Uber Now Lets Drivers Thank Passengers for Their Tips

Whenever a passenger tips a driver, that driver receives a notification in the driver app letting him know that that passenger left a tip. Whenever I get those notifications, I’ve always wanted to thank the passengers for tipping me, and that feature is actually now live in the driver app. You can send passengers thanks for tipping.

Let’s take a look at that feature, as well as some other things that Uber and Lyft do to encourage tipping.

And really quickly, I’d like to mention a new app called GetUpside that we’ve partnered with. I personally have only been using it for a couple of months, and I’ve already saved over $30 in gas and millions of people have already earned millions of dollars. It’s really easy. All you have to do is upload your gas receipt and then cash gets added to your account. The cash adds up over time, and you can cash it out whenever you want.

Get advanced tactics and earn more! Maximum Ridesharing Profits has my top tips for earning more money. Click here to enroll.

How Drivers Can Thank Uber Passengers for Tipping

It’s really easy to send a thank you for tips now on the Uber driver app. In order to do it, you’ll just want to click your picture in the top right corner to see your notifications, then you can select any tip notification. And there it is right there in the trip details. You can see there’s a button that says “Send rider thanks.” And here’s a look at what the notification looks like for the passenger.

This is really simple but very effective way to encourage tipping. It allows drivers to show their gratitude to passengers for tipping, and it also gives passengers some positive feedback for tipping a driver. And once this feature became live in my driver app, I actually went back to my trips for the past month and all the passengers that tipped, I sent them all thanks. It felt pretty good.

Uber is always included a thank you email whenever a passenger tips, but this is more personal. This lets the passenger know that that driver saw that they tipped and the driver’s acknowledging them. There’s a one to one contact there. This feature should be available nationwide now.

Lyft has actually had a similar feature available for a while now. For 24 hours after you give a passenger a ride, you have the option to rate them or leave them a comment. So again, a really simple but effective feature that Uber has added to the driver app.

What Have Uber & Lyft Done to Encourage Tipping?

First of all, we can thank Lyft for pioneering in-app tipping. They’ve had the option in their app available from day one when they launched. They also have included some other cool things to encourage passengers to tip and I feel that this has influenced Uber. This is the reason that Uber added an in-app tipping option and also has encouraged passengers to tip.

One thing that Uber and Lyft do to encourage tipping is that in the Ride Review, they ask the passenger if they would like to tip and they also include default percentages or default dollar figures for tipping. Lyft also has the option where a passenger can set an automatic tip for every ride.

Another thing to encourage tipping is they allow passengers to tip while a ride is in progress. I love this feature because then passengers don’t have to remember to tip after a ride is over, they can tip while the ride is in progress, maybe when it’s about to finish, right there while they’re in your car.

And as far as tipping after the ride, Lyft allows passengers to tip up to three days after the ride. And Uber actually allows passengers to tip up to 30 days after a ride. This is a really cool app feature too, because I actually just this week received tips from passengers that I gave rides to two weeks ago. A lot of passengers probably won’t remember to do this, but I do love that they have the option to be able to do so.

What Can Drivers do to Get Tips?

One thing is include you can include giveaways, something as small as maybe a mint or a bite-sized snack. And now I understand that a lot of drivers probably don’t want to fork out the money for giveaways like this.

Another tipping idea, and this is actually airport related. This was sent to me by another driver here in Minneapolis by the name of Alex. When passengers get to the airport, it can be a little overwhelming when they get out of your vehicle, they need to grab their bags, they need to check in for their flight. So they may forget to tip you in that whole process.

What Alex does is when he’s approaching the drop off location at the airport, he’ll end the ride about 30 seconds before he gets there. This will send the passenger a notification while they’re still in the car, they may pull their phone out and see that the ride has been ended. They may review the ride right there and actually tip right there and then.

This is a cool idea and also something that I think that Uber could build into the driver app instead of drivers having to do something like this. Uber could build into the app to where all right, you’re about to get to the destination, you’re about to get to the airport, maybe a minute or two minutes. Prior to getting to the airport, the rider app could send the passenger a notification, “Oh, your ride is about to end. How is it been? Would you like to tip?” Just a proactive way to engage riders and airport rides, especially. Those rides are usually the longest and the ones where you get the best tips on.

All right, so there’s a lot of ways to encourage passengers to tip, both Lyft and Uber have been proactive, including things in their driver app. And drivers can be proactive on their own too. What are some other things that you do to encourage tipping that we haven’t mentioned? Leave a comment below and let us know. Thanks again for watching.

 

Ready to Maximize Your Ridesharing Profits?

Maximum Ridesharing Profits is The Rideshare Guy's online video course. Enroll to learn how rideshare veterans earn more, spend less, and treat rideshare driving like a real business.