In business, you have to have ears as well as a mouth

Starting at a new company can be daunting, no matter how much experience you have. It means a new boss, a new office building and maybe even a new city. The culture, team, strategy, metrics and approach … all different. In my experience, you need to balance getting off to a fast start and establishing a foundation for long-term success.

I focus on learning how the business works and meeting people across the company to understand who does what, especially the teams on the ground. Since joining Uber in September, I've spent more than 250 hours diving into the details, asking and answering questions, and developing our priorities and plans for 2017. To say it has been exhilarating (and exhausting) would be an understatement.

Equally valuable to me have been the hours I've spent hearing directly from our customers: riders and drivers. But one experience on Twitter really stands out.

A month after starting, I noticed a tweet: “Uber driver learns that @jjones is big on communication and really huge on feedback.” It was a retweet from @HippievsJocks, a driver in Los Angeles, who had recently picked up one of my former Target colleagues. She had told him how much I value feedback—so he made a video with his feedback.

I have yet to meet @HippievsJocks, but his video brought home three important points for me:

• Improving the driving experience: It’s always important to use your own products. And having now gone through the process needed to become a driver, and with a few trips under my belt, I have a great deal of empathy for how challenging the work can be. It’s given me lots of ideas for how Uber can do better. We’ve seen that technology can make it easier to drive with innovations like back-to-back trips and driver destinations. But there’s much more to be done.
• Communicating with drivers: Drivers’ time is precious. When things are going well, they don’t want us to bother them so much. But when they have a problem, they want to be able to get in touch with someone who can help. Experiencing firsthand how we communicate with drivers today … well, it’s not a proud moment for Uber. Our messages are too frequent, too disconnected and too off-putting. So we’re conducting a top-to-bottom audit of driver communications to make sure that when we reach out to drivers, we do it right.
• Meeting with drivers: Feedback matters and we need to hear it directly. So starting two weeks ago in Minneapolis and last week in Oakland, I’m personally meeting with drivers in different cities to hear what’s on their mind. I can’t guarantee to address everything, but I can promise that Uber will do a much better job listening to drivers and serving their needs.

So @HippievsJocks and @MEGra18 and all the drivers I have yet to meet … thanks for your feedback. In business, it’s not always easy to hear what your customers think. Demonstrating that we have ears as well as a mouth will be crucial to Uber’s long-term success.