The NOW Gen

Micro-mobility

How Chris Vetrano Builds Customer Culture and Engagement in the Micro-Mobility Industry

Speed can be experienced daily. As a result, mobility is a vital part of our daily routines. Brands like Lyft, from the micro-mobility industry, are working hard to provide the world’s best transportation means. Episode guest Chris Vetrano, Head of Partner & Customer Engagement Bikes Scooters & Transit at Lyft, talks to our host about customer experience and engagement in the micro-mobility industry. From his vast experience in different sectors to creating a CX that allows users to plan, enjoy, and move freely and with speed to where they need to be. Lyft’s CX in this fast-paced industry is all about learning from the consumer’s needs, and Chris’s human approach makes the difference.

Guest

Chris Vetrano

KEY POINTS:

  • From social media management, the music industry, to creating CX in the micro-mobility industry.
  • Lyft’s efforts to provide ‘the world’s best transportation’ for customers.
  • The pandemic’s push to the micro-mobility industry.
  • Having the right products and experiences for their consumers.
  • Innovation to solve the NOW gen’s transportation challenges.
  • Eradicating traffic through micro-mobility to provide instant gratification.
  • Solving consumer concerns is king in CX’s future planning.
  • Empathy is the key to great customer experience from both ends.

RELEVANT QUOTES:

“So people were buying scooters on Amazon or buying scooters and bike shops and stuff. And so e-scooters became a thing. And you know, for Lyft, where our mission is to provide the world’s best transportation, we saw an opportunity that there’s more than just people getting in cars. The irony was this was before the pandemic and so we didn’t realize like actually what the opportunity was there when the pandemic hit. And actually getting in a car with someone you didn’t know was gonna be a very difficult thing to do during that time. And so we kind of got in at the right time.”

“I think, you know, the different cities are coming in with various RFPs and awarding permits to the right operators and we’re starting to sort of weed out the folks that really can deliver the best experience and make sure that it’s safe and that we have the right operations in place to really run that.”

“We’ve gotta make sure that we have the right products, we have the right experiences which is where I come in and making sure that we’re delivering the right kind of customer experience or supporting our customers when things potentially go wrong so that we win trust.”

“It’s really important that we’re providing that sort of end-to-end experience and helping like build that trust with our our customer but also innovating in the way in which we create safety through the vehicles themselves.”

“People are saying like I can get on this bike and it has so much power that I feel like I really never have to get in a car again. and I think like that’s the kind of thing that you really wanna be innovative around is if we’re going to solve some of our transportation issues we have to have something that really truly can replace some of the other alternatives.”

“I think you just you nailed it on the head with like your experience in New York is if you get in a in a car you’re likely gonna sit in traffic especially during you know rush hours or I don’t know if that even really is a thing in in New York I feel like it’s just constantly rush hour.”

“So if you really truly wanna ha up that experience and you need to be where you want to be now and you don’t wanna wait you know bike lanes are there for the taking.”

“We start to actually provide people more of that instant gratification because we can build bigger bike lanes which allow more people to do that and do it it freely and even faster.”

“And again giving you these multimodal opera options is something that we can, you know, sort of serve the needs of whomever needs to take transportation which is everyone needs to get somewhere at some point. And so that’s really who our audience is.”

“There are some challenges with trying to potentially like launch in a market where there isn’t the infrastructure.”

“I think we have to really be cautious of not as not just of Lyft, but you know if we’re going to continue to invest, we have to be thinking about how do we build our cities around the infrastructure and things for this kind of transportation to exist.”

“I mean so from the customer experience standpoint you know our biggest sort of challenge that we’re trying to bite off right now is you know pre pandemic. We were really focused on, you know, delivering as much support and through automation or within the app or through you know faster kind of real-time channels like chat and making sure that we were available to assess our customer’s needs as they came up.”

“People are even like demanding to be even faster than chat or definitely faster than an email channel. And so we wanna make sure that we give our customers the option to get in touch with us as quickly as they prefer to.”

“And you know, as we look towards the future, we’re thinking less about that and thinking more about how we are resolving these issues because that’s truly what our customers need right now.”

“I think really trying to figure out how to you know create this like world-class experience for our customers in this state of now as you call it of like where everyone needs their answers now. They want to like be able to move on and try to cater to that and give that to them in a way that is meaningful but also at scale for us as a business.”

“And so I think that everyone’s experiencing challenges not only that potentially you know, up against a recession up against kind of what might be in on the horizon as well. And so we have to remember to be empathetic with that. And I think sometimes because we live in this fast-paced world where we demand that everything have its answers now we really lose our empathy at times.”


“And you know when you start to like really start to think about what challenges that business is facing you might be able to approach it a little bit more empathetically.”

“In a world where we cater to the now and cater to the fast I think we are for needing to force ourselves to sort of take a step back and slow down and allow for a little bit more margin of error as we sort of like rebound and recover from all of what we just went through.”