Dive Brief:

• Uber Eats rolled out an app feature in the U.S. and Canada Wednesday to provide additional transparency about when and how couriers will view customer information, said Zach Singleton, Uber Eats’ head of product for privacy and equity.
• “View as Delivery Person” will allow customers to see what information the delivery driver can access during each stage of the order process, he said. Users can click on “What delivery people see” in the Uber Eats app once they have placed their order.
• Uber offers a similar feature for its Rides business, called “View as Driver,” that allows customers to see the personal information their driver has access to. Uber received positive customer feedback for a year after it launched this capability in 2020, Singleton said.

Dive Insight:

After talking with users, it became clear they wanted to see what personal information was shared with couriers at each stage of Uber Eats’ delivery process. The company receives thousands of such customer inquiries each year, Singleton said, and women are 53% more likely to be concerned about how their data is shared with delivery drivers. 

This feature shows consumers how the user data given to a delivery person changes depending on the stage of the delivery process. These varying points of data accessibility have always been in place, an Uber spokesperson confirmed, but the company wanted to make users aware of how their information is and isn’t shared.

When a driver picks up an order, they will see an approximate pickup location and approximate delivery location, Singleton said. When they’re en route to a customer’s home, they see the person’s name, last initial, address and any delivery notes. 

After the order is completed, the platform removes that specific address from the driver’s end of the app, so couriers can only see approximate pickup and delivery locations after the fact. Alcohol deliveries are slightly different because IDs need to be scanned, allowing a delivery person to view a customer’s last name, but that information is not stored in the Uber Eats app, Singleton said. 

The delivery person never sees a customer’s payment method, phone number, the rating given to a delivery person or a customer’s profile photo, Singleton said. 

“This will improve the customer experience by providing additional peace of mind and transparency around the information that delivery people have about our users,” Singleton said. “That’s particularly important in the off-chance that there is an uncomfortable situation that occurs as part of the delivery.”

Singleton hopes that by making diners more comfortable using Uber Eats, they could order more from its restaurant partners.

View as a Delivery Person is part of the company’s overall push toward creating a safer experience for drivers and customers. Uber added a new safety Safety ToolKit for drivers and Rides users last year to provide couriers easy access to emergency assistance. 

“The way we look at privacy at Uber is [as] a component of safety,” Singleton said. “We are a product that brings the physical and digital worlds together. So if we’re protecting your data and providing more transparency to our users, we’re actually providing you physical safety.”