DoorDash is Requiring all Employees to Make Deliveries: Why it Matters for CX

Brands often describe themselves as customer-centric; they shape their business around customer needs, work to provide exceptional, individual support and promote a culture of empathy and care. But, true customer centricity goes beyond customer-focused initiatives and upholds these deeper values throughout the entire organization.

DoorDash, the popular online food delivery platform, has recognized this critical feature and is working to achieve a more customer and employee-centric culture by requiring its employees to utilize its platform and complete a delivery each month. WeDash, initially established in 2013, ensures all employees, from its engineering team all the way up to its CEO, carry out a delivery to better understand the process its Dashers go through with every new order.

If employees are unable to complete deliveries, the company also permits them to shadow customer-service workers with its WeSupport programs, or engage with the merchant-support side of the business with WeMerchant.

The company stated, "By engaging as a Dasher, supporting a merchant, or shadowing a customer experience agent, employees learn first-hand how the technology products we build empower local economies, which in turn helps us build a better product."

The program is exciting for customer experience leaders — with more time spent engaging with customers on the front-lines, employees in a wide array of roles gain hands-on exposure and an inside look at the end-to-end experience. If engineers are able to engage with their own technology, they can begin to understand the user's perspective in a practical setting, rather than a theoretical framework. This can go a long way with customers; CCW Digital research found that over 90% of customers are more willing to support brands with high-quality user design standards. Brands that maintain a high ease of use and appeal of design are consistently more desirable for modern customers. 

But, the benefits of this program go beyond just an enhanced user experience; with renewed empathy for its delivery team, the organization can formulate more realistic and productive expectations and ensure employees are being treated fairly. High-ranking employees can often become distanced from the actual product and experience itself, and this program aims to diminish that divide and extend a passion for the customer experience to all employees, regardless of their internal position. 

However, not all of these employees are entirely enthusiastic about the new responsibility. An anonymous DoorDash employee recently went viral for criticizing the program. The employee stated that he, “didn’t sign up for this, there was nothing in the offer letter/job description about this.” He expressed even more anger over the fact that the delivery will be tracked in performance reviews. Commenters on the site did not necessarily agree with his sentiments, and their sympathies were likely negated once he referenced his own compensation which totaled over six figures. But, it represents the exact problem this program is working to uncover — the fact that highly compensated executives would not even be willing to work within their own business model. 

The idea that employees are potentially unwilling to use the product they are devoting their time to improving should be a red flag for users and the organization itself. To create a product that's accessible, intuitive and useful for customers and Dashers alike, employees must maintain at least some level of passion and excitement for learning about and understanding the end-to-end experience. Therefore, this ‘below my pay-grade’ perspective should certainly be something organizations work on correcting moving forward. If your top employees start to look down on the responsibilities of your front-line workers, maybe the experience could use some repairs.

Not all employees hold this view, of course, and DoorDash is not the first company to create a customer service program like this. A Shake Shack digital marketing employee recently documented their positive experience working in the kitchen of the restaurant chain. In the viral video, she shared her excitement seeing the ‘behind the scenes’ look at the restaurant's operations. 

Although it may be a risk assigning frontline work during the COVID pandemic, and is likely why DoorDash paused the program up until now, all companies can benefit from promoting this level of customer-facing experience. Ensuring their team members have access to a first-hand view of the customer journey is critical for creating a culture of customer-centricity. And, leading companies understand its power, customer experience trailblazer Zappos also includes customer facing practice during onboarding. In their first month working with the shoe company, new hires learn the importance of their ‘WOW’ customer service strategy by taking phone calls and interacting with customers directly. 

In the end, the importance of this strategy should not be diminished by a few disgruntled employees. If more employees believe that the customer experience is outside their purview, and they feel no sense of investment in the success and use of their own product, it may speak to a breakdown in culture. Giving employees the opportunity to engage with customers on the front-line and see their product in action should be seen as invaluable and exciting. More companies should strive for this kind of participation, because without it, many employees will struggle to identify the impact their actions have on the bottom line. To truly consider yourself a customer-centric brand in 2022, employees across the organization must be dedicated to improving experiences and enhancing the product for all users — this program represents a major step towards that goal.