CRMside

  • Architects & Construction CRMs
  • Affiliate Marketing CRMs
  • Engineering Firms CRMs
  • Food Industry CRMs
  • Interior Designers CRMs
  • Immigration CRMs
  • Law Firms CRMs
  • Merger & Acquisition CRMs
  • Private Schools CRMs
  • Painting Contractor CRMs
  • Tour Operators CRMs
  • Venture Capital CRMs
  • Comparisons
  • Case Studies

Uber CRM Case Study: The Taxi Gaint

  • Category : Case Studies
  • Last updated on June 11, 2023
  • By Viktor. A
  • No Comments

Uber CRM Case Study

Uber was born from the question,  “What if you could request a ride from your phone?”

This question was from Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp when they could not get a cab in Paris in 2008. Uber primarily focuses on perfecting the imperfect to meet customers’ needs.

Uber re-imagined the taxicab experience, making it more convenient, predictable, affordable, and fun. Its global ride-sharing app disrupted modern transportation as we know it, at one point making Uber the most valuable startup company in the world.

Uber has implemented different CRM strategies to strengthen their customer relationships. They don’t joke about the needs of their customers. They partnered with other businesses to execute a complex idea to satisfy their customers.  This is the powerful secret that fueled their popularity.

You’ve got to have a little hustle in you. I think that’s where the world is going. People will not own cars; they’ll have a service that takes them where they want to go, when they want to go there. And that’s what Uber is. – Travis Kalanick

In this Uber’s CRM case study article, we’ll discuss how Uber’s CRM strategies contributed to the company’s growth.

History of Uber, Timeline & Facts

2008: On a cold winter evening in Paris, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp couldn’t get a ride. That’s when the idea of Uber was born.

2009: Its global ride-sharing app was launched.

2010: The company received its first significant funding, a $1.3 million round led by First Round Capital.

2012: The company broadened its offerings by launching UberX, which provided a less expensive hybrid car as an alternative to the black car service.

2013: The perfect partnership with animal shelters across the US, we launched UberKITTENS. Riders requested 15 minutes of snuggle time with a furry friend, and all proceeds benefited local shelters.

2014: Spreading goodwill with #UberSpringCleaning, riders requested on-demand donation pickups and gave more than 5,000 pounds of clothes to Goodwill.

2015: Expanding opportunities for deaf and hard-of-hearing driver

2016: Uber then raised a further $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Also the self-driving pilot program was launched in Pittsburgh. Now local riders could get a self-driving vehicle when they request their next trip.

2017: $1 million for Meals on Wheels to help deliver even more meals to seniors, we provided free rides to the volunteers who bring food and friendship, and we also donated directly to the Meals on Wheels America organization.

2018: 10 billion trips and counting in more than 21 countries across five continents, 173 trips and deliveries started simultaneously. And the journey to our subsequent 10 billion visits began.

2022: Uber launched UberX share, which allows multiple customers to share a ride, saving them up to 20% on the standard fare.

2023: Khosrowshahi remains the CEO of Uber.

uber crm case study

Freshsales automates your sales process, and helps drives sustainable business growth.

uber crm case study

A sales-focused CRM that leverages AI to automate sales, lead & demand generation. 

uber crm case study

Customize your workflows to track all aspects of the sales cycle, from lead gen to post-sale support.

Uber CRM Case Study: 4 Strategies Feuling Their Growth

Uber focuses more on their customers needs, and they use the following CRM strategies to satisfy them.

1. Partnerships

Uber has implemented several partnerships to entice both first-time and loyal customers to take a ride. They partnered with Starwood, Capital One, etc.

a) Uber and Starwood

Starwood is one of the world’s largest hotel companies. Uber is partnering with Starwood to broaden its app use and reach globally. Through the partnership, Starwood’s guest loyalty program members can link their accounts with Uber accounts and earn Starwood credits whenever they take an Uber ride.

Uber passengers earn one Starwood rewards point for each dollar they spend on a ride in a car. Free hotel nights start at 3,000 points for the lowest tier of hotels and can be as high as 35,000 points a night for high-end properties.

b) Uber and Capital One

Uber is teaming up with Capital One to offer Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card and Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card cardholders the following rewards;

  • 10% cashback on Uber rides and Uber Eats purchases.
  • Cardholders will receive a free Uber One membership for $9.99 a month.

The partnership will make the Uber experience better for riders, said Jonathan DiOrio, head of travel partnerships.

2. Introducing Uber Eats

Uber Eats is an online food ordering and delivery platform launched by Uber in 2014. It is an app for mobile devices that allows users to look through restaurant menus, pick out the food items they’d like, and have it delivered right to their door.

Once you place an order on Uber Eats, the restaurant will confirm your order and begin preparing it. An UberEats delivery driver will be matched to your order, and you’ll be able to track your order’s progress the whole time.

Once the driver has picked up your order, you can track the car on a map and estimate how soon the driver will arrive at your location with your food.

uber eats

UberEats CRM strategy;

  • Make it easy for their customer to pick up a meal without leaving the house.
  • It enables customers to discover new restaurants around them so they can always try something new.
  • Enables Uber customers to compare meal prices from different restaurants before ordering.

3. Customer loyalty

Uber has a loyalty program called “Uber VIP” for a selected group of users with specific American Express credit cards. These valued customers enjoy the following benefits;

  • They are invited after taking a high number of rides in certain cities.
  • Uber VIP members are matched only with the highest-rated drivers. This means that they will be compared with drivers with a rating of 4.8 stars or above and can feel assured that their ride will go smoothly and safely.
  • Finally, Uber VIP users are the first to hear about exclusion promotions, deals, and discounts that Uber has to offer.
  • An Uber VIP trip will cost the same amount as a regular one. That said, Uber VIP members are matched with better drivers and better vehicles without paying a higher price.

4. Referral program

Uber’s innovative referral program is the secret behind its rapid adoption. Riders and drivers can refer the app to their friends using their referral code. Once their friends join the app using the code, their friends get free or discounted rides while the drivers earn Uber credit.

What makes Uber so successful?

Since its inception, Uber has dominated the industry because it perfected a solution to meet customers’ needs. They re-imagined the taxicab experience, making it more convenient, predictable, affordable, and fun. They did this because they knew that an incomplete solution was an invitation to competitors.

Uber values their customers a lot. They also partnered with other businesses to meet their customers’ needs. This is the main secret behind Uber’s exponential growth and huge market share . They work with other companies to handle any technology that is difficult for them to take.

What CRM does Uber use?

Uber depends heavily on Salesforce CRM technology for its growth. Salesforce helps extract data from its customers’ engagement with its brand on social media; then, Uber can track and respond to customers’ concerns swiftly.

Uber uses CRM software to tailor offers, recommendations, and customer promotions based on past orders. Uber asks its customers to register for an account to ensure consistent contact with their customers.

It also makes it easy for customers to reorder so that customers can pay with a click and get a better Uber experience.

Conclusion :

To build a scalable business, it’s best to emulate the strategies used by top business owners. Customer relationship management is the primary factor considered by significant companies and Uber is not excluded. They use SalesForce CRM software to streamline their business processes.

SalesForce CRM enables Uber to tap into its customers’ behaviors and riding habits. From the customer’s side, they get a superior, more tailored service – and will be more likely to use Uber again.

Viktor. A

Viktor. A is a writer and researcher with experience writing about various topics, including CRM software, SaaS, finance, and technology. When he's not writing, he's swimming and travelling

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Related Posts

netflix crm case study

Netflix CRM Case Study: Their Secret Sauce 2024

toyota CRM

Toyota CRM Case Study: What You Should Know

airbnb crm case study

Airbnb CRM Case Study: The Hidden Strategy

CRM Case studies

10 CRM Case Studies From the World’s Biggest Brands 2024

ai crm

We are aimed on providing timely CRM tools, techniques, and resources to help their businesses grow their revenue and sales. Read more

Quick Links

  • Recommended Tools
  • Affiliate Disclaimer
  • Write for Us

Copyright Š 2024 CRMside.com. All Rights Reserved.

goshomron.com

Uber CRM Case Study: The Taxi Gaint

Photo of Junaid Awan

Uber was born from the question, “What if you could request a ride from your phone?”

This question was from Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp when they could not get a cab in Paris in 2008. Uber primarily focuses on perfecting the imperfect to meet customers’ needs.

Uber re-imagined the taxicab experience, making it more convenient, predictable, affordable, and fun. Its global ride-sharing app disrupted modern transportation as we know it, at one point making Uber the most valuable startup company in the world.

Uber has implemented different CRM strategies to strengthen their customer relationships. They don’t joke about the needs of their customers. They partnered with other businesses to execute a complex idea to satisfy their customers. This is the powerful secret that fueled their popularity.

Uber CRM Case Study: 4 Strategies Feuling Their Growth

Uber focuses more on their customer’s needs, and they use the following Uber CRM strategies to satisfy them.

1. Partnerships

Uber has implemented several partnerships to entice both first-time and loyal customers to take a ride. They partnered with Starwood, Capital One, etc.

a) Uber and Starwood

Starwood is one of the world’s largest hotel companies. Uber is partnering with Starwood to broaden its app use and reach globally. Through the partnership, Starwood’s guest loyalty program members can link their accounts with Uber accounts and earn Starwood credits whenever they take an Uber ride.

Uber passengers earn one Starwood rewards point for each dollar they spend on a ride in a car. Free hotel nights start at 3,000 points for the lowest tier of hotels and can be as high as 35,000 points a night for high-end properties.

b) Uber and Capital One

Uber is teaming up with Capital One to offer Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card and Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card cardholders the following rewards;

10% cashback on Uber rides and Uber Eats purchases.

Cardholders will receive a free Uber One membership for $9.99 a month.

The partnership will make the Uber experience better for riders, said Jonathan DiOrio, head of travel partnerships.

2. Introducing Uber Eats

Uber Eats is an online food ordering and delivery platform launched by Uber in 2014. It is an app for mobile devices that allows users to look through restaurant menus, pick out the food items they’d like, and have it delivered right to their door.

Once you place an order on Uber Eats, the restaurant will confirm your order and begin preparing it. An UberEats delivery driver will be matched to your order, and you’ll be able to track your order’s progress the whole time.

Once the driver has picked up your order, you can track the car on a map and estimate how soon the driver will arrive at your location with your food.

UberEats CRM strategy;

Make it easy for their customer to pick up a meal without leaving the house.

It enables customers to discover new restaurants around them so they can always try something new.

Enables Uber customers to compare meal prices from different restaurants before ordering.

3. Customer loyalty

Uber has a loyalty program called “Uber VIP” for a selected group of users with specific American Express credit cards. These valued customers enjoy the following benefits;

They are invited after taking a high number of rides in certain cities.

Uber VIP members are matched only with the highest-rated drivers. This means that they will be compared with drivers with a rating of 4.8 stars or above and can feel assured that their ride will go smoothly and safely.

Finally, Uber VIP users are the first to hear about exclusion promotions, deals, and discounts that Uber has to offer.

An Uber VIP trip will cost the same amount as a regular one. That said, Uber VIP members are matched with better drivers and better vehicles without paying a higher price.

4. Referral program

Uber’s innovative referral program is the secret behind its rapid adoption. Riders and drivers can refer the app to their friends using their referral code. Once their friends join the app using the code, their friends get free or discounted rides while the drivers earn Uber credit.

What makes Uber so successful?

Since its inception, Uber has dominated the industry because it perfected a solution to meet customers’ needs. They re-imagined the taxicab experience, making it more convenient, predictable, affordable, and fun. They did this because they knew that an incomplete solution was an invitation to competitors.

Uber values their customers a lot. They also partnered with other businesses to meet their customers’ needs. This is the main secret behind Uber’s exponential growth and huge market share . They work with other companies to handle any technology that is difficult for them to take.

What CRM does Uber use?

Uber depends heavily on Salesforce CRM technology for its growth. Salesforce helps extract data from its customers’ engagement with its brand on social media; then, Uber can track and respond to customers’ concerns swiftly.

Uber uses CRM software to tailor offers, recommendations, and customer promotions based on past orders. Uber asks its customers to register for an account to ensure consistent contact with their customers.

It also makes it easy for customers to reorder so that customers can pay with a click and get a better Uber experience.

Conclusion:

To build a scalable business, it’s best to emulate the strategies used by top business owners. Customer relationship management is the primary factor considered by significant companies and Uber is not excluded. They use SalesForce CRM software to streamline their business processes.

SalesForce CRM enables Uber to tap into its customers’ behaviors and riding habits. From the customer’s side, they get a superior, more tailored service – and will be more likely to use Uber again.

An Online Publication for CRM Resources and Tools – CRMSide . We create in-depth guides, reviews statistics and articles about CRM & Sometimes Automation.

Photo of Junaid Awan

Junaid Awan

Elegance by essentials: fear of god essentials clothing women’s hoodie, top 5 most popular participation sports in the world, related articles.

uber crm case study

Unveiling Instagram’s Origin: Exploring the Launch Date and the Benefits of Buying Instagram Followers

Performance

Unlocking Sales Excellence with Varicent Sales Performance Management

uber crm case study

Understanding the Meaning of Instagram’s CFS and the Best Site to Buy Instagram Likes

uber crm case study

The Key Benefits of Hiring a Financial Advisor for Effective Wealth Management

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

  • CRM Software and Systems /

Big Brand CRM Case Studies

big brand crm case studies

  • British Airways
  • McDonald's

Our site is reader-supported – by clicking our links, we can match you with a potential supplier, and we may earn a small commission for this referral.

Apple, Amazon, and… your business? Join the ranks of the planet’s biggest brands, and find out how CRM is the secret to their success

How did a handful of ambitious thinkers take simple ideas and grow them into instantly recognisable brands, and… into companies worth hundreds of billions of pounds?

Well, they did it by retaining a firm focus on the customer. And they did that through the use of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) .

  • A type of software (such as Maximizer or Salesforce ) that helps businesses manage leads, deals, and clients, and craft targeted marketing campaigns.
  • The specific strategies via which a business engages and retains its existing customers.

With CRM , the Tescos and Amazons of this world were not only able to win new customers, clients, and users – they got lifetime value out of them. With targeted marketing campaigns , these brands hit the right people with the right offers, at exactly the right time.

So, what kind of lessons can you take from the best in the business? Is CRM the key with which you can unlock your own company’s potential, and fuel commercial growth on a scale that rivals the big guns? Let’s take a look at our top 11 CRM case studies from the world’s leading brands .   Or, if you're just ready to get started with a CRM system yourself, check out our recommended partners below. 1. Tesco CRM Tesco is a truly global business. It’s one of the world’s top 10 retailers , with supermarkets across Asia, Europe, and North America. With more than 3,400 stores in the UK alone, you’ll probably know it as your first port of call for a spontaneous pint of milk, or for an indulgent ÂŁ3 meal deal during your lunch hour. So, what’s the secret to Tesco’s success? Well, it boils down to one main factor: The Tesco Clubcard . Tesco CRM: Case Study The Tesco Clubcard is Tesco’s way of rewarding its most loyal customers. For every pound you spend online or in-store, you’ll get a point. These points, when accumulated, can be traded in for Tesco Clubcard ‘vouchers’ (for instance, 150 points gets you a ÂŁ1.50 voucher). A voucher can then be traded in for rewards, such as an afternoon at Cineworld with the kids (a timeless experience), or an evening at Pizza Express (enjoy it while you can). Clubcard holders can also collect points at Tesco fuel stations, and by filling out feedback surveys online. What’s in it for Tesco? Returning customers that are invested in the brand, and whose opinion Tesco can leverage to continue improving its growing basket of offerings. 2. Apple CRM This one needs no introduction. Founded by visionary Steve Jobs in 1976, this instantly recognisable brand is the apple of many a tech-lover’s eye. Apple has given us the iPad, iPhone, iMac, and Apple TV. But anyone who’s ever used one of its slick, stylish products knows that Apple’s appeal goes far beyond its niftiest handheld devices… … because it’s how it treats its customers that’s the key to Apple’s success.  Apple CRM: Case Study Let’s take Apple ID as an example. If you’ve ever used iTunes (Apple’s online music streaming service), you’ll have an Apple ID – and if you’ve ever used an Apple device, you’ll have had to register it using an Apple ID, too.  These unique IDs synchronise across devices, remember music and film selections, and provide personalised recommendations based on what’s you've been watching or listening to. For the user, it offers convenience. And for Apple, it’s a constantly updating data set, telling the company exactly what its customers like and allowing for effortless, targeted marketing. It’s…. CRM, done well. 3. Uber CRM Uber arrived in 2009 to spearhead the ride-sharing revolution, and has quickly become a household name. But, with a huge host of new competitors driving costs down (not to mention a few other issues ), Uber’s monopoly over its 95 million worldwide monthly users could be under threat. Can Uber hold on? And what can help us understand how successful Uber has been thus far in retaining its enormous customer base? Uber CRM: Case Study Well, CRM is a good place to start – and for Uber, it’s industry-leading CRM software provider Salesforce that’s powering the ride-sharing giant’s strategy. Salesforce helps Uber extract data from people engaging with its brand on social media. With this system in place, Uber can reply with haste to customer complaints, and track all its interactions with the public from an intuitive dashboard. And, of course, it runs its own loyalty program. Uber Rewards lets you earn points every time you ride or eat with Uber, and redeem them across its increasing range of services. It’s a textbook example of how Uber is incentivising customers to keep relying on its brand, as it continues to branch out . 4. British Airways CRM In the hotly contested, heavily consumer-oriented aviation space, you’ve got to get your CRM strategy right. And, clearly, British Airways (BA) does – flying 145,000 people to more than 200 destinations every day . So, why do its customers keep coming back? The answer can be summed up in two words… Executive. Club. British Airways CRM: Case Study The British Airways Executive Club is an example of CRM loyalty schemes done right. Free to join and with no ongoing charges, the club allows customers to earn ‘Avios’ points through purchasing flights, hotel stays, holidays, or car rental through BA or its partners. Avios points can then be redeemed for discounts on travel or accommodation with (you guessed it!) BA.  Customers can save their meal and seat preferences, making for a smoother, more seamless re-booking experience. And, as they continue to fly with BA, they’ll be able to progress through the levels of Executive Club membership – from blue to bronze, silver to gold, then (maybe one day) the elusive ‘Premier’ tier. To keep track of all this, BA has been been using a CRM solution called Teradata since 2002. It allows the airline to keep track of all the customers on its books, and re-engage them with offers and deals targeted to their level of membership and favourite destinations. 5. Nokia CRM Nokia has been around the block a few times. We’ve all owned one of its basic, ‘brick’ design mobiles at some point, and while these phones may seem a bit antiquated now, they’re still virtually indestructible – and perfect for a quick game of Snake while waiting for the bus. Despite iPhones and Galaxys hogging the plaudits more recently, Nokia’s brand is still ticking away. It's currently valued in the region of a whopping 10 billion USD – and Nokia stock is poised to make an unexpected comeback in 2021 . So, what’s its secret? CRM, of course! Nokia CRM: Case Study Nokia implemented Salesforce (that name again) to help manage the size and diversity of its client base. Salesforce allows Nokia to customise its product range and marketing to suit geo-specific locations. Nokia’s collaboration with CRM brought order to chaos, empowering marketing departments across countries and languages to organise customer data. Through the selecting and segmenting of data into specific target groups, Nokia’s team saw more effective lead generation – which probably helps explain why its brand is still thriving. 6. McDonald's Every day, McDonald’s serves almost four million customers in the UK alone – about the population of New Zealand. Worldwide, that figure’s more like 69 million – roughly the size of Great Britain’s own populace. So, with such a vast empire and super-sized customer database, how does this fast food giant ensure their customers keep lovin’ it? With an industry-leading CRM strategy, that’s how. McDonald's CRM: Case Study McDonald’s partners with Astute Solutions , allowing the restaurant chain greater insights into consumer feedback and satisfaction levels. Being able to assess restaurants by region, or even individually, means that McDonald's can quickly spot potential customer relationship issues, and resolve them before they become a serious problem. And, with Astute Solutions, McDonald’s can also: Provide both its franchisees and corporate managers with live access to customer information Integrate data from its dynamic network of restaurants into an effective CRM tool Increase the accuracy of its reporting, and inform more intelligent decision-making As Christopher Garrity, McDonald’s’ own Senior Director of Customer Satisfaction, espouses: “CRM [is a] critically important function for any large company. It’s clear that Astute understands the important role it plays, and meets the ever-changing needs of our prime customers through continued innovation.”

Prime customers… was the pun intended? We don't know.

What we can tell you, though, is that one too many Big Macs may leave you feeling bloated and unmanageable… but your SME’s customer database doesn’t have to be. Browse our guide to the best CRM systems for restaurants to learn more, or click below to start comparing CRM software quotes for your business.

7. Coca Cola CRM

coca cola logo

While Coca-Cola’s iconic recipe has remained a secret since 1886, this global beverage giant has been less coy about the other secret of its success – a dedication to the customer. It came as no surprise when Coca-Cola’s German branch adopted Salesforce – but what role did CRM software play in engineering the soft drink goliath’s continued growth?

Coca-Cola CRM: Case Study

“We needed to get much faster, to work on collaboration, connectivity, and scalability — and all that in a mobile context. Salesforce has been a fantastic partner, and a great help for us.”

That’s Coca-Cola Germany’s CEO, Ulrik Nehammer. He’s happy, because his customer service team is happy. And they’re happy because CRM software allows them instant access to customer history – which, in turn, allows them to hit their targets, and deal more efficiently with complaints.

With Salesforce, Coca-Cola Germany’s team can easily log issues with customers or suppliers, and then respond by dispatching field service technicians in real time. The result? A sweet 30% increase in productivity . Refreshing!

8. Unilever CRM

unilever logo

Also known as Europe’s seventh most valuable company, Unilever’s products are available in almost 200 countries around the world. With brands like Lipton, Magnum, and Hellmann’s under its considerable belt, Unilever has its fingers in a lot of pies. But does it have its finger on the pulse when it comes to managing its customer relationships?

Unilever CRM: Case Study

If you guessed yes, then you’re absolutely right. With the help of SAP CRM , Unilever improved its call centre capabilities, and boosted the productivity of its consumer advisory representatives. Just ask one of its head honchos:

“[CRM] enables faster response time to queries and needs raised by consumers. It provides for effective maintenance of our customer database, and allows for easy access to customer information for analysis and strategy development.”

  • Efren Samonte, Commercial Director – Unilever Philippines

And let’s face it, the proof of Unilever CRM’s effectiveness is, quite literally, in the pudding. Because if you’ve ever scoffed down a Magnum on a hot summer’s day, then you’ve witnessed first-hand the effectiveness of Unilever’s ability to keep customers coming back. Can you emulate them?

Hopefully! But to do so, you’ll need your own CRM first. While there are some free options you can go with, these are limited, not scalable, and certainly not fit for ambitious businesses. 

Nope – your best bet is to complete our quick, free quote finding form , to browse CRM options for your SME. We’ll just ask a couple of quick questions, including how many people you need the software for, and what features you’ll need. It takes half a minute at most, and when you’re done, you’ll receive quotes tailored to your business’ specific needs . 

9. Zara CRM

zara logo

Leading European clothing brand Zara specialises in fast fashion at low(ish) prices, and the profits are also moving quickly – it made almost 19 billion USD last year. But is it the price point that keeps Zara’s customers coming back, or its relentless, CRM strategy-powered focus on the customer? We think the latter.

Zara CRM: Case Study

Zara was one of the first to pioneer the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) to capture customer data in real time – not just on transactions, but on their customer’s preferences and habits. CRM software comes in when it’s time to use this data to sell, sell, sell, re-engaging existing buyers with fresh discounts and campaigns.

10. BMW CRM

BMW Logo

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last hundred years, you’ll instantly recognise BMW’s iconic logo. Producing well over two million vehicles per year, and with its status as a film icon firmly cemented, BMW’s success shows no signs of slowing down. And though the cars may have changed a bit since the company was founded in 1916, its customer focus has remained just the same.

BMW CRM: Case Study

And again, a successful CRM strategy underpins it all. To execute it, BMW teamed up with Legacy Lifestyle to create a luxury loyalty scheme called – wait for it – ‘The Owner’s Circle’.

The Owner’s Circle lets BMW owners track their car’s financing and maintenance. Owners of new or old BMWs can also register their vehicles online. From here, they can check the status of a new car order, view the maintenance history of a used car, or get reminders about upcoming service milestones. There’s also an owner-to-owner chat box thrown in, for ultimate convenience. 

All this serves to strengthen the post-purchase relationship between BMW and its customers, ensuring an enduring connection long after they’ve rolled their car out of the garage. 

And, because any points earned through the Owner’s Circle can be used on a variety of luxury items, it strengthens BMW’s status as a luxury brand – and ensures it’ll be continuing to attract a lucrative clientele for many more years to come. 

11. Amazon CRM

Amazon Logo

We could spend all day throwing statistics demonstrating Amazon’s popularity around, but let’s face it – we’re all familiar with Amazon. As the world’s leading online retailer, Amazon continues to go from strength to strength, led by its enigmatic founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. But how have Bezos and the gang been so good at winning, retaining, and consolidating users of their wildly popular online platform?

Amazon CRM: Case Study

By using CRM, that’s how. And if you’ve ever used Amazon (and the data says you probably have), you’ll know how hard its tailored offers, recommendations, and promotions – all based on your past purchases – can be to resist. 

Plus, by asking its customers to register for an account, Amazon makes it extremely easy for customers to re-order. Cash-rich, time-poor consumers can pay with a click, and have their goods gracing their doorstep within 24 hours. 

Want to know more? Check out our full Amazon CRM case study to read more about how this ecommerce behemoth is crushing the competition.
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – customers are the most important part of your business. Without them, you wouldn’t have one!

With that in mind, then, ensuring you have at least some kind of CRM strategy is crucial. How will you draw in new leads, juggle unfolding deals, and manage prospects and client relationships? How will you keep your customers engaged, ensuring they continue to use your services while identifying with your brand and values?

If these big brand CRM case studies have shown us anything, it’s that CRM software is just as important as the strategic side – all of the big companies are using it to manage customer data, and extract key insights which can help improve customer experience. Here are some CRM systems that we can highly recommend for all types of businesses:

var appWikiRequestUrl = “https://appwiki.nl”;

Not sure which CRM software is right for your business? To find out, simply fill in our 30-second form . We’ll ask a couple of questions about your software needs, and you’ll receive tailored CRM quotes from leading UK providers . And who knows… give it a few years, and your business could be on this list!

Written by:

Amazon logo for CRM case study

Amazon CRM Case Study

Apple logo rainbow style

Apple CRM Case Study

CRM Software Webform

CRM Software and Systems

uber crm case study

Common CRM Problems and Solutions

CRM, defined

The 10 Best CRM Strategy Examples

Hand drawing arrows pointing to the word customer, emphasising the importance of strategic CRM goals

Top 5 Goals Your Business Can Achieve with CRM

best crm systems for small businesses

The 7 Best CRM Systems for Small Businesses

Tablet displaying analytical CRM software at work

The 4 Best Analytical CRM Software Solutions for Businesses

The magic behind Uber’s data-driven success

Uber, the ride-hailing giant, is a household name worldwide. We all recognize it as the platform that connects riders with drivers for hassle-free transportation. But what most people don’t realize is that behind the scenes, Uber is not just a transportation service; it’s a data and analytics powerhouse. Every day, millions of riders use the Uber app, unwittingly contributing to a complex web of data-driven decisions. This blog takes you on a journey into the world of Uber’s analytics and the critical role that Presto, the open source SQL query engine, plays in driving their success.

Uber’s DNA as an analytics company

At its core, Uber’s business model is deceptively simple: connect a customer at point A to their destination at point B. With a few taps on a mobile device, riders request a ride; then, Uber’s algorithms work to match them with the nearest available driver and calculate the optimal price. But the simplicity ends there. Every transaction, every cent matters. A ten-cent difference in each transaction translates to a staggering $657 million annually. Uber’s prowess as a transportation, logistics and analytics company hinges on their ability to leverage data effectively.

The pursuit of hyperscale analytics

The scale of Uber’s analytical endeavor requires careful selection of data platforms with high regard for limitless analytical processing. Consider the magnitude of Uber’s footprint. 1 The company operates in more than 10,000 cities with more than 18 million trips per day. To maintain analytical superiority, Uber keeps 256 petabytes of data in store and processes 35 petabytes of data every day. They support 12,000 monthly active users of analytics running more than 500,000 queries every single day.

To power this mammoth analytical undertaking, Uber chose the open source Presto distributed query engine. Teams at Facebook developed Presto to handle high numbers of concurrent queries on petabytes of data and designed it to scale up to exabytes of data. Presto was able to achieve this level of scalability by completely separating analytical compute from data storage. This allowed them to focus on SQL-based query optimization to the nth degree.

What is Presto?

Presto is an open source distributed SQL query engine for data analytics and the data lakehouse, designed for running interactive analytic queries against datasets of all sizes, from gigabytes to petabytes. It excels in scalability and supports a wide range of analytical use cases. Presto’s cost-based query optimizer, dynamic filtering and extensibility through user-defined functions make it a versatile tool in Uber’s analytics arsenal. To achieve maximum scalability and support a broad range of analytical use cases, Presto separates analytical processing from data storage. When a query is constructed, it passes through a cost-based optimizer, then data is accessed through connectors, cached for performance and analyzed across a series of servers in a cluster. Because of its distributed nature, Presto scales for petabytes and exabytes of data.

The evolution of Presto at Uber

Beginning of a data analytics journey.

Uber began their analytical journey with a traditional analytical database platform at the core of their analytics. However, as their business grew, so did the amount of data they needed to process and the number of insight-driven decisions they needed to make. The cost and constraints of traditional analytics soon reached their limit, forcing Uber to look elsewhere for a solution.

Uber understood that digital superiority required the capture of all their transactional data, not just a sampling. They stood up a file-based data lake alongside their analytical database. While this side-by-side strategy enabled data capture, they quickly discovered that the data lake worked well for long-running queries, but it was not fast enough to support the near-real time engagement necessary to maintain a competitive advantage.

To address their performance needs, Uber chose Presto because of its ability, as a distributed platform, to scale in linear fashion and because of its commitment to ANSI-SQL, the lingua franca of analytical processing. They set up a couple of clusters and began processing queries at a much faster speed than anything they had experienced with Apache Hive, a distributed data warehouse system, on their data lake.

Continued high growth

As the use of Presto continued to grow, Uber joined the Presto Foundation, the neutral governing body behind the Presto open source project, as a founding member alongside Facebook. Their initial contributions were based on their need for growth and scalability. Uber focused on contributing to several key areas within Presto:

Automation: To support growing usage, the Uber team went to work on automating cluster management to make it simple to keep up and running. Automation enabled Uber to grow to their current state with more than 256 petabytes of data, 3,000 nodes and 12 clusters. They also put process automation in place to quickly set up and take down clusters.

Workload Management: Because different kinds of queries have different requirements, Uber made sure that traffic is well-isolated. This enables them to batch queries based on speed or accuracy. They have even created subcategories for a more granular approach to workload management.

Because much of the work done on their data lake is exploratory in nature, many users want to execute untested queries on petabytes of data. Large, untested workloads run the risk of hogging all the resources. In some cases, the queries run out of memory and do not complete.

To address this challenge, Uber created and maintains sample versions of datasets. If they know a certain user is doing exploratory work, they simply route them to the sampled datasets. This way, the queries run much faster. There may be inaccuracy because of sampling, but it allows users to discover new viewpoints within the data. If the exploratory work needs to move on to testing and production, they can plan appropriately.

Security: Uber adapted Presto to take users’ credentials and pass them down to the storage layer, specifying the precise data to which each user has access permissions. As Uber has done with many of its additions to Presto, they contributed their security upgrades back to the open source Presto project.

The technical value of Presto at Uber

Analyzing complex data types with presto.

As a digital native company, Uber continues to expand its use cases for Presto. For traditional analytics, they are bringing data discipline to their use of Presto. They ingest data in snapshots from operational systems. It lands as raw data in HDFS. Next, they build model data sets out of the snapshots, cleanse and deduplicate the data, and prepare it for analysis as Parquet files.

For more complex data types, Uber uses Presto’s complex SQL features and functions, especially when dealing with nested or repeated data, time-series data or data types like maps, arrays, structs and JSON. Presto also applies dynamic filtering that can significantly improve the performance of queries with selective joins by avoiding reading data that would be filtered by join conditions. For example, a parquet file can store data as BLOBS within a column. Uber users can run a Presto query that extracts a JSON file and filters out the data specified by the query. The caveat is that doing this defeats the purpose of the columnar state of a JSON file. It is a quick way to do the analysis, but it does sacrifice some performance.

Extending the analytical capabilities and use cases of Presto

To extend the analytical capabilities of Presto, Uber uses many out-of-the-box functions provided with the open source software. Presto provides a long list of functions, operators, and expressions as part of its open source offering, including standard functions, maps, arrays, mathematical, and statistical functions. In addition, Presto also makes it easy for Uber to define their own functions. For example, tied closely to their digital business, Uber has created their own geospatial functions.

Uber chose Presto for the flexibility it provides with compute separated from data storage. As a result, they continue to expand their use cases to include ETL, data science , data exploration, online analytical processing (OLAP), data lake analytics and federated queries.

Pushing the real-time boundaries of Presto

Uber also upgraded Presto to support real-time queries and to run a single query across data in motion and data at rest. To support very low latency use cases, Uber runs Presto as a microservice on their infrastructure platform and moves transaction data from Kafka into Apache Pinot, a real-time distributed OLAP data store, used to deliver scalable, real-time analytics.

According to the Apache Pinot website, “Pinot is a distributed and scalable OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) datastore, which is designed to answer OLAP queries with low latency. It can ingest data from offline batch data sources (such as Hadoop and flat files) as well as online data sources (such as Kafka). Pinot is designed to scale horizontally, so that it can handle large amounts of data. It also provides features like indexing and caching.”

This combination supports a high volume of low-latency queries. For example, Uber has created a dashboard called Restaurant Manager in which restaurant owners can look at orders in real time as they are coming into their restaurants. Uber has made the Presto query engine connect to real-time databases.

To summarize, here are some of the key differentiators of Presto that have helped Uber:

Speed and Scalability: Presto’s ability to handle massive amounts of data and process queries at lightning speed has accelerated Uber’s analytics capabilities. This speed is essential in a fast-paced industry where real-time decision-making is paramount.

Self-Service Analytics: Presto has democratized data access at Uber, allowing data scientists, analysts and business users to run their queries without relying heavily on engineering teams. This self-service analytics approach has improved agility and decision-making across the organization.

Data Exploration and Innovation: The flexibility of Presto has encouraged data exploration and experimentation at Uber. Data professionals can easily test hypotheses and gain insights from large and diverse datasets, leading to continuous innovation and service improvement.

Operational Efficiency: Presto has played a crucial role in optimizing Uber’s operations. From route optimization to driver allocation, the ability to analyze data quickly and accurately has led to cost savings and improved user experiences.

Federated Data Access: Presto’s support for federated queries has simplified data access across Uber’s various data sources, making it easier to harness insights from multiple data stores, whether on-premises or in the cloud.

Real-Time Analytics: Uber’s integration of Presto with real-time data stores like Apache Pinot has enabled the company to provide real-time analytics to users, enhancing their ability to monitor and respond to changing conditions rapidly.

Community Contribution: Uber’s active participation in the Presto open source community has not only benefited their own use cases but has also contributed to the broader development of Presto as a powerful analytical tool for organizations worldwide.

The power of Presto in Uber’s data-driven journey

Today, Uber relies on Presto to power some impressive metrics. From their latest Presto presentation in August 2023, here’s what they shared:

Uber’s success as a data-driven company is no accident. It’s the result of a deliberate strategy to leverage cutting-edge technologies like Presto to unlock the insights hidden in vast volumes of data. Presto has become an integral part of Uber’s data ecosystem, enabling the company to process petabytes of data, support diverse analytical use cases, and make informed decisions at an unprecedented scale.

Getting started with Presto

If you’re new to Presto and want to check it out, we recommend this Getting Started page where you can try it out.

Alternatively, if you’re ready to get started with Presto in production you can check out IBM watsonx.data , a Presto-based open data lakehouse. Watsonx.data is a fit-for-purpose data store, built on an open lakehouse architecture, supported by querying, governance and open data formats to access and share data.

1 Uber. EMA Technical Case Study, sponsored by Ahana. Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). 2023.

More from Artificial intelligence

The convergence of hpc and ai: driving innovation at speed  .

3 min read - In today’s rapidly changing landscape, delivering higher-quality products to the market faster is essential for success. Many industries rely on high-performance computing (HPC) to achieve this goal.   Enterprises are increasingly turning to generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) to drive operational efficiencies, accelerate business decisions and foster growth. We believe that the convergence of both HPC and artificial intelligence (AI) is key for enterprises to remain competitive.    These innovative technologies complement each other, enabling organizations to benefit from their…

Enterprise generative AI made simple: IBM’s differentiated approach to delivering enterprise grade foundation models 

5 min read - In 2023, organizational departments such as human resources, IT and customer care focused on generative artificial intelligence (AI) use cases such as summarization, code generation and question-answering to reduce costs and boost productivity. A Gartner executive poll indicates that 55% of organizations are already piloting or implementing generative AI. The major challenge facing enterprise decision-makers is achieving the right balance between operationalizing generative AI faster and mitigating foundational model-related risks, while staying on top of a rapidly evolving technology landscape. …

IBM secures Leadership in G2 Spring Reports

2 min read - IBM offerings were featured in more than 1,200 unique G2 reports, earning over 250 Leader badges across various categories. These accolades are given to offerings that receive positive reviews from verified users, compared to competitive products in their respective categories. Detailed information about G2’s scoring methodologies, G2 Market Report inclusion criteria, and sorting logic can be found on G2 platform. According to the most recent G2 Software Buyer Behavior Report, “Value, scalability, and ease are top considerations for software buyers.” Ninety-three percent of…

IBM Newsletters

uber crm case study

Strategies Driving Uber’s Successful Journey: A Case Study

by PanGrow | Nov 6, 2023

uber marketing strategy

Uber, the global leader in ride-hailing, is a universally recognized brand. We all know it as the platform that seamlessly links passengers with drivers for convenient transportation. However, what often escapes notice is that beneath the surface, Uber is more than just a transportation facilitator; it’s a formidable force in data and analytics. On a daily basis, countless riders engage with the Uber app, unwittingly feeding into a sophisticated network of data-powered insights and choices.

uber

Uber stands as a dominant force in the transportation and delivery industry, boasting operations in over 72 countries and catering to more than 110 million active monthly users.

The remarkable triumph of Uber has spurred numerous entrepreneurs to venture into the realm of ride-hailing and delivery services. Let us get familiarized with Uber’s marketing strategies through this guide.

Revenue Model & Pricing Strategy

Uber makes money in a few different ways. Its a commission based system, where it takes a percentage of the total fare. There are various elements of its revenue model.

First, they take a part of the money you pay for your ride. This is called a commission, and it’s usually about 20-30% of the total cost. Sometimes, when a lot of people need rides, Uber might charge a bit more. This is called surge pricing. It helps encourage more drivers to be available when it’s really busy, and Uber makes extra money from it.

They also have other fees, like a booking fee or an airport fee. These are extra charges for specific situations. Some people pay a subscription fee for a service called Uber Pass. It gives them discounts on rides and other perks, and Uber makes money from these subscriptions.

Uber does more than just rides. They also deliver food (Uber Eats) and help ship goods (Uber Freight). They make money from fees they charge restaurants, riders, and other partners for these services. Businesses can pay Uber to advertise on their app, which brings in more money.

So, in short, Uber mainly makes money by taking a piece of the fare from each ride. They also have other ways of earning, like subscriptions, fees, and advertising. They’ve expanded into different services to bring in even more money.

Navigating Marketing Strategies

Uber, a trailblazer in the ride-sharing industry, owes much of its success to a well-crafted marketing strategy.

Customer at the Center Stage

A cornerstone of Uber’s strategy is its unwavering focus on the user. The company places a premium on delivering a seamless, hassle-free experience. This commitment is evident in their user-friendly mobile app and straightforward booking process. By prioritizing customer satisfaction, Uber has built a loyal and trusting customer base.

uber marketing strategy guide

Dynamic Pricing Feature

Another standout tactic is Uber’s dynamic pricing, known as surge pricing. This strategy, allows Uber to adjust fares based on demand and supply. While it can be a topic of debate, surge pricing effectively balances ride availability during peak times, ensuring a reliable service.

Referral Program: A Win For All

Uber’s referral program is a brilliant move in customer acquisition. By encouraging existing users to refer friends and family, the company taps into the power of word-of-mouth marketing. This not only brings in new customers but also fosters a sense of community and trust among users. Incentives like discounts on future rides create a win-win situation, driving platform growth.

Data-Driven Approach

Data is a powerful ally for Uber. The company leverages analytics to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences. This data-driven approach informs decisions on pricing, routes, and service expansion, keeping Uber attuned to evolving customer needs.

go to market strategy uber

Enhancing Experience

In addition to customer-focused strategies, Uber places significant emphasis on driver satisfaction. Recognizing drivers as integral to the service, Uber implements initiatives to enhance their experience. Offering flexible earning opportunities, access to support, and performance incentives are among the ways Uber keeps its driver base motivated and engaged.

Multichannel Marketing

Uber’s marketing efforts span various channels. The company invests heavily in digital marketing, utilizing social media, email campaigns, and targeted ads to engage with users. This multi-channel approach ensures Uber maintains a strong online presence and remains top-of-mind.

uber advertising strategy

In summary, Uber’s success hinges on its dedication to user satisfaction, data-informed decision-making, and a comprehensive approach to the ride-sharing ecosystem. By focusing on user experience, implementing dynamic pricing, leveraging referral programs, and using data analytics, Uber has established itself as a dominant force in global transportation.

Additionally, the company’s attention to driver satisfaction and robust digital marketing efforts further contribute to its triumph.

Brand Building & Customer Loyalty

A key element of Uber’s success lies in its strategic use of social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube to connect with a diverse user base, including passengers, drivers, food enthusiasts, and partners. This concerted effort is central to building a strong brand identity and fostering lasting customer loyalty.

Through engaging content on platforms like YouTube, Uber shares driver stories, customer feedback, road safety tips, and updates on initiatives. This content not only informs and educates but also reinforces the brand’s commitment to safety, innovation, and community.

Uber excels at customer service on social media, promptly addressing feedback, suggestions, and concerns. With a dedicated customer service account, the company builds trust and reliability among its users.

Campaigns like the #WhyIRide initiative in 2016, encouraging users to share their motivations for choosing Uber on social media, have been highly successful in generating organic word-of-mouth marketing and user-generated content. This has significantly increased brand awareness and customer engagement.

Uber also strategically partners with influential figures, celebrities, and organizations that align with its values. Notable collaborations, like pledging to create one million job opportunities for women as drivers in partnership with UN Women in 2015, underscore the brand’s commitment to inclusivity and empowerment, garnering widespread recognition and praise.

Challenges and Future Prospects

Uber serves as a pivotal platform connecting drivers and passengers across cities globally. The company’s forward trajectory appears promising, owing to its astute consideration of critical factors such as regulatory dynamics, fierce competition in the transportation and delivery sector, ongoing innovation in products and services, and unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction.

This success has piqued the interest of entrepreneurs, leading to an uptick in the development of Uber-like clone apps for taxis and delivery services, potentially expanding to incorporate various modes of transportation like bikes, motorbikes, trains, scooters, buses, and even futuristic prospects like flying taxis. However, adherence to local laws and regulations is paramount in implementing Uber’s marketing strategies, as stringent rules governing safety, labor, and taxation may influence the company’s profitability and growth.

In the face of its accomplishments, Uber grapples with a set of formidable challenges that could impact its operations, financial performance, and overall prosperity. Foremost among these are regulatory hurdles. Many cities and countries contend that Uber’s business model clashes with existing legal frameworks, resulting in bans and limitations on its operations in certain locales.

Legal entanglements also pose a significant obstacle. Disputes with drivers seeking reclassification as employees rather than independent contractors, along with allegations of inadequate safety measures against harassment and assault, have landed Uber in the courtroom.

Furthermore, Uber contends with fierce competition in a cutthroat industry, contending with rivals like Lyft and Didi Chuxing, some of whom boast strong affiliations with local authorities and transportation entities.

Safety constitutes a paramount concern for Uber, encompassing both rider and driver well-being. The company has faced scrutiny for perceived inadequacies in safeguarding its stakeholders, prompting substantial policy adjustments to address these anxieties.

Finally, despite its lofty valuation, Uber’s profitability remains elusive. Pressured by investors to demonstrate sustainable financial viability, the company has undertaken substantial modifications to its business model and cost structure in a bid to achieve profitability. Balancing these challenges against its well-established strengths, Uber’s trajectory in the transportation and delivery sector will hinge on its ability to navigate these hurdles and capitalize on its innovative and customer-centric approach.

Lessons Learnt

Uber employs a distinctive marketing approach to cultivate a loyal user community. By offering complimentary rides, discounted fares, and referral perks, the company effectively lures in customers. The exceptional quality of the ride experience fosters a desire for repeated use, ultimately creating a habitual and revenue-generating pattern for the company.

To ingrain this novel mode of transportation in the public consciousness, Uber has made substantial investments in marketing efforts, generously providing free rides on a global scale. Moreover, the company leverages its competitive pricing structure as a significant selling point, further solidifying its appeal.

If you are interested in knowing more about digital marketing services that can help your business substantially, contact us at [email protected] or visit our website today!

All images belong to their respective owners. Please email  [email protected]  if removal is required.

Fill the form below to request a callback.

By submitting this form, I agree that the  Terms of Service  and  Privacy Policy .

10 CRM studies you need to read before you select your next CRM

Take a look at these CRM case studies before deciding which is the best software for your needs

Woman on a customer service call

British Airways

Wells fargo.

1.  Uber

3. British Airways

4. Wells Fargo

6. McDonald's

8. Unilever

9. Activision

10. Amazon  

In a crowded market, discerning what the best CRM software is to meet your needs is difficult. Reviews, statistics, and user feedback are all useful, of course, but sometimes reading evidence of how a brand has employed a CRM tool as part of a specific project is what is really needed to convince businesses that a particular piece of software is a good fit.

The need for a trustworthy CRM case study is made even more pressing given the sheer number of solutions on the market - many with their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as target audiences. For example, would a list of the best CRMs for startups be relevant for your company? Or would the best recruitment CRM be more suitable? There are also the best insurance CRMs , the best CRMs for real estate , the best sales CRM , and more to consider. 

One of the best ways of answering, “ What is CRM software? ” is to look at the tools already on the market and then, if you want to see how they have been employed effectively by brands in the past, examining some high-profile CRM case studies should be next on your agenda. Below, we outline 10 CRM studies that will demonstrate the full potential of this powerful solution and how it’s been used across a wide range of industries.

Reader Offer: Save 18% on Monday.com annual memberships

<a href="https://try.monday.com/tg08g" data-link-merchant="try.monday.com"" target="_blank"> Reader Offer: Save 18% on Monday.com annual memberships Monday.com is an easy-to-use and customizable work management platform, enabling teams of all sizes to plan, manage and centralize work. Get started now and boost your team's communication and productivity.

Preferred partner ( <a href="https://www.techradar.com/news/content-funding-on-techradar" data-link-merchant="techradar.com"" data-link-merchant="try.monday.com"" target="_self"> What does this mean? )  

The 10 CRM studies you need to read 

Close up of UBER sign at their headquarters in San Francisco's SOMA district

Today, Uber is known the world over for having disrupted mobility completely, garnering a valuation that dwarfs that of more established players in the automotive space - despite owning zero vehicle assets itself. However, despite its future-first ethos, Uber still depends on CRM software to ensure it is able to harness the huge quantities of data at its disposal. 

Uber uses Salesforce CRM software to extract data from individuals who engage with its brand on social media, ensuring that interactions are monitored, complaints are responded to, and all feedback can be put towards the creation of a better customer experience. By piecing all relevant data within a holistic dashboard, Uber can tailor offers, recommendations, and promotions based on previous customer interactions.

Uber has always understood that the real value lies in customer data - not simply providing a transportation service. That’s why it makes more sense to think of it as a technology company; not a taxi firm. With that in mind, finding a suitable CRM platform has long been critical to Uber’s success. This has allowed the company to monitor customer behavior and riding habits - even as it experiences rapid growth. 

divider pink

Another of the great disruptors of the 21st-centrury economy, Airbnb couldn’t have achieved its huge success without relying on a suitable CRM solution. The scale of the Airbnb platform is mind-boggling. The platform boasts more than 100 million guests globally, has listings in 65,000 cities and 191 countries, and is used by an estimated one in every four leisure travellers. 

This scale means that Airbnb is privy to huge quantities of data and faces a seriously large number of queries every day. To manage this, Airbnb decided to make use of the Zendesk CRM , which offered the scalability, reliability, and uptime needed to facilitate growth as the number of hosts and guests using the platform continued to rise rapidly. 

Airbnb’s Global Customer Experience team uses Zendesk to provide real-time support to customers across multiple channels, with every contact recorded within Zendesk Support. Zebdesk also empowers Airbnb to gain a grip of customer data by providing a 360-degree view of each customer. This means support can be personalized and a better customer experience can be delivered.  

British Airways

The travel industry has bounced back remarkably well after being decimated by the pandemic. Brands have had to reconsider how their revenues are driven, however, with global airline capacity taking several years to return to pre-COVID levels. One of the ways that brands have attracted tourists back in the air is with value-add services like the British Airways Executive Club. 

Utilizing the Teradata CRM, the British Airways Executive Club is a loyalty scheme that allows individuals to earn points by purchasing flights, hotel stays, or car rentals through British Airways or its partners. Customers can also save their preferences so repeat bookings are smoother, ensuring a seamless customer experience. They also have the opportunity to work their way up the membership ranks, achieving blue, bronze, silver, gold, or Premier membership.

The British Airways Executive Club demonstrates how CRM solutions can be used to strengthen customer loyalty. The platform allows the airline to keep track of customer preferences so it can offer targeted deals based on their membership level and past bookings. 

Wells Fargo

One of the largest banks in the US, Wells Fargo manages sensitive information for approximately 70 million individuals. But even with its considerable scale, Wells Fargo must continue to uphold the highest standards of customer service - particularly given the competitive nature of its industry. As well as other established financial institutions, organizations like Wells Fargo have also seen their market share come under threat from new fintech start-ups.

In light of the increasingly competitive financial sector, Wells Fargo employs a CRM solution to ensure its many different departments run smoothly and customer communication is seamlessly enabled. This means empowering social media connectivity and collating customer contact across multiple channels. 

Wells Fargo has revealed that its use of a CRM has enabled it to greatly increase efficiency so greater focus can be placed on high-value work because certain manual tasks can be streamlined or even automated. This has led to the creation of more optimized platforms, allowing the bank to save time and energy and ensuring customers receive better service.

Nokia sign

Once the world’s number one smartphone manufacturer, Nokia’s brand still carries some considerable heft - even if the likes of Apple , Samsung , and Google have taken its smartphone crown. Nokia’s use of the Salesforce CRM has played a major role in ensuring that the company continues to generate significant revenues in a fast-changing market.

One of the major challenges facing Nokia before it began using the Salesforce CRM was how to manage the diversity and scale of its products and markets across different geographies and languages. Salesforce allows Nokia to more easily organize its data - no matter how spread out it is.

Salesforce allows Nokia to select and segment data into specific target groups for more effective lead generation. It has also led to the creation of the Nokia Intelligent Care Assistant, which integrates directly with the Salesforce Service Cloud. This collaboration provides a holistic subscriber view, which enables truly omnichannel customer service, including proactive support. Although Nokia’s brand may not carry the same weight as it once did, without the company’s employment of the Salesforce CRM, it may no longer be around at all.

McDonalds delivery app

The fast-food giant McDonald’s has become one of the most recognizable brands in the world - but their success is down to more than just flipping burgers. McDonald’s has a long-running partnership with CRM platform Astute Solutions, which provides the restaurant chain with detailed insights on customer satisfaction levels and other forms of feedback. Providing a breakdown by region or individual restaurant, Astute enables McDonald’s to quickly identify potential customer issues so they can be remediated swiftly. 

With McDonald’s serving an estimated 60 million people every day, managing the huge amount of data at its disposal is key to providing a quality service. As such, the company’s CRM provides real-time access to customer information, integrates data from across a network consisting of thousands of restaurants, and provides accurate reports for managers.

Despite McDonald’s global standing, the fast-food space is a crowded one and the restaurant chain is always looking to open new sites and launch new products. In order to gain visibility into what customers want and how best to capture potential new customers, data is key. For an organization of McDonald’s size, managing this data has only been made possible through its use of a CRM. 

BMW Wireless Charging Pilot Program

The automotive space has undergone massive change in recent years and further evolution is predicted for the not-too-distant future. Even though BMW may have been around since the early 1900s, it knows that no firm is immune from disruption - even those that have existed for over a century. 

With most vehicles now incorporating an increasing number of software solutions, they represent an effective way for firms to harvest, collate, and analyze data. BMW uses a CRM to realize the benefits that can be unlocked through this data, by capturing data from multiple sources including - whether that includes dealerships, web pages, call centers , SMS, or through direct marketing .

In addition, CRM software has played an essential role in the company’s loyalty scheme, “The Owner’s Circle.” This lets BMW owners of old or new cars register their vehicles online and monitor their car’s financing and maintenance. All this helps to strengthen the post-purchase relationship between the vehicle owner and BMW, allowing them to check the status of their new car order, view the maintenance history of a used car, or get reminders about upcoming service milestones. It’s about maintaining engagement after a transaction has been completed.

Unilever

One of the world’s largest producers of consumer goods, Unilever manufactures a host of items that are commonly purchased by households across the world, including Dove. Persil, Domestos, and many more. Given the sheer number of goods Unilever produces, it understandably handles a huge amount of customer data. Using SAP’s CRM, Unilever was able to improve its call center capabilities and increase the productivity of its consumer-facing teams.

Unilever has also employed CRM tools to capture real-time information from customer surveys across and run targeted campaigns to capture customer data. The company’s use of the technology has allowed for faster response times to consumer queries and more efficient maintenance of customer databases.

Unilever represents a great example of how CRM tools can provide clarity and unity to a company that has grown far beyond its domestic market and offers products that spread across multiple categories and industries. The analytics functionality, in particular, allows Unilever to better understand consumer challenges allowing the company to apply its innovations and digitalization efforts to the launch of new products.

Activision Blizzard headquarters in Santa Monica, California, US, on Monday, May 15, 2023.

Video game maker Activision is responsible for some of the most popular series in the world, including the likes of Call of Duty , Crash Bandicoot, Guitar Hero, and many others. But where Activision’s only real concern was ensuring sales figures were high enough, now the company’s aim is to build long-lasting customer relationships. For that, a CRM is key.

Making use of the Salesforce CRM, Activision was able to completely overhaul its customer service offering. Before employing the CRM, almost half of all customers experiencing an issue spoke to an Activision rep over the telephone, but today 82% use an online self-service portal, with 10% opting for social channels. This has had a major impact in terms of cost reduction and customer satisfaction levels.

Because of the way that the Salesforce CRM can scour social networks for relevant posts, Activision has been able to get much closer to the gaming community. As such, it has become easier to understand their likes, dislikes, needs, and issues. Challenges have been resolved faster and insights have been put towards the creation of the next blockbuster game

Prime Day Sverige 2022

Amazon may be one of the biggest companies in the world but it still requires third-party help in the form of a CRM solution. The e-commerce juggernaut not only provides an online retail site but also offers a popular cloud computing service in the form of Amazon Web Services, which has been using Salesforce CRM since 2006.

Elsewhere, Amazon has crafted its own bespoke CRM strategy to ensure it offers native integration with other Amazon software. The technology giant uses its CRM to share personalized offers and promotions with customers, collect data en masse and store it, and provide recommendations based on an individual’s purchase history. 

In the years since its founding, Amazon has seen plenty of companies come and go, but still, it remains top of the tree. Over the years, the company has understood that what sets it apart is not the products it offers, but the data that it has access to. And the best way of managing this is through a CRM.

Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!

Barclay Ballard

Barclay has been writing about technology for a decade, starting out as a freelancer with ITProPortal covering everything from London’s start-up scene to comparisons of the best cloud storage services.  After that, he spent some time as the managing editor of an online outlet focusing on cloud computing, furthering his interest in virtualization, Big Data, and the Internet of Things. 

This tiny box from Samsung can hold 2TB of a special kind of RAM worth tens of thousands of dollars — CXL Memory Module Box hailed as the future of expansive server memory in the age of AI

This previously unknown malware has some crafty tricks for avoiding antivirus

Quordle today – hints and answers for Thursday, April 4 (game #801)

Most Popular

By Barclay Ballard February 28, 2024

By Barclay Ballard February 27, 2024

By Krishi Chowdhary February 26, 2024

By Barclay Ballard February 26, 2024

By Barclay Ballard February 24, 2024

By Barclay Ballard February 23, 2024

By Barclay Ballard February 22, 2024

By Barclay Ballard February 21, 2024

  • 2 Everything new on Max in April 2024
  • 3 In praise of Google Keep: an ode to the digital notebook for modern minds
  • 4 Not a joke: LG's stunning C3 OLED TV drops to a record-low price at Best Buy
  • 5 It's good that PC gaming is less convenient than console gaming
  • 2 Samsung can't blame Apple's iPhone monopoly for a lifetime of terrible software
  • 3 Is 7 years of software support a gimmick? My 4-year-old Samsung Galaxy S20 just gave me the answer
  • 4 This is no April Fools prank: the Asus ROG Ally is now under $300 at Best Buy
  • 5 Apple reportedly won’t bring iPadOS 18 to three iPads, but there’s better news for iPhones

uber crm case study

How Uber Transports Their CRM Data from Point A to Point B with RampID

  • Jun 28, 2018
  • Share on linkedin
  • Share on twitter
  • Share on facebook

Uber’s all about getting their users from point A to point B. So what gets Uber’s data from their CRM database into the digital space? Why, LiveRamp of course! Tesäen Chavis, DMP manager at Uber, uses RampID to connect Uber’s data from their CRM to pseudonymous channels so they can test user segments and find out if they’re targeting based on the right attributes.

“RampID has been able to help us tie these identities together and effectively manage our campaigns in a way that we’re saving dollars as they run,” said Tesäen. Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Don’t feel like watching the video? Read the full transcript here:

My name is Tesäen Chavis. I am the DMP Manager at Uber. Uber is a leading technology app. We provide a service that enables people to get rides. We’re a mode of transportation that takes a person from point A to point B.

I manage our tokenized data through our DMP. In short, I collect all of Uber’s data. We unify that data into a single ID, in this case it’s AAMID [Adobe Audience Manager ID], and then we activate that across all of our media campaigns.

We utilize LiveRamp as our CRM encryption. When it comes to Uber’s CRM data, we are able to segment users into specific life-cycle stages. LiveRamp is able to segment and anonymize those life- cycle stages so we can apply the same logic to our media campaigns.

Via LiveRamp we’re able to take directly identifiable personal data and tie that to several IDs, whether that be device IDs or cookie IDs. Then we can tie those identities together. Why do we want to do that? We need to have an understanding of who these people are across all of their devices so we can effectively target them and manage things like frequency capping. We can suppress them if we are over targeting them. LiveRamp has been able to help us tie these identities together and effectively manage our campaigns in a way that we’re saving dollars as they run.

Our LiveRamp account team is pretty incredible. They’re able to answer any questions that we have, whether it pertains to identity resolution , or personalization , or even building out our own version of a CDIM graph. They’re able to understand our business challenges, and they appropriately apply solutions to those challenges in a meaningful way. It’s not just an upsell, it’s, “this is why you need to consider this, and this is where it will get you a year or two from now.”

As we test user segments to figure out if we have viable attributes to go after different audiences, we’ve been utilizing LiveRamp to make that connection from CRM to pseudonymous channels. We gain these insights via the performance metrics that [tell us whether] this test group is converting or there’s some sort of incrementally in terms of whether or not they’re taking additional trips. From there, we can pretty much scale up that effort into a full-fledged campaign.

Once we actually gain those insights, whether it’s demographic-based or behavioral-based, we’re able to utilize LiveRamp’s Data Marketplace in order to gain second-party segments or third-party data in order to expand our reach. That’s pretty integral to how we approach these campaigns as well.

Subscribe for Updates

Stay up to date with the latest from LiveRamp.

Cart

  • SUGGESTED TOPICS
  • The Magazine
  • Newsletters
  • Managing Yourself
  • Managing Teams
  • Work-life Balance
  • The Big Idea
  • Data & Visuals
  • Reading Lists
  • Case Selections
  • HBR Learning
  • Topic Feeds
  • Account Settings
  • Email Preferences

Share Podcast

Cold Call podcast series

Uber’s Strategy for Global Success

How can Uber adapt its business model to compete in unique global markets?

  • Apple Podcasts
  • Google Podcasts

As Uber entered unique regional markets around the world – from New York to Shanghai, it has adapted its business model to comply with regulations and compete locally. As the transportation landscape evolves, how can Uber adapt its business model to stay competitive in the long term?

Harvard Business School assistant professor Alexander MacKay describes Uber’s global market strategy and responses by regulators and local competitors in his case, “ Uber: Competing Globally .”

HBR Presents is a network of podcasts curated by HBR editors, bringing you the best business ideas from the leading minds in management. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harvard Business Review or its affiliates.

BRIAN KENNY: The theory of disruptive innovation was first coined by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen in his 1997 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma . The theory explains the phenomenon by which an innovation transforms an existing market or sector by introducing simplicity, convenience, and affordability where complication and high cost are the status quo. Think Netflix disrupting the video rental space. Over the years, the term has been applied liberally and not always correctly to other examples, but every so often, an idea comes along that really fits the bill. Enter Uber, the ridesharing behemoth that turned the car service industry on its head. In a few short years after launching in 2010, Uber became the largest car service in the world, as measured in ride count. Last year, Uber drove 6.2 billion riders. Today’s case takes us to London in 2019, where Uber is facing the latest in a long list of challenges from regulators threatening their ability to continue operating in that important market. In this episode of Cold Call , we welcome Alexander MacKay to discuss the case entitled, “Uber: Competing Globally.” I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call on the HBR Presents network.

Alexander MacKay is in the strategy unit at Harvard Business School. His research focuses on matters of competition, including pricing, demand, and market structure. Alex, thanks for joining us on Cold Call today.

ALEX MACKAY: Thank you, Brian. Very happy to be here.

BRIAN KENNY: The idea of Uber seems so simple, but it was revolutionary in so many ways. And Uber has been in the headlines many times for both good and bad reasons in its decade of existence. So we’re going to touch on a lot of those things today. So thanks for sharing the case with us.

ALEX MACKAY: Brian, I’m very happy to. It’s a little funny, we’ve actually started to see the first few students who have never hailed a traditional taxi in our classrooms. So I think increasingly, the contrast between the two is going to be pretty difficult for people to fully understand.

BRIAN KENNY: Let me ask you to start by telling us what your cold call would be when you set up the class here.

ALEX MACKAY: The case starts off with the current legal battle going on in London. And so the first question I just ask to start the classroom is: What’s the end game for Uber in London? What do they look like 10 years from now? In the midst of this ongoing legal battle, there has been back and forth, some give and take from both sides, Transportation for London, and also on the Uber side as well. And there’s actually a recent court case that has allowed Uber to have a little more time to operate. They bought about 18 more months of time, but this has been also brought with additional, stricter scrutiny, and 18 months from now, they’re going to be at it again trying to figure out exactly what rules Uber’s allowed to operate under.

BRIAN KENNY: It seems like 18 months in the lifetime of Uber is like a decade. Everything seems to happen so quickly for this company. That’s a long period of time. What made you decide to write this case? How does it relate to the work that you’re doing in your research?

ALEX MACKAY: A big focus of my research is on competition policy, particularly the realms of antitrust and regulation. And here we have a company, Uber, whose relationship with regulation has been really essential to its strategy from day one. And I think appreciating the effects of regulation and how its impact Uber’s performance in different markets, is really critical for understanding strategy and global strategy broadly.

BRIAN KENNY:  Let’s just talk a little bit about Uber. I think people are familiar with it, but they may not be familiar with just how large they are in this space. And the space that they’ve sort of created has also blown up and expanded in many ways. So how big is Uber? Like what’s the landscape of ridesharing look like and where does Uber sit in that landscape?

ALEX MACKAY: Uber globally is the biggest ridesharing company. In 2018, they had over $10 billion in revenue for both ridesharing and their Uber Eats platform. And you mentioned in the introduction, that they had over 6 billion rides in 2019. That’s greater than 15 million rides every day that’s happening on their platform. So really, just an enormous company.

BRIAN KENNY: So they started back in 2010. It’s been kind of an amazing decade of growth for them. How do you explain that kind of rapid expansion?

ALEX MACKAY: They were financed early on with some angel investors. I think Kalanick’s background really helped there to get some early funding. But one of the critical things that allowed them to expand early into many markets that helped their growth was they’re a relatively asset light company. On the ground, they certainly need sales teams, they need translation work to move into different markets, but because the main asset they were providing in these different markets was software, and drivers were bringing their own cars and riders were bringing their own phones, the key pieces of hardware that you need to operate this market, they really didn’t have to invest a ton of capital. In fact, when they launched in Paris, they launched as sort of a prototype, just to show, “Hey, we can do this in Paris without too much difficulty,” as their first international market. So being able to really scale it across different markets really allowed them to grow. I think by 2015, their market cap was $60 billion, five years after founding, which is just an incredible rate of growth.

BRIAN KENNY: So they’re the biggest car service in the world, but they don’t own any cars. Like what business are they really in, I guess is the question?

ALEX MACKAY: They’re certainly in the business of matching riders to drivers. They’ve been able to do this in a way that doesn’t require them to own cars, just through the use of technology. And so what they’re doing, and this is I think pretty well understood, is that they’re using existing capital, people who have cars that may be going unused, personal cars, and Uber is able to use that and deploy that to give riding services to different customers. Whereas in the traditional taxi model, you could have taxis that you didn’t necessarily own, but you leased them or you rented them, but they had the express purpose of being driven for taxi services. And so it wasn’t using idle capital. You kind of had to create additional capital in order to provide the services.

BRIAN KENNY: So you mentioned Travis Kalanick a little bit earlier, but he was one of the co-founders of the company, and the case goes a little bit into his philosophy of what expansion into new markets should look like. Can you talk a little bit about that?

ALEX MACKAY: Certainly. Yeah. And I think it might even be helpful to talk a bit about his background, which I think provides a little more context before Uber. He dropped out of UCLA to work on his first company, Scour, and that was a peer-to-peer file sharing service, a lot like Napster, and actually predated Napster. And where he was operating was sort of an evolving legal gray area. Eventually, Scour got sued for $250 billion by a collection of entertainment companies and had to file for bankruptcy.

BRIAN KENNY: Wow.

ALEX MACKAY: He followed that up with his next venture, Red Swoosh, and that was software aimed at allowing users to share network bandwidth. So again, it was a little bit ahead of its time, making use of recent advances in technology. Early on though, they got in trouble with the IRS. They weren’t withholding taxes, and there were some other issues with his co-founder, and there was sort of a bad breakup between the two. Despite this, he persevered and ended up selling the company for $23 million in 2007. And after that, his next big thing was Uber. So one thing I just want to point out is that at all three of these companies, he was looking to do something that leveraged new technology to change the world. And by nature, sometimes businesses like that operate in a legal gray area and you have very difficult decisions to make. Some other decisions you have to make are clearly unethical and there’s really no reason to make some of those decisions, like with the taxes and with some other things that came out later on at Uber, but certainly one of the things that any founder who’s looking to change the world with a big new technology company has to deal with, is that often, the legal framework and the regulatory framework around what you’re trying to do isn’t well established.

BRIAN KENNY: Obviously drama seems to follow Travis where he goes. And his expansion strategy was pretty aggressive. It was almost like a warlike mentality in terms of going into a new market. And you could sort of sum it up as saying ask forgiveness. Is that fair?

ALEX MACKAY: Yeah. Yeah. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. I think they were really focused on winning. I think that was sort of their ultimate goal. We describe in the case there’s this policy of principle confrontation, to ignore existing regulations until you receive pushback. And then when you do receive pushback, either from local regulators or existing sort of taxicab drivers, mobilize a response to sort of confront that. During their beta launch in 2010, they received a cease-and-desist letter from the city of San Francisco. And they essentially just ignored this letter. They rebranded, they used to be UberCab, and they just took “Cab” out of their name, so now they’re Uber. And you can see their perspective in their press release in response to this. They say, “UberCab is a first to market cutting edge transportation technology, and it must be recognized that the regulations from both city and state regulatory bodies have not been written with these innovations in mind. As such, we are happy to help educate the regulatory bodies on this new generation of technology and work closely with both agencies to ensure compliance.”

BRIAN KENNY: It’s a little arrogant.

ALEX MACKAY: Yeah, so you can see right there, they’re saying, what we’re operating in is sort of this new technology-based realm and the regulators don’t really understand what’s going on. And so instead of complying with the existing regulations, we’re going to try to push regulations to fit what we’re trying to do.

BRIAN KENNY: The case is pretty epic in terms of it sort of cuts a sweeping arc across the world, looking at the challenges that they faced with each market they entered, and none more interesting I think the New York City, which is obviously an enormous market. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges they faced going into New York with the cab industry being as prevalent as it was and is?

ALEX MACKAY: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it’s pretty well known for people who are familiar with New York that there were restrictions on the number of medallions which allowed taxis to operate. So there was a limited number of taxis that could drive around New York City. This restriction had really driven up the value of these medallions to the taxi owners. And if you had the experience of taking taxis in New York City prior to the advent of Uber, what you’d find is that there were some areas where the service was very, very good. Downtown, Midtown Manhattan, you could almost always find a taxi, but there are other parts of the city where it was very difficult at times to find a cab. And when you got in a cab, you weren’t sure that you were always going to be given a fair ride. And so Uber coming in and providing this technology that allowed you to pick up a ride from anywhere and sort of track the route as you’re going on really disrupted this market. Consumers love them. They had a thousand apps signups before they even launched. Kalanick mentioned this in terms of their launch strategy, we have to go here because the consumers really want us here. But immediately, they started getting pushback from the taxicab owners who were threatened by this new mode of transportation. They argued that they should be under the same regulations that the taxis were. And there were a lot of local government officials that were sort of mobilized against Uber as well. De Blasio, the Mayor of New York, wrote opinion articles against Uber, claiming that they were contributing to congestion. There was a lot of concern that maybe they had some safety issues, and the taxi drivers and the owners brought a lawsuit against Uber for evading these regulations. And then later on, and this was the case in many local governments, de Blasio introduced a bill to put additional restrictions on Uber that would make them look a lot more like a traditional taxi operating model, with limited number of licenses and strict requirements for reporting.

BRIAN KENNY: And this is the same scenario that’s going to play out almost with every city that they go into because there is such an established infrastructure for the taxi industry in those places. They have lobbyists. They’re tied into the political networks. In some instances, it was revealed that they’ve been connected with organized crime. So not for the faint of heart, right, trying to expand into some of the biggest cities in the United States.

ALEX MACKAY: Absolutely. Absolutely. And what’s sort of fascinating about the United States is it’s actually a place where a company can engage in this battle over regulation on the ground. And de Blasio writes his opinion article and pushes forward this bill. Uber responds by taking out an ad campaign, over $3 million, opposing these regulations and calling out de Blasio. So again, we sort of have this fascinating example of Uber mobilizing their own lobbyists, their lawyers, but also public advertising to sort of convince the residents of New York City that de Blasio and the regulators that are trying to come down on them are in the wrong.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And at the end of the day, it’s consumers that they’re really making this appeal to, because I guess my question is, are these regulations stifling innovation? And if they are, who pays the ultimate price for that, Uber or the consumer?

ALEX MACKAY: Consumers definitely loved Uber. And I don’t think any of the regulators were trying to stifle innovation. I don’t think they would say that. I think their biggest concern, their primary concern was safety, and a secondary and related concern here was losing regulatory oversight over the transportation sector. So this is a public service that had been fairly tightly regulated for a long time, and there was some concern that what happens when this just becomes almost a free market sector. At the same time, these regulators have the lobbyists from the taxicab industry and other interested parties in their ear trying to convince them that Uber really is like a taxi company and should be regulated, and really emphasizing the safety concerns and other concerns to try to get stricter regulations put on Uber. And part of that may be valid. I think you certainly should be concerned about safety and there are real concerns there, but part of it is simply the strategic game that rivals are going to play between each other. And the taxicab industry sees Uber as a threat. It’s in their best interest to lobby the regulators to come down on Uber.

BRIAN KENNY: And what’s amazing to me is that while all this is playing out, they’re not turning their tails and running. They’re continuing to push forward and expand into other parts of the world. So can you talk a little bit about what it was like trying to go into countries in Latin America, countries in Asia, where the regulations and the regulatory infrastructure is quite different than it is in the US?

ALEX MACKAY: In the case, we have anecdotes, vignettes, one for each continent. And their experience in each continent was actually pretty different. Even within a continent, you’re going to have very different regulatory frameworks for each country. So we sort of pick a few and focus on a few, just to highlight how the experience is very different in different countries. And one thing that’s sort of interesting, in Latin America, we focus on Bogota in Colombia, and what’s sort of interesting there is they launched secretly and they were pretty early on considered to be illegal, but they continue to operate despite the official policy of being illegal in Colombia. And they were able to do that in a way that you may not be able to do it so easily in the United States, just because of the different layers of enforcement and policy considerations that are present in Colombia and not necessarily in the United States. Now, when I talk about the current state of Uber in different countries, this is continually evolving. So they temporarily suspended their operations early in 2020 in Columbia. Now they’re back. This is a continual back and forth game that they’re playing with the regulators in different markets.

BRIAN KENNY: And in a place like Colombia, are they not worried about violence and the potential for violence against their drivers?

ALEX MACKAY: Absolutely. So this is true sort of around the world. I think in certain countries, violence becomes a little bit more of a concern. And what they found in Colombia is they did have more incidents where taxi drivers decided to take things into their own hands and threaten Uber drivers and Uber riders, sometimes with weapons. Another decision Uber had to make that was related to that was whether or not to allow riders to pay in cash. Because in the United States, they’d exclusively used credit cards, but in Latin America and some other countries like India, consumers tended to prefer to use cash to pay, and allowing that sort of opened up this additional risk that Uber didn’t really have a great system in place to protect them from. Because when you go to cash, you’re not able to track every rider quite as easily, and there’s just a bigger chance for fraud or for robbery and that sort of thing popping up.

BRIAN KENNY: Going into Asia was also quite a challenge for them. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges they faced, particularly in China?

ALEX MACKAY: They had very different experiences in each country in Asia. China was a unique case that is very fascinating, because when Uber launched there, there were already existing technology-based, you might call them, rideshare companies, that were fairly prominent, Didi and Kuaidi, And these companies later merged to be one company, DiDi, which is huge. It’s on par with Uber in terms of its global presence as a ridesharing company. When Uber launched there, they didn’t fully anticipate all the changes they would have to make to going into a very different environment. In China, besides having established competitors, Google Maps didn’t work, and they sort of relied on that mapping software to do their location services. So they had to completely redo their location services. They also, again, relied on credit cards for payments, and in China, consumers increasingly used apps to do their payments. And this became a little bit of a challenge because the main app that Chinese customers used, they used WeChat and Alipay primarily, they were actually owned by parent companies of the rival ridesharing company. So Uber had to essentially negotiate with its rivals in order to have consumers pay for their ridesharing services. And so here are a few sort of localization issues that you could argue Uber didn’t fully anticipate when they launched. The other thing about competing in China that’s sort of interesting is that Chinese policy regarding competition is very different from policy in the United States and much of Europe. For the most part, there’s not the traditional antitrust view of protecting the consumers first and foremost. That certainly comes into play, but the Chinese government has other objectives, including promoting domestic firms. And so if you think about launching into a company where there’s a large established domestic rival that certainly increases the difficulty of success, because when push comes to shove, the government is likely to come down on the side of your rival, which is the domestic company, and not the foreign entrant.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, which is understandable, I guess, to some extent. This sounds exhausting, to be sort of fighting skirmishes on all these fronts in all these different places in the world. How does that affect the morale or tear at the fabric maybe of the culture at a company like Uber, where they’re trying to manage this on a global scale and running into challenges every step of the way?

ALEX MACKAY: It certainly has an effect. I think Uber did a very good job at recruiting teams of people who really wanted to win. And so, if that’s the consistent message you’re sending to your teams, then these challenges may be actually considered somewhat exciting. And so I think by bringing in that sort of person, I think they actually fueled this desire to win in these markets and really kept the momentum going. One of the downsides of this of course is that if you exclusively focus on winning and getting around the existing regulations, there does become this challenge of what’s ethical and what’s not ethical? And in certain business areas, there actually often is a little bit of a gray line. I mean, you can see this outside of ridesharing. It’s a much broader thing to think about, but regulation of pharmaceuticals, regulation of use of new technologies such as drones, often the technology outpaces the regulation by a little bit and there’s this lag in trying to figure out what actually is the right thing to do. I think it’s a fair question whether or not you can disentangle this sort of principle of confrontation that’s so pervasive throughout the company culture when it comes to regulation from this principle confrontation of other ethical issues that are not necessarily business driven, and whether or not it’s easy to maintain that separation. And I think that’s a fair question, certainly worthy for debate. But what I think is important is you can set up a company where you are abiding by ethical issues that are very clear, but you’re still going to face challenges on the legal side when you’re developing a new business in an area with new technology.

BRIAN KENNY: That’s a great insight. I mean, I found myself asking myself as I got through the case, I can’t tell if Uber is the victim or the aggressor in all of this. And I guess the answer is they’re a little bit of both.

ALEX MACKAY: Yeah. I think it’s fair to characterize them as an aggressor, and I think you sort of need to be if you want to succeed and if you want to change the world in a new technology area. In some sense, they’re a victim in that we’re all the victim as consumers and as firms of regulations that are sometimes difficult to adapt in real time to changing market conditions. And there’s a good reason why they are sticky over time, but sometimes that can be very costly. Going back to something we talked about earlier, I think there are hardly any consumers that wanted Uber kicked out of New York City. I think everyone realized this was just so much superior to any other option they had, that they were really willing to fight to keep Uber around in the limited ways they could.

BRIAN KENNY: So let’s go back to the central issue in the case then, which is, how important is it to them, in terms of their global strategy, to have a presence in a place like London? They’re still not profitable by the way, we should point that out, that despite the fact that they are the largest in the space, they haven’t turned the corner to profitability yet. I would imagine London’s kind of important.

ALEX MACKAY: Absolutely. London is a key international city, and a presence there is important for Uber’s overall brand. So many people travel through London, and it’s a real benefit for anyone who travels to be able to use the same service at any city you stop in. At the same time, they’re facing these increasing regulatory pressures from London, and so it’s a real question whether or not, 10 years from now, they look substantially different from the established taxi industry that’s there. And you can kind of see this battle playing out across different markets. As another example, in Ghana. When they entered there, they actually entered with a framework for understanding. They helped build the regulations for ridesharing services in Ghana when they entered. But over time, that evolved to additional restrictions as the existing taxi companies pushed back on them. So I think a key lesson here in all of this is that the regulations that you see at any given point in time aren’t absolutely fixed, for anyone starting a technology-based company, there will be regulations that do get created that affect your business. Stepping outside of transportation, we can see that going on now with the big tech firms and sort of the antitrust investigations they’re are under. And the policymakers in the US and Europe are really trying to evolve the set of regulations to reflect the different businesses that Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google are involved in.

BRIAN KENNY: One thing we haven’t touched on, and it’s not touched on in the case obviously because it just sort of started fairly recently, is the pandemic and the implications of the pandemic for the rideshare industry as fewer people find themselves in need of going anywhere. Have you given any thought to that and whether that’s going to have any effect on the regulations?

ALEX MACKAY: It certainly could. Uber is in a somewhat fortunate position, at least if you judge by their market capitalization, with respect to the pandemic. Initially their stocks took a pretty big hit, but rebounded pretty quickly, and part of this is because the primary part of their business is the transportation through Uber X, but they do also offer the delivery services through Uber Eats, and that business has really picked up during this pandemic. There’s certainly a mix of views about the future, but I think most people do believe that at some point we’ll get back to business as usual, at least for Uber services, when we come up with a vaccine. I think most people anticipate that they’ll be resuming use of Uber once it becomes safe to do so. And I think, to be frank, a lot of people already have resumed using Uber, especially people who don’t have cars or who see it as a valuable alternative or a safer alternative to public transit.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, that’s a really good point. And the Uber Eats thing is interesting as another example of how it’s important for businesses to re-imagine the business that they’re in because that, in many ways, may be helping them through a really tough patch here. This has been a really interesting conversation, Alex, I want to ask you one final question, which is, as the students are packing up to leave class, what’s the one thing you want them to take away from the case?

ALEX MACKAY: So I would hope the students take away the importance of regulation in business strategy. And I think the case of Uber really highlights that. And if you look at the conversation around Uber I’d say for the first 10 years of their existence, it was essentially around the superiority of their technology and not so much how they handled regulation. If you think back to the cease-and-desist letter that San Francisco issued in 2010, if Uber had simply stopped operations then, we wouldn’t have the ridesharing world that we have today. So their strategy of principle confrontation with respect to regulation was really essential for their future growth. Again, this does raise important ethical considerations as you’re operating in a legal gray area, but it’s certainly an essential part of strategy.

BRIAN KENNY: Alex, thanks so much for joining us on Cold Call today. It’s been great talking to you.

ALEX MACKAY: Thank you so much, Brian.

BRIAN KENNY: If you enjoy Cold Call, you might like other podcasts on the HBR Presents Network. Whether you’re looking for advice on navigating your career, you want the latest thinking in business and management, or you just want to hear what’s on the minds of Harvard Business School professors, the HBR Presents Network has a podcast for you. Find them on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’ve been listening to Cold Call , an official podcast of Harvard Business School on the HBR Presents Network.

  • Subscribe On:

Latest in this series

This article is about competitive strategy.

  • Global strategy
  • Government policy and regulation

Partner Center

Our products

Influencer Marketing

Automate and scale influencer activation by collaborating with a large pre-vetted community of micro and nano-influencers

Ratings & Reviews

An end-to-end solution to collect, manage, analyze and display your customers ratings and reviews

Live Shopping

Create, stream and manage live shopping events with experts and super brand lovers, to bring you closer to your community

Consumer Videos

Get your brand ambassadors involved in the creation of quality and inspiring videos on a large scale, to inspire and better inform consumers.

Customer Data Activation

A one-to-one marketing solution that leverages your customer data, to make each interaction of the buyers journey, a lever for incremental growth

Feedback Management

Collect and manage customer feedback at each stage of the buying journey to continually optimize your customer experience and engagement

How to leverage UGC throughout the customer journey

Meet the fashion industry challenges by creating authentic UGC

Create UGC to revolutionize the shopping experience of beauty products

Consumer Electronics

Give shoppers a whole new experience at their fingertips with UGC

Food & Beverage

How UGC can make your culinary content aspirational

Consumer Services

Inspire clients at every touchpoint through authentic UGC

Consumers Goods

Deliver Convenience, Discovery and Goods

Home - Garden - DIY

Embrace the wave of consumer-driven content

Our Customers

Case studies

Case studies

Video gallery

Video gallery

Read our latest articles

Discover our clients successes

Check our ebooks

Our webinars calendar

Hightlight image

UGC Trends in 2024

Falling in love is addictive. Those of us who have ever fallen in love find it hard to explain how it happened and why. It is undoubtedly one of the best feelings there is, and yet it is difficult to explain rationally. Many of us spend a large part of our lives looking for love,...

How Uber delivers an excellent customer experience

How Uber delivers an excellent customer experience

2023-EN-SKP-FM-CTA-Vertical- 15+ questions to ask your customers about their needs and expectations

Falling in love is addictive.

Those of us who have ever fallen in love find it hard to explain how it happened and why.

It is undoubtedly one of the best feelings there is, and yet it is difficult to explain rationally.

Many of us spend a large part of our lives looking for love, falling in love, trying our best to stay in love and to be close to the people we love.

We love not only people; we love cars, some love places, others love food or films. People can love a multitude of things.

But wait, why are we talking about love in an article dedicated to the customer experience?

Quite simply because the best customer experiences are very similar to love. They are extremely tough to design, but when you get it right, you can make your customers love you for life . And the reason why it is so challenging to create an exceptional customer experience is very simple.

Experiences are all about human interactions. There are scientific explanations, but above all, it’s about emotions.

And as we can see in Maslow’s triangle, emotional needs transcend physical needs.

customer needs

Customer experience has become so important in recent times that several firms of analysts regularly publish indices. The Forrester’s US Customer Experience Index covers a significant proportion of industries such as airlines, hotels, insurance, etc.

But what happens if you’re not a service company, but rather an organization like AirBnB, Uber or WhatsApp? Who does the customer talk to when WhatsApp doesn’t work or when the Uber App is not responding?

How does Uber deliver an excellent customer experience?

Welcome to the world of product experience – a subset of customer experience, highly appreciated by design specialists, and of immense importance to organizations that cannot afford (or do not want) to spend a lot on marketing or customer service.

Product experience is what the consumer remembers about the product through the various stages of interaction with it (purchase, first use, current use, abandonment, etc.).

From the experience point of view, the three dimensions within which a product must perform are:

  • the functional,
  • the sensual,
  • and the emotional.

uber experience

These aspects are independent of the economic dimensions of the product such as the cost, price or efficiency of production (which are equally important attributes).

1 — Functional experience

The question that any product must answer is: what is the basic functional human need the product is intended to meet?

Is it a need for transport, for accommodation, for knowledge or something else?

We often speak of the functional value created by the product.

2 — Sensual experience

Nobody loves unattractive cars irrespective of the speed they can achieve. Beauty is a matter of taste, but things must be pleasant to see and hear.

Some even believe that a smell can evoke an experience (aromatherapy in hotels, spas or restaurants is a good example). As a matter of fact, people rarely judge a book by its cover.

So make sure you tell a great story that solves a big problem, but be sure that it is beautiful and appeals to the senses.

3 — Emotional experience

What emotional response does your product evoke in its user?

A sense of power, well-being, belonging, attachment, aversion, pleasure or pride?

Taking into account the wide variety of customers you want to reach in a B2C universe, there is no single formula.

You must invest time in studying your customers’ reactions within the environment in which they are likely to use your product.

Providing a Memorable Customer Experience

This is the cherry on the cake, the Holy Grail, the proof that your product experience is effective.

Does your product create a memorable or unforgettable customer experience based on the three dimensions above ?

To answer this question, create a questionnaire made up of ratings designed to assess the three dimensions of your product (functional, sensual and emotional experience) in real terms and determine the memorability of your product experience.

This type of questionnaire will provide you with an excellent means of quantitative measurement of the product experience, allowing you to estimate how successful it is likely to be with your target market.

So, while mapping the customer experience can be a good way to anticipate the contact points and the reactions of your consumers to your services throughout the product life cycle, a product experience measurement system can help you to improve the experience and therefore the attractiveness of your product to your customers by quantifying the different aspects of the experience.

In a nutshell, an exceptional product experience can evoke genuine loyalty in your customers.

Why does Uber deliver the best product experience?

To demonstrate why Uber provides a remarkable product (and customer) experience, I suggest we simply compare the experience offered by a traditional taxi service and that provided by Uber.

Like the booksellers or the travel agencies that went before them, the taxi industry hasn’t succeeded in breaking new ground in its approach to customers.

Instead of investing in improvements that could have removed some of the irritations that their customers experience, they have almost always chosen not to evolve and to stay as they were .

Meanwhile, Uber has arrived…

The start-up has invested heavily in the sticking points of the customer experience so as to disrupt the taxi market.

Fundamental principles of great Customer Experience

Here are the principles they apply and some concrete examples, always in comparison with the traditional taxi services:

1 — Remove the irritations

No more need to stand waving on the pavement, no more long waits, lower charges and clearer pricing, and an end to grumpy drivers.

Customers expect, more than ever before, simple and quick processes . If you don’t take account of this, you will quickly be replaced.

2 — Offer transparency

Your Uber driver is called Julien. He is driving a C-Class Mercedes and will arrive in 2 minutes.

The technology to keep customers informed in real time exists and should be made use of whenever possible.

Whether it is tracking a UPS shipment or the number of steps required to make an online purchase, knowing when and why an order will be on time or late (or any other relevant information available about a product or service) allows you to meet the expectations of your customers more effectively .

3 — Use customer feedback as though it were currency

How would you evaluate your experience with your Uber driver? Why?

Give customers and employees alike the chance to be heard and make good use of the feedback.

In the case of Uber, feedback is a fundamental element in the experience which ensures that the best (customers and employees) get the best service .

4 — Establish strong relationships with people

Thank you for the journey, see you again soon!

Customers are human beings, and the companies that serve them are made up of human beings too. Making things simple and transparent doesn’t mean sacrificing the human factor.

In fact, technology makes it much easier to put the emphasis on encouraging human contact. How do you ensure that this is VIP contact? This is where feedback becomes vital !

And you, what do you do to make sure your customers love you and feel loved? Which companies inspire you the most?

15 questions to know your customers needs and expectations

15+ questions to ask your customers about their needs and expectations

Qualify customer expectations before, during and after the purchase, or for a new cycle !

LearnSQL.com helps Uber employees get the most out of their data

LearnSQL.com and Uber cooperate since July 2016

E-learning platform based on LearnSQL.com

Teach users to identify trends and pull data themselves

When you think of successful startups, Uber is one of the first that comes to mind. Operating in 633 cities around the world, the company is the biggest transportation service provider.

This tremendous growth was possible thanks to great service, amazing people, right timing, and taking advantage of collected data in order to deliver an exceptional customer experience.

LearnSQL.com helps Uber employees make the best use of their data by delivering interactive online courses.

Cities worldwide

Trips (and counting)

uber crm case study

The challenge

How can you teach users to identify trends and pull data themselves?

Thousands of Uber employees use data in their daily work. Operation teams, as well as marketing and promotions, need it for planning and decision-making processes.

Data is at the heart of the decision making process at Uber. People across various roles and locales need access to accurate and reliable business metrics. Lyle Adams Analytics Manager

Even though there are internal Business Intelligence tools available, the most up-to-date, precise, and granular data can be accessed programmatically. Uber’s Data team was flooded with requests from various organizations and individuals on the ways to access the relevant datasets.

Uber tried educating users through video conferences, learning groups, and how-to guides. However, these solutions were insufficient on their own. Uber needed a way to educate its global workforce at scale.

Road to the solution

Rise and fall of the traditional learning process

The traditional approach with lectures and presentations proved to be ineffective. SQL training became an obligatory part of onboarding, but with the number of employees growing exponentially, it was taking more and more time.

PowerPoint presentations and in person sessions didn’t scale since it would take months to educate our global operations team. We needed a solution that allowed us to reach as many users as possible and educate users at their own pace. Lyle Adams Analytics Manager

in person presentation

Also, Uber’s internal data architecture was constantly evolving. Continuous revisions and updates were costly and time-consuming; thus, central coordination of the SQL education process in several countries became almost impossible.

Uber wanted an e-learning solution that could scale with its business. To that end, it contacted the LearnSQL.com Team in hopes of a potential partnership.

The solution

Tailored e-learning platform based on LearnSQL.com

To meet Uber’s needs, LearnSQL.com created a dedicated e-learning platform based on its cutting-edge LearnSQL.com platform. Starting with an SQL Basics course, participants gain knowledge and SQL skills and can immediately test them on a specially designed dataset that resembles Uber’s actual databases.

Uber Academy course

All of the course tasks are strictly connected to Uber’s domain and educate users on how to identify specific Uber metrics using SQL. LearnSQL.com and Uber partnered to create a completely custom course that teaches users the basics of SQL syntax while giving them an overview of important business metrics. Thanks to this course, employees can learn the specifics of Uber’s databases with their actual structure, dictionaries, etc. –always in their most current version.

Teaching SQL using daily problems and real-life examples improved user engagement, which resulted in higher user retention and more impactful training.

Data consumers at Uber face not only challenges of being able to query, but also understanding how to use our many databases. With the course created around Uber specific tables, even users who are savvy with coding gain insight in the different ways the key tables work with each other. For those who are learning SQL, they get a hands-on experience in our database without the intimidation of our database. Mallory Wang Data Analyst

Moreover, LearnSQL.com allows central management of SQL training, which solves many problems with coordination and updating the course content in different countries. The e-learning platform is available 24/7 regardless of time zones. It also allows Uber to check the progress of all course participants and help them if assistance is needed.

The SQL introductory course was just the beginning

We compared total execution for data at Uber during a 2-week period for new employees who finished the introductory course with total executions during a comparable 2-week period for new employees who never took the course. The data shows that those who completed the course queried 20 times more than those who didn’t take the course. This means that the SQL Learning Platform gives users the confidence to query data, which is certainly the first step in using data at Uber.

Further leveraging this powerful tool, future growth includes creating courses for other parts of Uber’s data, such as Eats, Driver Operations, and more. Lyle Adams Analytics Manager

We grow together

Online interactive courses (and counting)

Employees started online training

Average course rating

Let's make great things together

Drop us a line at [email protected]

Uber Case Study: How the Ridesharing Giant Keeps Its Brand Strong

26 Nov 2019

Michael Signal

Table of Contents

How do average people fundamentally reshape a global multi-billion-dollar industry?

In Uber’s case, the answer is “by driving the same cars they already have.”

In this Uber case study, we will find out how they ascended to the heights of success and navigated through difficult waters along the way. We’ll see how they’ve built a sustainable brand that continues to succeed in a challenging industry.

Uber was one of the first companies to embrace and define “the sharing economy” concept. In so doing, it empowered consumers and entrepreneurial individuals to take control of for-hire transportation.

It is, in short, one of the most iconic technology companies in modern history.

That success didn’t happen overnight or without a lot of strategic planning and effort.

Uber is not a mere beneficiary of good luck or positive economic forces beyond their control. They are a perfect example of how a brand can be disruptive, transformative, and even sustainable.

Innovation in the Driver’s Seat

Innovation was the driver behind Uber’s initial success. This was evident in its unique premise: hail a ride from anywhere using a smartphone.

It is easy to forget that only a few short years ago, this wasn’t possible. At best, one might call a ride in from a local taxi or shuttle company, wait in the taxi line at the airport, or hail a cab on the side of the street.

Uber’s entry into the opaque world of ride-for-hire also allowed it to define innovation as its primary driver early on. The company would, its management said,  define itself as a technology company  and not as some kind of new taxi enterprise.

Again, a few years ago, this was unthinkable. Uber was a completely new product in a world where people had to wave down a ride from the side of the street. Uber’s product put the power of transportation into the hands of riders through their smartphone.

Embracing Disruption

As the company grew and ran into regulatory barriers erected to support the traditional for-hire transportation industry, such as taxis and limousines, it decided to embrace the controversial role of industry disruptor.

How, though, could Uber win against the myriad taxi regulations in major cities, which prevented them from doing things like picking up and dropping off at airports?

As Shark Tank investor Kevin Harrington pointed out in Forbes, the answer was in mobilizing customers to their cause. Uber was able to identify that many of its customers weren’t happy with the existing state of affairs in the transportation industry.

These customers wanted something better and became Uber’s core base. They then became advocates for the company in various forums as it fought against old regulations. Uber was smart to  identify and cultivate these customers  early on.

By making customer convenience and service a priority, Uber took the role of “disruptor” and turned it into a part of the company’s image and brand. They joined a broader  socioeconomic movement  towards changing old industries in ways that benefited consumers.

Uber, of course, also had to create a framework of lobbyists and other professional policy advocates. They began spending millions of dollars in places like  New York City . These fights continue because regulated taxis haven’t given up trying to keep Uber from invading their turf.

By and large, however, Uber has won – and in the process, made the innovation of changing an old industry part and parcel of what it represents to consumers.

Navigating Tough Waters

No Uber case study would be complete, or accurate, without documenting Uber’s challenges over the past couple of years.

In February 2017, former Uber employee Susan Fowler, an engineer, made a blog post heard round the world. On her blog, she described a toxic culture at the company where sexual harassment was rampant and managers cannibalized each other.

Her post received so much attention that Uber decided to respond by having the law firm Perkins Coie  do an investigation  into her allegations.

The CEO and co-founder of Uber, Travis Kalanick, began facing scrutiny over Uber’s company culture.

The company recognized a crucial if simple truth: to maintain a sustainable brand long-term, Uber had to be honest about what it stood for. Was it a cutting-edge, progressive company, as it attempted to posture itself? The brand teetered on the brink of outright hypocrisy, if not total disaster.

If it was the brand that Kalanick had long said that it was, then he had to go. Kalanick, along with Uber’s management, recognized this. There were numerous other personnel casualties of Uber’s very public self-reflection.

The most noteworthy demise, however, was the toxic culture threatening the long-term viability of the company. Out of the ashes of its former self, Uber decided to undergo a massive effort to restore its image and set itself up for the future.

Rebranding for the Future

Uber took what could have been its defeat and turned it into an opportunity. The new CEO made a point of  listening to employees  and driving that principle deep into the heart of a new corporate culture.

Some Uber executives even go the extra mile to participate as normal Uber drivers and experience what Uber’s drivers experience. The importance of getting one’s hands dirty is a part of the refreshed culture. Executives now attempt to bridge the gaps between drivers and the employees at the very top.

It also embarked on a major rebranding intended on capturing an accessible, progressive style that reflected the best of the company and communicated credibly with consumers. Uber recognized that  design was crucial  to the customer experience.

This included not only practical matters, such as the kind of typeface used, but also larger questions such as the tone of voice applied to its marketing and communication efforts.

Uber is not done with its rebranding effort, which included a  massive initial public offering  (IPO) in May of 2019. Uber’s entry into the stock market has been fraught with challenges. The company continues to lose money and investor confidence dwindles. The stock has had problems due to doubts about Uber’s profitability, among other concerns.

However, the Uber brand continues to be strong and recognizable – an asset that is almost certain to continue.

Lessons of the Uber Case Study 

Uber is, in one sense, a wholly unique company whose success would seem hard to emulate.

After all, not everyone is in a position to create a new company that disrupts an entire industry and takes on regulators the world over en route to a multi-billion-dollar IPO.

On the other hand, many of the lessons that Uber provides apply to other companies and startups .

Uber’s determination to focus on technology and innovation points to the importance of defining a clear brand strategy and messaging focus.

Their ability to embrace the role of disruptor offers hope to entrepreneurs tackling business norms and stale industry attitudes.

Hope can also be found in the company’s ability to weather challenges to its very existence. Uber took what could have been a disastrous 2017 and parlayed it into fresh opportunities for the company that concluded with an IPO.

The final lesson of this Uber case study, then, appears to be determination: determination to  strategize and plan  with clarity and focus, determination to stick with it through thick and thin, and determination to right the ship when things get difficult.

Are You the Next Uber?

Uber’s determination has proven, in many respects, to be the core value upon which its brand is most closely associated. It is this determination which also proves the greatest lesson for others in this Uber case study.

Do you have a great idea for a mobile or web app and want to emulate the success of Uber? We have experience helping some of the most credible and innovative firms in Australia and would love to partner with you to create more success.

Reach out  to learn more!

Michael is the creative brains of the company and he leads the UX and UI team at EB Pearls. He has experience of over 20 years in interaction design and have designed digital products for Fortune 50 companies all over the world.

See more articles like this

  • Digital Strategy

Crafting Success: A Guide to Effective App Development Strategies

By Nikesh Maharjan

How to Protect Your Idea, Get a Patent and Trademark

By Akash Shakya

How and Where a Start-Up Business Fails

Start your app development journey now.

“We’re very happy with the results of EB Pearls’ work. Since its launch, the app has had over 7,000 downloads, with around 6,000 users completing the signup process in the first 6 weeks. ”

— Founder at Intro Dating

Two people talking, looking at a tablet

  • Business Decision Makers
  • Thought leadership
  • Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Revolutionizing marketing workflows with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

  • By Jim Nakashima, Partner General Manager, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

In the ever-evolving landscape of generative AI, a copilot isn’t just a companion that makes tasks that you’re already doing at work easier, but it’s quickly becoming a transformative force reshaping the very core of how things are done.

After shipping 13 publicly available Microsoft Copilot features in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights that enable marketing teams to ask Copilot questions about their data, receive ideas for content from key points they want to make, define audiences and journeys in everyday words, understand their data quality, or get a summarized answer from multiple sources on how to use a feature within Dynamics 365 Customer Insights (to name a few), we realized that Copilot can help our marketing teams not just with tasks, but can completely change their workflow.  

This workflow in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will enable marketers to deliver unparalleled customer experiences (CXs). This could encompass a myriad of scenarios, from a marketing campaign for a new product or promotion, to managing how companies interact with their customers in key moments at scale.

a person sitting at a table using a laptop

The new Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

The new Copilot in Customer Insights in now available in preview.

Take for example a theme park—as customers scan their tickets to ride attractions, they can receive personalized messages and notifications across their preferred channels be it: in-app, web, text message, or email. This not only enhances customer experience by making the most out of their visit but also enables the company to maximize customer spending.

Companies often spend a tremendous amount of time building these campaigns and experiences. With the growing demand for digital and mobile experiences, coupled with the need to use customer data from an expanding array of disconnected systems to personalize and trigger the experiences, the time and cost to deliver continues to rise.

Our conversations with numerous companies illuminated a common pain point—the process to deliver a CX project or campaign can extend from 12 to 15 weeks (about three and a half months). There are no signs this will decrease in length.

It’s not surprising why. The current marketing workflow resembles a complex team sport, requiring multiple contributors focused on different aspects—audience, journey, content, and the delivery channel.

graphical user interface, diagram

Most teams create campaigns starting with a blank canvas; assembling, testing, and going live; then tracking the analytics to ensure everything is going well and any drop-off points are addressed. The complexity and coordination across people affect more than the time to market, it affects the quality and level of personalization delivered to the end customer.

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will completely change the game.

“At Campari Group, we’re excited by the opportunities these new Copilot capabilities will bring us to streamline our digital marketing processes—driving collaboration and enhancing our ability to deliver a truly engaging consumer experience, whilst staying one step ahead of the competition!” David Hand – Global IT Manager, CRM, Campari

Companies have data that ground Copilot in brand styles, tone, language, and imagery. Briefs contain a lot of key information about the intent, success, branding, and key points. Over time, data from prior projects or campaigns will drive the continuous improvement of business results.

Armed with this data, what if you could describe the outcomes you want, and Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights could take the lead?

Our vision has four key areas of innovation:

  • We’re removing complex UIs that are difficult to navigate and use, instead Copilot will provide dynamic user experiences (UX) that come to you based on what you are trying to achieve . Examples of this are the dynamic project board and analytics.
  • Instead of marketers having to start from a word or pixel for every element of the project or campaign, Copilot provides data-driven suggestions that allows you to curate your project instead of having to create every piece. Everything starts connected and Copilot keeps it connected and in sync making any downstream changes saving the marketer time and eliminating a class of errors due to partial changes. Choose from suggested images, emails, audiences, journeys, and more instead of having to create each element from scratch. We don’t believe any of the suggestions will be 100% of what the marketing team needs, what we do know is that even if it’s only 60% the way there, it will save 60% of the time needed to launch the project.
  • We’re removing the constraint of resources limiting the quality of experience and depth of personalization. Instead of personalizing to four cohorts, Copilot will personalize to 64 cohorts or more. But then, you need confidence in what you’re delivering to customers. We are innovating in new UX and Copilot capabilities that will allow marketing teams to review and approve at Copilot scale where instead of having to review 100 variations across the journey, Copilot will tell you the key variations to review and tweak and make corrections on your behalf.
  • Today, after a project or campaign goes live, you need to assign a person to track the analytics and find where customers are dropping off. That person then needs to work with the right people to improve the results. Now, Copilot can track the analytics on behalf of the marketing team and proactively notify of optimizations with suggested options that allow the team to curate rather than create and deliver business success.

A new Data - A new data and Gen AI first connected, collaborative, and holistic Copilot + team experience.

We’re partnering with Typeface to deliver this vision, and it plays a key role in enabling scaling on-brand multimodal content personalization in ways that simply were not possible in the past. Typeface understands your brand in depth and utilizes that understanding to deliver text and images that align to companies’ brand guidelines enabling one-on-one personalization with on-brand images at a scale that wasn’t viable in terms of time and cost before.

“Copilot holds the potential to be a real game-changer. Its ability to seamlessly align our business goals with community values has the potential to save us valuable time on internal processes. This efficiency translates to quicker iterations and more frequent connections with our audience. It’s not just shaping up to be a tool but a strategic advantage.” Martin Nicholson –   D igital Engagement Manager,  Rare Ltd., Xbox – Sea of Thieves

This innovation is not years away, not months, not even weeks. Today , we’re happy to announce that our first public preview focusing on curation rather than creation is now available in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights in English, in all regions. Sign up to be one of the first to preview and experience the new capabilities.

We invite you to explore this transformative journey as Copilot takes the reins, opening a new era in marketing workflows. Join us in redefining how work gets done.

Learn more:

  • Register and access Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights .
  • Watch our latest webinar on Streamlining Marketing with AI in Microsoft Copilot!
  • Watch the New Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights .
  • Read the release note on Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights .
  • Check the release W1 2024 video for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights .
  • Discover more about Typeface .
  • Read Microsoft’s commitment to responsible AI .

a man smiling for the camera

Related posts

Microsoft Dynamics 356 Customer Service icon next to a customer service agent on her laptop

Forrester TEI study shows 315% ROI when modernizing customer service with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service  

Ribbon-like graphic design

Explore the next wave of AI innovation at the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event  

Customer service support call in action, including the Dynamics 365 Customer Service icon.

Microsoft is a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Service Solutions, Q1 2024   

abstract image of two people looking at a computer

AI in CRM and ERP systems: 2024 trends, innovations, and best practices  

IMAGES

  1. Uber CRM Case Study: The Taxi Gaint

    uber crm case study

  2. uber crm case study

    uber crm case study

  3. uber crm case study

    uber crm case study

  4. How to Grow Your Business With a CRM System + Examples From Netflix

    uber crm case study

  5. What Made Uber?- A Case Study for Entrepreneurs

    uber crm case study

  6. Is There A Future For Uber? (Business Case Study)

    uber crm case study

VIDEO

  1. Nordamerika🇺🇸 mit Kanada🇨🇦 Mein Schiff 1 mit New York

  2. Brand New Cars In 22G Autos Brampton Canada|#rukusuna #viral #trending #shortsfeed #canada #usa

  3. Uber's Case Study

  4. Acumatica Workflows

  5. How did Uber got started

  6. BMC case study video on UBER. #snsinstitutions #snsdesignthinkers #designthinking

COMMENTS

  1. Uber CRM Case Study: The Taxi Gaint

    In this Uber's CRM case study article, we'll discuss how Uber's CRM strategies contributed to the company's growth. History of Uber, Timeline & Facts. 2008: On a cold winter evening in Paris, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp couldn't get a ride. That's when the idea of Uber was born. 2009: Its global ride-sharing app was launched.

  2. Which CRM System Does Uber Use?

    With the help of industry-leading CRM supplier Salesforce, Uber's approach to managing its customer relationships has been the very lifeblood of its ascent to the top.. Uber was established in 2009 and has long since become well-known. What began as a ride-hailing app has evolved into a transportation service that's reshaping US city operations and boosting economies around the globe.

  3. How Uber Is Building A New Age Of Intelligent Customer Experience

    A key pillar in Uber's experience transformation is being aware of the bias blindspot. "We can easily recognize the impact of biases on other people's behavior and judgements, but we are ...

  4. Customer Stories & Reviews

    Courtesy rides. Ryder surpasses 100,000 rides by integrating Uber's API. Read the customer story. Honda Auto Center of Bellevue saves 47% by replacing shuttles with Uber. Read the post. Zenique Hotels replaces airport shuttles with rides with Uber and saves 30%. Read the post.

  5. Case Studies and 3 Key Innovations in CRM

    Uber CRM Case Study. Uber runs an incentivizing model that allows customers to earn points each time they eat or ride with Uber. In turn, they can redeem them across other services its renders.

  6. Uber CRM Case Study: The Taxi Gaint

    Uber CRM Case Study: 4 Strategies Feuling Their Growth. Uber focuses more on their customer's needs, and they use the following Uber CRM strategies to satisfy them. 1. Partnerships. Uber has implemented several partnerships to entice both first-time and loyal customers to take a ride. They partnered with Starwood, Capital One, etc.

  7. How Big Brands Do CRM: Case Studies

    Uber CRM: Case Study. Well, CRM is a good place to start - and for Uber, it's industry-leading CRM software provider Salesforce that's powering the ride-sharing giant's strategy. Salesforce helps Uber extract data from people engaging with its brand on social media. With this system in place, Uber can reply with haste to customer ...

  8. Unleashing the power of Presto: The Uber case study

    Uber's success as a data-driven company is no accident. It's the result of a deliberate strategy to leverage cutting-edge technologies like Presto to unlock the insights hidden in vast volumes of data. Presto has become an integral part of Uber's data ecosystem, enabling the company to process petabytes of data, support diverse analytical ...

  9. 4 Amazing CRM Case Studies for 2022

    This is a classic case of a well-done CRM. 2. Uber CRM. Uber hit the market in 2009 and since then has been at the forefront of the ride-sharing revolution. Today, Uber is a household name in many parts of the world, but the big question is, can it continue its dominance in the future? Well, we will have to wait and find out.

  10. Uber's Use Of Salesforce CRM To Improve Customer Service And ...

    Uber, as one of the world's most popular ride-sharing apps, is available in more than 30 languages. The company uses Salesforce CRM software to manage its relationships with customers. Uber's CRM collects information from users on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in order to analyze the data.

  11. Under the Hood of Uber's Experimentation Platform

    In Case Study 1, we outline how bandits have helped optimize email campaigns and enhance rider engagement at Uber. Here, the Uber Eats Customer Relationship Management (CRM) team in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) launched an email campaign to encourage order momentum early in the customer life cycle.

  12. Strategies Driving Uber's Successful Journey: A Case Study

    A cornerstone of Uber's strategy is its unwavering focus on the user. The company places a premium on delivering a seamless, hassle-free experience. This commitment is evident in their user-friendly mobile app and straightforward booking process. By prioritizing customer satisfaction, Uber has built a loyal and trusting customer base.

  13. 10 CRM studies you need to read before you select your next CRM

    BMW. 8. Unilever. 9. Activision. 10. Amazon. In a crowded market, discerning what the best CRM software is to meet your needs is difficult. Reviews, statistics, and user feedback are all useful ...

  14. Uber Connects CRM Data, Improving Targeting

    Explore our content library for resources, videos and case studies. Blog. The latest industry-related insights, tips and trends to stay ahead of the market. LiveRamp University. ... When it comes to Uber's CRM data, we are able to segment users into specific life-cycle stages. LiveRamp is able to segment and anonymize those life- cycle stages ...

  15. Uber's Strategy for Global Success

    Harvard Business School assistant professor Alexander MacKay describes Uber's global market strategy and responses by regulators and local competitors in his case, " Uber: Competing Globally ...

  16. How Uber delivers an excellent customer experience

    To demonstrate why Uber provides a remarkable product (and customer) experience, I suggest we simply compare the experience offered by a traditional taxi service and that provided by Uber. TAXI. UBER. 1. The client must hail the taxi from the roadside (if he sees one, the driver may not see him, or the driver may not wish to stop).

  17. Vertabelo helps Uber employees get the most out of their data

    Thousands of Uber employees use data in their daily work. Operation teams, as well as marketing and promotions, need it for planning and decision-making processes. Data is at the heart of the decision making process at Uber. People across various roles and locales need access to accurate and reliable business metrics. Lyle Adams Analytics Manager.

  18. UBER CRM case study Customer retention metrics in SQL

    UBER CRM case study Customer retention metrics in SQL. Background: I want to find the retention of a customer cohort on a weekly-rolling basis, so that they can take necessary intervention if a rider has not taken a ride for 28 days. date: the date in respect to which the below metric will be computed.

  19. Uber Case Study: How Uber kept Its Brand Strong

    Uber is not done with its rebranding effort, which included a massive initial public offering (IPO) in May of 2019. Uber's entry into the stock market has been fraught with challenges. The company continues to lose money and investor confidence dwindles. The stock has had problems due to doubts about Uber's profitability, among other concerns.

  20. Analyzing Customer Issues to Improve User Experience

    Broadly speaking, we use the support data to: 1. Improve the Support Experience. Mining users' support interaction helps us recognize the top issues faced, as well as the efficacy of their support resolution. For example, analysis of user and support staff interactions has helped us identify patterns that can be automated, such as one-touch ...

  21. (PDF) Uber Case Study Analysis

    reported 1.71 billion trips on the platform, a growth of 18% from the corresponding quarter. the following year. The number of paid active platform users has increased by 17% to 115. million ...

  22. (PDF) Management Analysis of Uber

    Abstract and Figures. Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation network company (TNC) offering services that include peer-to-peer ridesharing, ride service hailing, food ...

  23. Revolutionizing marketing workflows with Copilot in Dynamics 365

    David Hand - Global IT Manager, CRM, Campari. Companies have data that ground Copilot in brand styles, tone, language, and imagery. Briefs contain a lot of key information about the intent, success, branding, and key points. Over time, data from prior projects or campaigns will drive the continuous improvement of business results.

  24. Youth Perspectives on Collaborative Consumption: A Study on the ...

    With the emergence of the sharing economy, a significant change in consumer behavior can be observed worldwide, which has a considerable impact on various industries. The rise of the sharing economy has changed the way people experience transport services, with ridesharing being a catalyst for change. In Romania, the debut of Uber in 2015 sparked controversy and led to legal regulations that ...

  25. Leading the pack: an exclusive interview with Uber's Chief Barketing

    Meet Teddy, Uber's Chief Barketing Officer. With a nose 👃 that can sniff out trends faster than you can say "squirrel!" 🐿️ and loyalty that puts human's best friend to shame, Teddy is more than just an employee; he's the leader of the pack 🐺. From negotiating treats 🦴 to chasing the company's KPIs (Kibble Performance ...