Uber + AutoGuru: rethinking the car-servicing experience

Autoguru, Australia’s leading booking site for car servicing and repairs, is on a mission to make getting a car serviced as easy as booking a hotel or flight. The website attracts over 400,000 visitors per month. It takes the guesswork out of finding the best local mechanics by empowering consumers to compare costs for any logbook service and common repair online before they book in.

“By entering your car’s rego, and then choosing any service or repair, you can instantly browse fixed price quotes from customer rated workshops in your area. It’s that easy and you can book the best mechanic for the job in just a few clicks,” explains founder and CEO Eden Shirley.

Constantly looking to improve the customer experience, Shirley discovered that the biggest pain point for car owners when dropping off their car for a service is getting to their next destination. “When you think about dropping your car off at the mechanic, you obviously need to get to where you’re going to next. And you’ve got to do it without your car.”

Shirley learned that customers found booking a loan car restricting due to limited availability, and while many workshops provide customer drop-offs, it can be time consuming to take a mechanic off the tools to do so. The solution was simple—partner with Uber to offer courtesy rides to customers at workshops, enabling an exceptional car servicing experience. “Uber provides a really elegant solution where we can tap right into the Uber Vouchers API,” says Shirley.

The Autoguru and Uber Vouchers partnership eliminates the stress and complexities associated with getting a car serviced. On their website, a customer simply selects the workshop they wish to service their car, and at checkout, will confirm if they would like the Uber Voucher added to their confirmation. If so, the day before their service appointment they will receive an SMS with the Uber Voucher to help cover the cost.

“We were aware of workshops that already use taxi services and Uber. But the challenge was that it’s all handled manually, on private accounts, giving customers no control over the ride,” said Shirley. “It didn’t feel like a value add, and certainly not offered as a courtesy ride. So using the Uber Voucher API took our value proposition to a much, much higher level.”

It all works so effortlessly. Customers see which workshops offer Uber rides on AutoGuru.com.au, and workshops have the option to offer courtesy Uber rides to walk-in customers, giving them an opportunity to delight customers online and offline.

“That’s the kind of stuff that makes people happy.” says Shirley. “These are the feature enhancements that really improve the customer experience.”