Lyft Responds to Uber Pro With Their Own Driver Enhancements

Are Lyft’s new Driver Enhancements better than Uber Pro? Uber Pro is a rewards program for drives that promises to offer perks and extra pay to some drivers. Lyft has followed suit with their own rewards program, called Driver Enhancements.

What exactly is the Lyft Driver Enhancements program, and how does it measure up to Uber Pro? Check out this video by Jay Cradeur of The Rideshare Guy to get the full story.

Hey, everybody. This Jay Cradeur with the Rideshare Guy. Today, we’re going to break down all of the enhancements, which lift has recently announced to improve the driver experience.

Lyft Driver Enhancements: Three Categories

Now as you can see here, Lyft has broken their enhancements into three categories.

• Helping increase earnings and lower expenses
• Making the app experience easier and more informative
• Helping drivers feel safe and supported on and off the road.

I’m going to go one by one here and share with you what these are and what I think of them.

Tipping improvements: Default tip setting

First category, the first one we have is called Tipping improvements. Lyft is trying to make it easier for the passenger to pay us more in tips, and they’re doing it in a couple of ways. One is they’re allowing the passenger to set a default tip percentage that they will give to all drivers. Let’s say for example I’m comfortable giving a 20% tip to all the drivers that give me rides. I can set that up in the app. When I complete a ride, I don’t have to add any extra tip. It’s just automatic, automatic that 20% is going to go to the driver.

The second thing is they’re allowing passengers to tip during the ride. In other words, if you’re going to the airport and you don’t want to have to deal with having to tip when you’re getting all your bags and you got to go get in line and all of that, you can say the ride is going really well. I’m going to give this guy a $5 tip.

I think both of these have the potential to increase our income. I’m not sure how much. I know for me as a passenger, I want to wait to the end the ride and see if it was good or not. I don’t want to just default and give everybody a tip because not everybody earns a tip. But, a lot of people will choose it just for the ease of use. They don’t have to think about it. It’s one less thing they have to think about. Good on you, Lyft. I think this one is going to pay us a little bit of extra money.

Airport queue: More accurate time estimates

Up to this point, you’ve been able to see how many cars are ahead of you in the airport queue. You’re at the airport and you decided you want to hang out a little bit, take a break, and just wait to pick somebody up at the airport.

Instead of it saying there’s 42 cars ahead of you, it’s going to say there is 60 minutes ahead of you or there’s 30 minutes ahead of you. This way, you’ll have a much more realistic idea of how long you’re going to have to wait there in line before you can make a pickup.

Cancellation protection: Don’t get dinged for safety-related cancellations

The next one is called safety precaution cancellations. If you cancel on somebody for one of the reasons that’s listed here on the screen, that cancellation will not go against your cancellation rate and it you will also get a cancellation fee for doing the right thing.

More detailed feedback reports from passengers

The next one is called actionable rider feedback. Every week you get an email and it tells you how many ratings you got five, how many ratings you got four and below, and if anybody left a comment. Well, what Lyft is going to do is if somebody gives you a four or less, they’re going to ask them to provide some feedback, which you’re then going to get in your weekly email which you can use to improve your skill as a driver. Let’s say for example three people gave you a four and they said wasn’t very friendly. That was kind of the message you were getting. Well, instead of just getting the four, you’re going to get not very friendly, didn’t smile much, whatever. You’re going to get some concrete feedback, which you can then use.

It’s going to give you a little more specificity so you know areas that you can improve on to become a better driver. I think this is great. The more feedback any of us can get, the better we can respond and improve ourselves.

See the length and direction of the ride before you accept

My favorite new feature is the new accept screen. If you read anything I’ve written or seen any videos, you know that I love Lyft because as I get close to a Lyft pickup, I can hit arrival. I can see the destination that we’re going to and determine if it’s a ride that makes sense for me. Well, now what they’re going to do is similar to what Uber Pro does is if you maintain a 90% acceptance rate, on your screen it’s gong to tell you not only how long it’s going to take you to get to the pickup, but it’s going to tell you the length of the ride and the direction of the ride.

Let’s say for example you work in downtown during rush hour and you want within the city and then you get a pickup and it says 30 minute ride and it’s going to be heading east.

Well, that’s going to tell me that that’s a ride that’s going across the bridge, which I don’t want to do. Instead of me having to drive close and hit the arrival button, I can right when I get the ping, I can look at that and say now this isn’t a ride I want and decline it. This is going to save me money and gas because I’m going to be able to focus on more rides because more of my time will be driving people rather than driving to make pickups that I’m going to cancel. This I can’t wait to get and this is definitely my favorite feature.

Are Lyft’s Driver Enhancements better than Uber Pro?

Is this better than Uber Pro? My take is that it’s great, but it’s not as great as Uber Pro and I’ll tell you why. Uber Pro actually gives us the opportunity to earn a high rank in their program. There’s four levels, partner, then it goes to gold, then it goes to platinum, and then it goes to diamond. Well, if you’re a platinum or diamond, you actually can earn extra money. At the high level, you can earn an extra 6% on all of your rides. That’s money in the bank. That would be like an extra $120 a week for me here in San Francisco. That’s real money. Over a year, that’s like six, $7,000. The Lyft, well it’s got a lot of benefits and things and I’ve told you how great they are.

I would love the opportunity to earn more money, to do a really great job, real bang up jobs, meet these high standards, and then get rewarded with more money in my pocket.

Still, it’s great for us as drivers that Uber and Lyft are courting us. They want our loyalty and they’re working really hard. They’re all talking to drivers and getting feedback and they’re taking that and turning it into all of these improvements.

That’s our video for today. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any comments, leave them down below. Everybody, you all have a great day. This is Jay Cradeur. Thank you so much for watching. I’m really grateful. You all go out and have a great day. Be safe out there.