A takeaway rider is on his way to deliver food. Photo by Xinhua News Agency
▲ The countdown will be prompted for 10 minutes, 5 minutes, and 1 minute, the purpose is to remind the rider not to be late.
The development of takeaway platforms has greatly facilitated people’s lives. But did you know that behind every punctual delivery, there is a takeaway brother who is "racing against time". In order to earn a delivery fee of less than 5 yuan per order, regardless of wind, rain, cold and heat, they keep going back and forth between merchants and customers. Is there any protection in case of traffic accidents? What is the loss of customers giving bad reviews? How can we provide the best service? Recently, a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily interviewed some ordinary takeaway riders to hear their thoughts on this job.
Takeaway platform positioning love problems
Calculating time and distance is "short of weight"
The development of technology has allowed for a larger area of takeout radiation, and more accurate display of location positioning and delivery timing. Due to this, the work intensity of riders has also increased.
In the past two years, various takeaway platforms have gradually reduced the unit price of food delivery, from a minimum of 6 yuan per order to less than 5 yuan. As in the past, there are fewer and fewer riders with a monthly income of over 10,000 yuan. If riders want to earn more money, they have to run more orders. Zhao Lei, a takeaway rider, introduced to the Beiqing Daily reporter that for riders, the pressure to receive orders is mainly on the delivery time. Because the delivery time given by the platform starts from the merchant receiving the order. After the merchant has a meal, the rider picks up the meal and delivers the meal. It is equivalent to the merchant and the rider being a baton. The merchant is slow to deliver meals, and the time consumed must be "recovered" by the rider.
"Some merchants get a lot of orders at once, or if a customer orders a few complicated dishes, the meal time may be slow. The platform may give 50 minutes for delivery, and the merchant takes 40 minutes for delivery, but the rider’s time is only 10 minutes." Zhao Lei said that although the rider’s pickup and delivery time will be displayed separately to customers on the ordering platform, if the waiting time is too long for customers, they will not carefully care whether the merchant is slow to deliver the meal or the rider is slow to deliver the meal.
After running takeout for two years, Zhao Lei found that each takeout platform has an unspoken rule: the distance displayed on the mobile phone is always shorter than the distance displayed by the road navigation.
He took his mobile phone and gave an example to the reporter of Beiqing Daily. For example, the order from Paris Beitian (Old Palace Vanke Store) to Yantou Cuicheng Xinyuan shows 9 kilometers on the rider’s mobile phone, but if you use Baidu to navigate, the shortest distance of this route is 9.6 kilometers. For example, from Scorpion Palace Yang Scorpion (Panjiayuan Store) to Huamao Apartment Building 2, the mobile terminal shows 5.1 kilometers, but the road navigation shows the shortest 5.4 kilometers.
"The distance shown by the platform is all less than the navigation. The farther the distance, the more different it is. On average, one order can be different by 500 meters. If I send three orders at the same time, it can be different by 1.2 kilometers.
In the WeChat group of the Knight Alliance initiated by Zhao Lei, the riders also believed that the platform was "short of weight" when calculating time and distance. Some riders used Baidu Navigation to measure the 10 orders provided on the platform, all of which were shorter than the navigation distance.
Riders believe that this situation will bring a variety of adverse effects. First, it will bring wrong judgments to the rider, thinking that the distance is close enough to run a few more orders, but the result is that the distance is inaccurate, resulting in a delay in the order being punished. Second, after the distance is shortened, the rider’s delivery fee will also be reduced accordingly. Although it may only be reduced by a few cents, it is not easy to be noticed, but it adds up, and a rider will lose more than ten yuan a day. Third, customers who place orders will subconsciously feel that the distance is very close, which increases the customer’s impatience, and the rider has to speed up in order to recover the distance gap.
A "bad review" will deduct money and lose the reward.
Work is inevitably wronged
Because the riders have been "running" on the road, the probability of traffic accidents is relatively high. Every day or two, someone in the Knight Alliance WeChat group will send out videos of riders having traffic accidents. In order to ensure the medical expenses of the delivery staff in the event of personal accidents, the delivery platform has insured each rider, and the insurance is 3 yuan per day, which is automatically deducted from the order fee. "But when the real claim is settled, there are a lot of rules and regulations, and it cannot be compensated," Zhao Lei said.
Among the problems between riders and customers, the wrong address is the most common. Zhao Lei had received an order from Songjiazhuang to Building 113 in Area B of Baiziwan Home, but when he arrived at Area B of Baiziwan Home with the goods, he found that there was no Building 113 here. When Zhao Lei called the customer to communicate, the other party repeatedly said that the address was correct. "I had four orders at that time, and this one was delayed for a long time. Later, the community security reminded me, could it be the coastal Sailuo City community next to me? I found Building 113 of Coastal Sailuo City, and then found the customer who ordered the order."
After seeing the customer, Zhao Lei said to him: You wrote the address wrong. Unexpectedly, the other party came up and asked him directly: Do you want money? Zhao Lei said, I’m not asking you for money, I’m just explaining to you the reason why the order timed out. As a result, the other party cancelled the order and gave Zhao Lei 27 yuan to keep the goods. Zhao Lei then went to deliver several other orders, but the other three orders were timed out by two and the money was deducted. As he was walking back, he received the first customer’s complaint: the service attitude was not good, so he was fined 50 yuan. "One complaint lost the Zhou reward, and the other two orders were delayed. I lost at least 150 yuan," Zhao Lei said.
Communication skills are essential
Sometimes you have to give up
The 40-year-old Huang, who has won the championship in running orders many times, taught Zhao Lei and other young riders to learn to communicate with customers. "For example, if the order is also hung online and no one picks it up, if the customer calls to urge, I will say, your order has been hung online and no one picks it up, and I have not timed out here," Huang said. "At this time, you should quickly appease the customer and tell him, ‘Be patient, I will deliver this order to you immediately after delivery.’ In most cases, the customer can understand."
"We have to find a way to reduce our losses. If we argue with the other party and the other party complains about bad reviews, we will be deducted more, and it will also affect the rewards later. It’s not worth it," Huang said.
Communicating with the platform cannot be entirely online
We hope to establish an industry association to provide assistance
Old Huang felt that the platform’s management of riders was too loose, and he rarely saw the platform’s webmaster. Whether it was communicating with the webmaster or customer service, he had to use the phone and the Internet. The platform should strengthen the psychological counseling and quality training of riders, "Riders are under a lot of pressure, and most of them are young people. If they don’t know how to deal with things, they may have a quarrel."
Decompression was also one of Zhao Lei’s original intentions for creating the Knight Alliance WeChat group, "The platform will not guide you in training, and there is no channel to vent." Now there is a Knight Alliance WeChat group, and we will organize riders to gather and eat from time to time, and everyone will chat together. In addition, the riders in the Knight Alliance WeChat group will help each other, and whoever has a car that dies halfway will have riders on the way to help him charge.
Zhao Lei hopes to establish an industry association based on the WeChat group of the Knight Alliance, and has the opportunity to register with relevant departments to provide training, assistance and protection for takeaway riders.
Beijing Youth Daily reporter, Zhang Ziyuan
