As every working quarter comes to an end, we also approach “Get to know your customer’s Day,” where we strive to learn more about our customers!

On this day, We sent out a survey to our stakeholders focusing on questions related to their store/job. The questions we asked were how they interact with clients, what they love about their work, what about our product could use improvements, their favorite and least favorite parts of their job, and if they had any suggestions for Packaly.

What we wanted to achieve with our survey was to understand our users better. We wanted to know where our gaps of knowledge were, what concerns, and the positive aspects of the different jobs.

We sent our survey to two groups – our riders and our stores.

Results of the survey

For our riders, the most unexpected insight was the variety in age of the respondents. The stereotype of who a bike courier is didn’t really fit with our couriers. Our youngest couriers are 18, and our oldest are in their 50’s. It was an exciting discovery to see that such a wide variety of ages are interested in being a courier. Those who are over 50 (15% of all our respondents are aged 37+) all cited their love for biking as one of the primary reasons they became a courier. The riders over 50 ( 15% of the respondents are aged 37+) stated that their love for biking was one of the primary reason they became a courier.

We discovered the main three motivations for becoming a bike courier: love for biking, flexibility in the job, and supplementing personal income. It was interesting to see that, most of our Dutch respondents are part-time workers elsewhere (38.7%). In contrast, our international respondents are primarily just bike couriers (40.9%).This outcome also explains the discrepancy of Dutch results noting that supplementing income was a reason for 66.7% of couriers and For non-Dutch respondents, that was the reason for 36.4%.

We received very little critical feedback from the stores, which was a very positive thing to see for us at HQ! The positive experiences that stores cited are the function of our services – our 60-minute and express delivery services and how their customers are impressed by this opportunity. Stores also mention that their favorite part of interacting with customers comes from chatting with them and receiving positive feedback.

Stories from our bike couriers

Our favorite stories come from our riders, from the goofy to the simple experiences:

One of our riders, Tim enjoys when people ask for special requests, like saying “Happy Birthday” or other exciting things.

Johan recalls his favorite delivery so far: “The mother opened the door for me, and her daughter is hiding behind her. Jumps out from behind and yells Peekaboo. I played along and not only make the girl happy but also the mother.”

Before moving to the Netherlands, David’s friend looked back to his unique experience “Taking consignment from a customer, which was wild boar skin. He couldn’t put it in his bag, so he put the skin on himself. Then rode around Prague as a pig.”

There’s also a lot of camaraderie amongst bike couriers. Sebastian referenced his experience of “Working together with other riders when one of us has suffered a puncture or lost chain. We come together and help without being asked or expecting repayment.”

How can Packaly improve?

From our Riders, we received quite a bit of feedback regarding our app. One of the main observations was about the contrast on our rider app since the current design is too dark to use comfortably. Our riders’ comments and suggestions included pointing out some minor bugs within the rider app and notes about our order confirmation system.

The questionnaires and the collected feedback are not only to gather information but a way for us to facilitate how we do things. The first thing that we did to address these comments was creating a document with all the notes we received. After evaluating with the respective departments within Packaly, we were able to identify the pieces within our product that we could change to provide the desired results as quickly as possible. The main changes that we will be working on include the display of the app and fixing the bugs that were pointed out to us. All are currently fixed and updated in our newly rebuilt Packaly Rider App 2.0.

We want to thank everyone who responded to our survey last week. We appreciate the feedback we received and are planning out how to address all our feedback.

We are always working to improve Packaly and make our Riders and customer experience seamless. Join our fleet and become a Packaly bike courier, or contact us and see how Packaly can boost your customer experience with our express same-day delivery.