Free Uber rides: This new scheme lets businesses pay for their customers’ trips.
Businesses can use Uber Vouchers to sponsor free rides for their customers as a value-add to their existing products or services and to attract new customers. Uber announced its launch globally including India recently.
Amid its aspiration for a valuation of up to $100 billion in its IPO, Uber — one of the world’s most valued startup — has launched its new service called Uber Vouchers. Now businesses can sponsor rides for their customers or guests in terms of rewards, attracting new customers and providing more value to them, General Manager and Global Head of Uber for Business Ronnie Gurion said in a company blog post.
“Let’s say you have services for which people need to commute, so giving a free ride becomes a reason not just for customers, who would anyway be using Uber, to come and use your service but also for those who might be using it for the first time,” Vinay Piparsania, Consulting Director at Counterpoint Research told Financial Express Online.
Launched globally, including India, through Vouchers businesses can decide how much of the ride a voucher can cover even as it would help cut costs of running shuttle or fleet.
“The vouchers can provide a real-time, flexible transportation option for customers while reducing operational overhead and fixed costs (for companies using shuttle or fleet service,” said Gurion.
Users can simply claim the voucher sent by the company on the app and apply it before confirming the ride.
“We’ve learned they (businesses) want to offer transportation at scale with flexibility and control. By working with a diverse group of retailers, restaurants and service providers, we are discovering more use cases to integrate vouchers into a customer’s experience and drive business value,” said Gurion.
For instance, TGI Fridays offer vouchers to “amplify promotions” that help bring more footfall in the restaurant during a specific time of day or to a certain location.
“It is a fairly innovative approach as they are trying to broaden their category of customers. B2C certainly has more frequent users user and that’s is where the growth can come from,” said Piparsania.
Both Uber and its arch-rival in India Ola also offer corporate services under Uber for Business and Ola Corporate brands respectively to optimise costs for employee transportation.
