Put simply, their mission is to make members happy. With over 130 employees speaking twenty languages, the team continuously support members in their use of the service across three continents.
The Member Relations TeamĪt the heart of BlaBlaCar sits the Member Relations Team. Instead, everyone is seen as an individual member of a broader community of peers that help each other out and BlaBlaCar is the enabler that brings everyone together. Infact, nobody is ever considered to simply be a user of the platform. From the moment they hear about BlaBlaCar to the moment they use the service, the member is always at the forefront of the team’s mind. Providing the best experience to members is fundamental. As one of today’s core values at BlaBlaCar, it ensures that everything that’s built internally must be focused on the user experience and be centered around the value which it brings to members. In fact, this journey became one of the most memorable rides to date and truly cemented the idea that “The Member is the Boss”. Together, they implemented most of the suggestions. Francis, who had worked nights and weekends coding the beginnings of the platform since 2006, had just joined BlaBlaCar full-time and was working hard to lay down a foundation for the future. A scalable solution was needed to bring trust and reliability to the platform. Other people were creating blacklists – saving unreliable people as no-shows in their mobile phone – so as to screen their calls next time around. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that this man was not alone. He would write their answers on a post-it as well as estimate the probability of them showing up, and would subsequently end up with a stack of post-its of what he deemed as the most dependable passengers. If it was to bring dirty laundry back to their parents, there would be less certainty. Whenever an interested passenger would get in touch over the phone, his go-to question would be “What’s your reason for going on this trip?” If it was for a friend’s wedding, there would be a degree of certainty that the passenger would show up. To combat this, Philippe had in fact developed his own strategy to work out the reliable passengers. As a result, it was difficult to make an informed decision about whom to travel with. There were no profile pictures, no price algorithm suggestions, and no online booking system in place.
At the time, the platform worked like a classified page with drivers listing their journey and sharing their mobile number. During the five hour drive, they discussed everything from music tastes to travel adventures, but the one topic which took center stage was BlaBlaCar itself. He was sharing the journey with Philippe, a member who used BlaBlaCar frequently as a driver. It was early 2008 and Fred was travelling back to Paris after a business trip had taken him to the suburbs of Lyon. The suggestions kept flowing as Fred Mazzella hurriedly took out his laptop and started typing everything down as he sat in the front passenger seat. “Profile pictures should be added so I can see who I’m travelling with!” “ BlaBlaCar should suggest the price of sharing a journey so that a driver’s listed price is justified! ”