Astro
Reduced complaints by 70%
A pickup experience improvement
Mar - Apr 2023
Introduction
Astro, a quick-commerce platform for daily essentials has seen growing demand but faces challenges in fulfillment accuracy. In February 2023, non-packaged products (e.g., water gallons, gas tanks, bottled water packs) made up 5.5% of fulfillment accuracy complaints.
Glossary
🏢 Hub
A mini-warehouse where Astro stores, packs, and dispatches all products.
🧑🧑🧒🧒 Hub Staff
A team responsible for picking, packing, and handing off products to drivers.
🛵 Driver
A team responsible for picking up orders from the hub and delivering them to customers.
💧 Non-packaged products
Products that come pre-packaged and require no additional external packaging.
Goals
The goal was to reduce fulfillment accuracy complaints by enabling drivers to identify and validate non-packaged product orders more effectively.
Visibility problems
Drivers receive no information about non-packaged products in their app and rely solely on manual instructions from hub staff, who pick and cluster the products for them.
Validation problems
Drivers cannot identify or validate non-packaged products, as they lack scannable codes or have receipts attached. Without QR code verification, fulfillment errors increase, leading to missed items, unawareness of orders, or incorrect deliveries, especially in pooled orders.
Challenges
Unlike other products that can be boxed and labeled with a QR code, the biggest challenge in validating non-packaged products is that they cannot be scanned, as attaching receipts to items like water gallons or gas tanks is strictly prohibited by regulators.
Scan approach
After discussions with teams across engineering, operations, and field teams (hub staff, drivers, area managers, etc.), we agreed that a scanning process, like other products, would be the most precise solution. We explored alternatives, such as placing a QR code on gallons and gas tanks without attaching it, but the risk of missing QR codes made this unviable.
Other approach
Other validation methods, such as ID input, OTP codes, and simple photos, were considered, but engineering and field teams raised concerns about development complexity and logistical challenges. Ultimately, we chose static information for validation as a temporary solution.
A hard-to-miss validation
A confirmation page now lists all non-packaged products, replacing the scanning process with static information for validation. Product images help drivers quickly and accurately recognize items, while a sliding button ensures they review all products before proceeding.
Increased awareness
Information about non-packaging products is now integrated seamlessly throughout the flow. Before delivery, drivers can clearly see these items both before and after the validation process, ensuring greater accuracy.
Impacts
After deployment, fulfillment accuracy complaints for non-packaged products dropped by nearly 70%, decreasing from an average of 70 to just 20 cases per month. These products now account for only 1.38% of total complaints, marking a significant improvement in accuracy and user satisfaction.
Other projects
