Redesigning the Dasher Support Experience
🚨 Problem Statement: The current in-app support experience in the Dasher app lacks easily accessible and helpful content, resulting in thousands of new cases everyday. This not only adds unnecessary workload for support teams but also decreases Dasher satisfaction and time spent dashing (making money).
🧢 My Role: As the sole product designer and researcher on this project, I was responsible for coordinating and conducting generative exploratory research, uncovering insights, and delivering data-driven designs to solve our core user and business needs.
✨ The Solution: Complete redesign of the Dasher Support experience to decrease support inbounds and increase Dasher satisfaction by providing easily accessible, resolution-focused content.
🕑 Timeline: August 2022 to November 2023
Introduction
At DoorDash, our Dashers are the backbone of our services. Recognizing their importance, I embarked on a project to overhaul our Dasher support system, aiming to simplify access to information and enhance overall efficiency and satisfaction.
My goal? To make it super easy for Dashers to get the help they need, when they need it, so they can stay on the road and reach their financial goals 💰👌.
Problem Statement
Imagine trying to find a needle in a haystack. That’s how our Dashers felt when looking for support information. The content was all over the place, and often just not helpful.
Old Experience
Here’s the breakdown:
Scattered Information: Essential support content was dispersed, making quick access challenging.
"Finding specific help felt like a wild goose chase... I just want to get back on the road"
Unhelpful Resources: Often, the available help didn’t resolve the issues effectively. "I’d end up more confused than when I started," another Dasher commented.
Impact on Experience: New Dashers felt lost from the start, and for seasoned Dashers, this inefficiency meant lost earnings and increased anxiety.
Erosion of Trust: All this chaos wasn’t just frustrating—it was starting to shake our Dashers' trust in us. They felt overlooked, and that’s the last thing we wanted.
Challenges
Redesigning the support experience wasn’t just about slapping on a fresh coat of paint. We had to dig deep:
Complex Navigation and Information Overload: The system was confusing, resembling a maze more than a help resource.
Quality and Relevance of Content: Outdated and irrelevant content was a major issue, causing frustration and a lack of trust.
Inefficient Support Interactions: Too many Dashers were defaulting to phone support for even minor issues, spiking our costs and wait times.
Cultural and Operational Alignment: Adapting our system for a diverse, global fleet of Dashers meant understanding and addressing regional differences, which was no small feat.
Opportunities
With every challenge came a massive opportunity:
Enhanced Dasher Autonomy and Satisfaction: "I want everything at my fingertips" noted a Dasher. This was our chance to empower them like never before.
Proactive & Reactive support tactics: This redesign was also a chance to build a smarter system, one that gets ahead of issues by educating our Dashers of common pitfalls before they happen.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlining the support process meant Dashers spent less time waiting and more time earning.
Building Trust and Loyalty: By improving our support, we could show Dashers we truly value their role in our success.
Hypothesis
How might we...
- Establish a foundation for the future of Dasher Support, a one-stop shop where this becomes the first location Dashers reference when they have a problem
- Provide engaging, valuable, and interactive content beyond basic FAQs that keeps Dashers coming back
- Proactively and reactively support our Dashers so we can anticipate and reduce issue severity when they arrise.
Research and "Sensemaking"
Research Question
Based on a Dx’s journey, how can we best support them when a question, issue, or resource need arises so we can most effectively support them?
How did we know what to build? We listened—a lot. Through workshops, interviews, and piles of feedback, we kept our ears to the ground:
Research methods:
I was responsible for preparing, conducting, and analyzing all methods below.
- 1-1 interviews
- Focus group sessions (4-7 Dashers each)
- Evaluative scenario testing
- Data mining and analysis
User Insights and Feedback:
Regular check-ins helped us iterate quickly. One Dasher’s suggestion led to a pivotal tweak in the layout, making it even easier to navigate.
Insights along the Dasher journey:
Solution
So, what did we build? A new, user-friendly support experience right inside the Dasher app:
Breaking down the redesign
Centralized Information Hub: We created a one-stop shop for all support needs. "Finally, everything in one place," cheered a Dasher during feedback sessions.
Contextual and Concise Content: We trimmed the fat, offering clear, concise support content through short & resolution-focused articles and proactive, educational Snippets. (see image).
"I can find what I need in seconds and understand it at a glance!"
Conversational Support: My top priority was to provide quick answers to issues. By incorporating answers into the Chatbot, we ensured that the responses would be served up quickest at the point of inquiry.
Results and Impact
The results were clear and gratifying (metrics obfuscated):
- Reduction in Escalated Cases: "We’ve seen a noticeable drop in support calls and a big boost in Dasher satisfaction," our analytics team reported.
- Increase in Dasher Activation Time (Time taking orders): Dasher activation times increased substantially.
- Dasher Satisfaction: Dashers weren’t just dashing more; they were more satisfied when issues arose.
Next Steps
I switched teams upon completion of this project, however, I passed off a few fast-follow concepts for the roadmap to tackle:
- Wrap-up development on remaining Q&A intents for the LLM chatbot experience
- Predictive support features to prevent and anticipate issues
- Personalized support content to meet individual Dasher needs directly
Conclusion and Reflections
This journey has reinforced that empathy is central to great design. Understanding and addressing Dasher frustrations drove every decision.
Reflecting on some of the feedback, one Dasher said,
"It’s great to see our voices shaping the app we use every day.”
This case study is just one chapter in our ongoing mission to empower our Dashers and enhance the DoorDash experience, one delivery at a time. Here’s to many more miles on this road together!
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