple shifts and have to cris-cross the city to earn a living. A reward for a forgotten phone is not sufficient to drive across the city and miss a peak-time earnings.  Early next morning (Day-3) I tried calling the driver, who didn’t pick up. I decided to email a complaint to Ola.

From Mohan

To support@olacabs.com

Hi

I need help in passing the message to the ola driver

I had used my ola account with phone number 974130xxxx to book a trip on 16th November. 

My wife forgot her iPhone 5s in the cab by mistake. Immediately after the trip I called and talked to the driver on his number 903525YYYY. He said he found the iPhone and had it was safe with him. 

The driver said he will try to contact me later in the evening on 16th. I have not been able to contact him since. 

I don't want to file a Police FRI yet since the Driver seems Honest. 

Please pass the message to the driver to contact me immediately and arrange to return my phone

My contact: 978789xxxx

Home: 080235xxxxx

Regards

Mohan

Trip details Wed, Nov 16, 08:25    

Mini•CRN 45781ABCd

From Main Road, Sanjaynagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

To 11th Cross Rd, Malleshwaram, Bengaluru

Driver XXX

KAXXXX54 . Indica

I got an immediate response from Ola Support:

##- Please type your reply above this line -##

Ola Mohan

We have received your request (Ticket 26709xxx) and our team is looking at it right now. If you have any questions or comments, please reply to this email.

Thank you.
Ola Support

Get quick help by clicking on the Support section in your Ola app menu or by visiting help.olacabs.com

***

Within 20 minutes of sending the email to Ola, I got a call back from the driver. He said he was in Madiwala and could return my i-phone. I said I could come and collect the i-phone, but he offered to drive down in about half-hour and suggested that I “compensate” him for the trip, which I agreed.

The driver turned up near our house in about half-hour (with a “friend”), returned the phone, collected his reward and left.

I thanked him and sent an email that “The Phone has been returned by the driver. Please thank him for the honesty and you may close the case”

Lesson learnt:

• Recall the message frequent fliers hear all the time? “Please check around your seat for any personal belongings you may have brought on board with you and please use caution…..” This applies equally to cab and Ola rides too
• It is important to be patient but persistent, especially if the “left/lost” item has been located. It may take a while for you to get it back in your hands
• Drivers are intrinsically honest, though they are overworked. 
• Misappropriating an expensive phone is not worth their trouble, especially if they can earn an honest  ‘reward’ or tip in return. 
• Try negotiating the return of the item, and threaten FIR etc only as a last resort

Smile on my wife’s face after she was reunited with her phone: priceless!  😄

My Indian ecommerce experience: When rubber fails to meet the road!

There is a tremendous amount of hype over India’s homegrown eCommerce startup and incubator culture. Many are attracting venture capital and partnership proposals, some are tying up with larger, more established global firms, while some are dreaming of growing up organically. There is also an emerging sub-segment of innovators developing IS/IT ‘tools’ catering to other startups, a niche within a niche!

Living in America, working for a multinational, I generally get my inputs on these developments from fellow Digirati and articles in the media. During a recent trip ‘back home’ to visit my parents, I got to engage in conversations with friends and former colleagues, some of whom had left the comfort of a steady paycheck to explore and experiment with hi-tech startups. It was also an opportunity to ‘experience’ their services first-hand.

One such experience with the much-hyped startup OlaCabs stood out for me. The on-demand cab service, Ola, touts itself as India’s answer to Uber.  “Ola started as an online cab aggregator in Mumbai, now based out of Bangalore and is among the fastest growing businesses in India” - Wikipedia.



Here is a summary of my experience of Ola’s service – the good and the bad.

The Application: Registration and onboarding


The registration and onboarding process is seamless. All one requires is a smartphone with internet/Wifi, to download and use the App. After downloading and registering the cellphone and email-id, one is good to go.

As a technologist, I get to use a wide variety of applications on different devices. My first impression: the mobile App is easy to download and use.  The application is slick, and easy to use, and recognizes one’s location. To book a cab, the user is given just a few options - the way it should be – and the App uses the cellphone location data to identify the user’s current location.

The service experience: Could be better!


While traveling to Bangalore, I generally pre-book a cab from a local taxi service. The guy has a few cars and drivers on call, who are generally available, and has been reliable and economical for years. The process is neither hi-tech nor digital. Just walk up to the Taxi-wallah, give him my phone number, pickup time and preference on the kind of car I want, agree on the rate and I am good to go.
The hype over the online service and word-of-mouth recommendations from friends prompted me to try Ola. What could go wrong? My parents live in central Bangalore area and I could always fallback on other cabs if my Ola-experiment didn’t work out.

I planned to book a cab to the Bangalore airport for 9.30 am, the following day. I figured this would give us adequate time to get to the airport and check-in with baggage for a 12 pm flight. While booking a “ride later,” the App does not provide an option to select a car size. That morning, I got an SMS message that a ‘mid-size’ Mahindra Verito, license plate XYZ would be arriving. At about 9.15 am the driver called and said he was in front of our house and I came out of the house with our bags. The driver looked at the luggage and said only one of the two suitcases would fit in the trunk and he couldn’t take the other one in the vacant seat up front or the luggage rack on top. He didn’t want to negotiate an extra baggage fee and just left, leaving my wife and I scratching our heads. To say I was irked by the lack of courtesy or customer service would be an understatement: didn’t the guy know that passengers going to the Airport would have luggage? What would the customer do if he left them stranded?

Time was beginning to run out and I was really glad I had left a buffer for my maiden Ola-experiment. My parents, whom I was visiting were amused, and began prodding me to make a switch and call the local Taxi stand.

Undeterred, I decided to continue with the Ola experiment.

I decided to use the App again, selecting the “Ride Now” option. Interestingly, this option allows the user to view available Cabs of different sizes in the vicinity, showing approximate time. I looked up a “large SUV” that was about 15 minutes from our house and decided to book it. The Ola App confirmed my request and promptly gave me the cab guy’s name, make of car (Tata Innova) and the driver’s cell-phone number. Within a couple of minutes, I got a call from the driver who confirmed my location and also confirmed that he could take us with the luggage to the airport.

The cab arrived promptly and the guy even helped pick up and load the suitcases and drove us to the airport. At the airport, he said the distance – from home to airport - calculate by Ola app was a bit off and would I be willing to make up the difference. Having arrived on time, I obliged, including a tip on top.

Bottomline: It’s all about Service, Stupid!


The Ola experience made me reflect on service management. At the end of the day, the customer is paying for the service: a cab that arrives promptly, a driver who is courteous and responsive and gets the customer from A-to-B.

An App is just a tool, an enabler that the customer isn’t paying for. A slick, easy to use mobile app is really useless without a world-class service to go with it.

Ola, and its competitors must remember the market. If a single driver turns out to be unresponsive, the word-of-mouth and reviews on social media can drown the tremendous amount of hard work that goes into engineering and developing a service! And in a market like India, the competition is not just another online service, but the ubiquitous call-taxis, autos and other modes of transport that are easily accessible!

End-note: Would I be willing to use Ola again in the future? For me, it has been a hit-and-miss experience with Indian eCommerce. For my next trip, I will probably stick to hailing local cabs or walking up to the local taxi-guy!

(Repost from LinkedIn Pulse)