Why Yandex Taxi is called UBER in Azerbaijan?

It took me 2 months to write this article. Finally, I decided that it was worth sharing my experience for several reasons. The main reason is the people of Azerbaijan. They have to know with whom and what they are dealing with. At the end of the day authorities in Azerbaijan will decide whether to take this seemingly ordinary situation under their control or just let it go. 

I use UBER in Azerbaijan extensively when I am in the country. In general, if we compare the quality of the services in CIS countries with similar economical development, the quality of UBER (Yandex) services in Azerbaijan is lower than in Belarus. There are several reasons for this, which I will discuss below. 

I started visiting Baku more often at the beginning of 2019, and I noticed some peculiarities in Uber's (Yandex) work in Baku. The most interesting were: 

1. Unprofessional behavior of more than 50% of the drivers. When I say unprofessional, it is due to the fact that Yandex did not conduct any training to the drivers (the work may include a short introductory course on working with clients and a mandatory exam on working with clients), before starting their working relationships with them. Therefore drivers acted with clients at their own discretion, making the work as comfortable as possible for themselves. There were cases when drivers swore and threatened to use force because of the method of payment. If, for example, the payment was by card, or because I had a “do not call” checkmark in my profile it simply offended many drivers because they could not find out about payment method or they did not know the exact route which made them really angry. The rules of working with a client imply and limit customers from a lot of inconveniences, you need to understand that the driver has no right to complain about problems with their earnings, and does not have the right not to return change. He should wait for the client to offer him the tips. 

One of the problems was "leaving at the gate", when drivers arrived, found out their route and just left. Because most of them did not want long trips, they are good with medium long trips in busy times. Another problem - drivers simply arrived in a dirty car and I often refused to go into it. I am sure that according to the questionnaires that I conducted among the drivers, Yandex does not have any control and inspection procedures of the cars and the driver. I am not talking about the control measures of the mental and other important health issues of the drivers which should be in place too. 

The funniest drivers were those who did not wash for several days or those who had a portion of extremely spicy food in the morning. It was hard to endure this throughout the trip.

With the rookies, I had to go through the traffic rules, which did not cause me pleasant emotions at all. Many drivers do not know the city well and do not understand that they are obliged to provide high-quality services.

2.  Uncontrolled registrations are welcomed by UBER. Any individual having a simple foreign car can register his profile and start driving. Nothing special is required to start working in Baku.

No one (neither Yandex nor governmental structure) is checking applicants' professional suitability for connecting to UBER (Yandex) services. No medical check-ups too. 

There are no simple exams from Yandex that will support the quality of the services in this segment.

For the sake of fairness, I want to note that in Dubai this segment is almost monopolized, and after checking and obtaining professional rights, it is the government agency that regulates pricing and the quality of services that takes the drivers to work. 

3. Customer profile. I also collected data on which matter drivers are dissatisfied with their customers. In all fairness, it should be noted that there is a number of such cases. The main complaints are as follows:

A) Customers are in no hurry to come to the pick-up point. Especially if it is a woman then your waiting time may exceed 20-30 minutes, for which drivers receive pennies, there is no system that regulates precisely the time frame. Of course, it exists, but it works for clients part, not for drivers. It should be maintained, we need a middle ground.

B) Insolent clients who choose long trips (Baku-Airport) then get out of the car and disappear. There are many such cases, any new mobile phone number is cheaper than a long trip.

C) Night clients from birthdays, weddings, which not only cost the driver his money/time but some of them are violent and toxic. They usually create all kinds of problems for the UBER (Yandex) drivers. The company has no mechanisms to prevent such cases, the company has nothing but to offer their office for registering complaints.

Having concluded that not everything is in order in this business, I decided to give the company my helping hand in resolving the situation. I was slightly surprised when I started looking for contacts of responsible persons who oversee Yandex in Baku. I was more surprised to learn that his name is Aram Sargsyan, Director of Yandex Taxi in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) and the CIS, respectively, in Azerbaijan. And I also found out that there is a guy named Ataman Ince, who is close to my people in spirit and blood, he is now responsible for the work of the Baku office.

I want to note that it took me more than one week to get in touch with these people. I had to write to the head office of Yandex, the head of the customer service tried to help me. In the end, I managed to establish a dialogue with Ataman. It was fundamental for me to find out the point of view of Aram, who is the director and makes important decisions in which the citizens of Azerbaijan are involved. Indeed, Aram’s political views can directly influence the work of UBER (Yandex) in Azerbaijan. At some point, I realized the real reason Yandex called its own services UBER in Azerbaijan. It was strange to see that when the UBER application was launched in Baku, a map of Moscow appeared first. In the beginning, I thought it was a marketing move that Yandex decided to leave the brand familiar to our people, but gradually, when I collected more data about the company and the processes, it became clear that Yandex left the name UBER for political reasons. It was all designed for the general population and media not to dig deep and ask questions about the personality of Aram Sargsyan.

I am in no position to share my whole correspondence with Ataman and Aram. But I’ll tell you briefly how our conversation ended.

My suggestion to them was to improve the quality of UBER (Yandex) services in my home country, to reach a new level and heights for the growth of the company in Azerbaijan. This question is fundamental and it bothered me for many reasons. Having provided a short report on the problems and their solutions to Ataman, I received an answer in a week, or even later.

In parallel, I corresponded with Aram, wanting to know his sincerity in relation to our market and overall business management. There was nothing antagonistic in our dialogue, but I did not see any zeal in solving problems.

Finally, after long dialogues, correspondence, reports, Ataman told me that a company is already conducting trainings and seminars, and they are sufficient to maintain the proper level of quality of services. The next day, I began to check information through insiders and ordinary drivers of UBER (Yandex). It turned out that no training, courses or other educational activities have ever been held and are not going to take place in the near future. I could not understand why Ataman told me this in official correspondence. If something is missing, why should you try to present it as desired?

In the end, I want to share my experience in working with RTA Dubai (Road and Transport Authority), which in 2017 had some issues with providing quality services in the taxi department of Dubai.

We started with the data collection process in Dubai. It was basically collecting data as a mystery shopper from the drivers, evaluation of their driving skills and overall behavior were the key factors for the general data collection. We also gathered data from the general requests and sent them to the customer service department. All and all we did 300 trips in a 3 month period, identified the main areas in which the company needs to work. Our report and implementation of the recommendations were accepted, a basic 2-way contract was signed, we fulfilled our obligations, and the work was completed the same year. That is the way the process works in the Middle East. 

Based on our correspondence, I concluded that the company, the director of which is ethnical armenian, operates and makes money on Azerbaijani soil, but at the same time manages the business in the way in which the quality of services leaves much to be desired. At the same time, our citizens suffer and dismiss proposals for improving services. It would be very interesting to see how the relevant authorities in Azerbaijan will react to the current situation in the industry.

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