Enhancing Captain Communication with InAppStory

Careem, operating in over 70 cities across 10 countries, has built a significant network of ride-hailing drivers and delivery riders, known as "captains." These captains play a vital role in their operations and come from diverse linguistic backgrounds. Beyond transportation, Careem's "Everything" app offers services like food delivery and grocery shopping, increasing interaction with both captains and customers in the diverse communities they serve.

To ensure that Careem captains are well-informed and find their platform accessible, they emphasize direct, timely, and personalized communication. Their team update captains on app enhancements, bonuses, safety guidelines, rating improvement tips, delivery instructions, and weather conditions. Effective communication is key to delivering superior customer service.

Careem Challenge

Traditional methods like in-app notifications and SMS effectively reach their captains but struggle to maintain engagement due to their textual nature, leading to low open and read rates, compounded by technical issues such as missed deliveries due to network problems.

Solution

To boost engagement, Careem partnered with InAppStory, a mobile story format similar to social media stories. This approach aims to increase captain interaction and foster community through real-time updates and recognition, supporting multiple languages including Arabic, Urdu, English, French, and Kurdish.

InAppStory plays a pivotal role in their communication strategy, offering varied content formats such as videos, polls/quizzes, and gifs. It's essential for sharing incentives, product features, event announcements, policy updates, and celebrating achievements.

Implementation

A discussion between Dharanidharan Gopalakrishnan and Vlad Lastovsky on LinkedIn evolved into a strategic partnership with InAppStory, enriching their communication with captains through an engaging format and a comprehensive archive of past notices.

“Careem InAppStory is an invaluable information channel. It lets me revisit content if I couldn’t fully engage with it initially, especially when messages arrived while I was driving. The stories on safety, city events, and rating improvements are incredibly useful.” - Khizer Hayat, a captain with over 5 years at Careem.

InAppStory platform capabilities

The advantages of InAppStory platform are substantial:

1. Being in the medium of the users: captains are highly familiar with popular social media apps and stories, conveying messages via this format enhanced relatability and comfort.
2. Multimedia options: With diverse multimedia options like gifs, videos, audio, interactive polls, and emojified actions, the platform allows for variety and engaging content.
3. Constant visibility: Stories remained readily available on the homepage, ensuring continuous access and visibility.
4. Stronger engagement insights: The platform provided rich analytics on delivery, open rates, and completion rates, enabling Careem to tailor its communication strategy effectively.

Business outcomes

The adoption of InAppStory resulted in significant improvements for Careem:

• Engagement rates: A 2x growth in the engagement rate showcased that captains became more attuned to the Careem’s updates and objectives.

The strategic decision to integrate InAppStory for disseminating information through stories proved to be a game-changer. It streamlined communication with the vast Captain community, bringing about a positive shift in crucial performance metrics and steering the company closer to its operational goals.