So, you’re a tech company, and you have users… How do you deliver the best experience to the people that matter most: your customers? Is it a beautiful and simple UI? Is it support? Is it the customer touch point? While smartphone apps started as lighters on your phone, then evolved into social/photo/communication tools, today’s apps are connecting people with the physical world around them. Uber connects you with a personal driver. Instacart brings you groceries. Homejoy does your housekeeping. Saucey delivers you drinks. In this new era of mobile platforms that connect you with physical services, what do we owe the customer?
The first wave of these businesses were companies like Seamless & Grubhub, that would basically act like a fax machine, taking your order and sending it to someone else. Today, the systems are more sophisticated. Customers expect a personalized experience from start to finish; emerge Uber/Instacart/Homejoy/Washio/Saucey. Customers deserve more than a digital fax machine, they want an experience. As companies that meet our customers on a daily basis, what do we owe them?
At Saucey, we believe it starts with design, and ends with a friendly driver at your door. Simply put, we focus on the details. In the app, that means things like letting users easily scan their payment info, drop a pin for their location instead of typing in an address, product detail pages with high res images for over a thousand products, email receipts that are clean and easy to read, intuitive navigation and order status updates. All these things matter, and it’s only about 1/10th the technology driving Saucey. If we built a “fax machine app,” our work would be done here. But Saucey customers deserve more than an order being passed off to someone else.
Without giving it all away, we built what was needed to run hundreds of orders across a city at any given time. We recruited, vetted and trained drivers to deliver a premium experience to customers. We make sure that every bottle delivered has a fun drinking quote attached to the bottle. At the end of the day we believe that design, simple UI, and a great delivery experience are what matter most to our customers. That’s why we admire and love companies who have gone the extra mile, companies that control the in-person experience with their customers. Just like before Uber there was Taxi Magic that passed you off to an experience they didn’t control, Instacart/Homejoy/Washio/and Saucey all have imitators that pass you off to someone else. It’s not easy to own that customer experience or build the necessary technology, but it matters, and that’s why we all operate the way we do.
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