Name: Ride. Eat. Exhale. Everyday solutions that ease the load
Uploaded: 2025-05-22T18:46:10.279Z
Duration: 30 min 4 s
Description: Ride. Eat. Exhale. Everyday solutions that ease the load

Transcript for "Ride. Eat. Exhale. Everyday solutions that ease the load": Alright. Well, hi, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, Ride, eat, exhale, everyday solutions that ease the load. Thanks for joining us. If you're new to Uber for business, we bring the best of Uber to organizations around the globe. With global scale, integrated solutions, and exceptional service, Uber for Business empowers organizations to streamline business travel, reimagine employee well-being, and elevate the customer experience, all while enabling employees to effortlessly leverage the Uber they love and trust in their professional lives. So my name is Vanessa Snow. I'm a senior manager on the global strategic accounts team at Uber. I've been at Uber for almost nine years, which here at Uber basically makes me a dinosaur, though I haven't gone extinct quite yet. I'm based in the Bay Area, but I lead an amazing team of global sales executives who are scattered across many time zones and probably on their third coffee by now. We work closely with Uber for Business's largest strategic partners and, in fact, I'm thrilled to see some of our partners on today's webinar. And I'm joined today by Sarah Farkas. While we give people a few seconds to log in, Sarah, do you wanna tell the audience a bit about yourself? Sure. Of course. Thanks, Vanessa. Hi, everybody. My name is Sarah Farkas. I am another one of the senior managers on our global strategic accounts team on Uber for Business. I'm based in New York City, and I've been with Uber for almost five and a half years now. It has certainly been a wild ride, especially starting with Uber only one month before the pandemic. But it is very cool to see Uber for Business come such a long way in a short period of time. It sure is. Yeah. We're excited to, take everyone through this webinar. But before we get started, Sarah, why don't we start off with one of our favorite work hacks? Sure. So my personal favorite work hack is our meals while traveling program. And we will, talk about this a ton today. But as you know, Vanessa, this job has us on the road a lot, and being able to have a meal from Uber Eats waiting for me at the hotel concierge when I check-in after a late flight makes all the difference. I'm sure that's one of your favorites too, Bee, but I'll let you, share yours with the group. It is. I mean, nothing makes me happier than getting Uber Eats instead of room service after a long day of travel. I love that one. Okay. Another favorite hack of mine, it's so simple, it almost feels like cheating, is hitting that little do not disturb button at the top right corner of my computer screen. In this age of nonstop Slack pings and emails and SMS notifications from all over the world, it's like a sanity switch. I silence everything, carve out focus time for the strategic stuff, and actually get time to think just a little bit. Then when I'm ready to turn on notifications, I go back, turn it on, then the world rushes back in. The little pause is a total game changer for me, probably because I'm, you know, still a dinosaur, so to speak. I really like that pause. But, anyway, let's get into our webinar, and, I'm really excited to dive through the content. But before we get started, let's do a little housekeeping. So for everyone listening to this webinar, if you want to submit questions, just look for the q and a tab on the right corner of your screen. We'll take as many of your questions as we can at the end of the call, and our team will do our best to follow-up with you for the ones we don't get to. And of course, if you want to learn more about Uber for Business, you can explore related content under the dots tab. And then also click the get demo, button on the top of your screen to request a demo from our Uber for Business team. We'll follow-up with you post webinar to get that set up. And if you miss anything during the webinar, no worries. We'll be sending you a replay after we get wrapped up. Awesome. Alright. So today, we're taking a look at how you can help support your teams in the ways that matter most to them. We'll dive into meal plans designed to reward the people putting in the hard work, commute solutions that help avoid stress related to diving pitfalls, driving pitfalls and transit schedules, voucher programs that give your sales and accounts team resources to win over customers, my personal favorite. And with all that taken care of, let's hop in. Your organization spends a lot of time preparing for, running, and maintaining its business. You've got market projections. Your marketing plan is probably set for the quarter, if not the year, and, ideally, you're running like a well oiled machine. You've got plans in place for when things go a little sideways. An example that's very current, like if one of us couldn't make the webinar today, they had other people lined up, and you've probably got backups for when things, at your business don't go exactly as planned. It's easy to think about those things on the business level. That's something we can plan for with a good Miro board, Google Doc, but it's different when we get down to the personal level. Things have been a little stressful for all of us lately, and that might not be enough to interfere with any of those business plans, but I think we've all had those days where we're just hanging in there, whether it's the news or the kids or the you name it. That is until one morning, all things go wrong. Your commute gets messed up. The conversations about where the team wants to grab lunch go five minutes too long, and now everyone's late to your next meeting. Or you have to send a fourth email asking someone to turn in their receipts. And you know how everyone hates doing expenses or even talking about expenses. The stress is just suddenly a lot. Sarah, can you relate to any of this? I definitely can, actually. I very recently got stuck between stops on the subway. I live in New York City as I mentioned before. It was about a thirty minute halt between stops, and then I finally got to the office, got off the train. And as I was about to badge in, I realized I left my badge at home. I had a really big client call that was starting in ten minutes, so I actually wound up taking that call from the lobby. Everything was fine. It went very well. We got some laughs out of it, but, of course, it was super stressful for me. And by the time I got upstairs, I saw the team at our desks, and they just knew not to talk to me until lunchtime. It it was not fun, but I did cool off after I got some food in my system. Well, that's exactly what we're focusing on today. The ways we can support the people on our teams in times that matter most, by putting together some types of plans and programs that you have on the business scale. And kind of piggybacking off of my commute horror story just before, I am going to start this conversation by asking one of the scariest questions you can ask a coworker, especially if they are a little grumpy from a rough commute. Hey, Vanessa. Have you eaten anything today? Well, yes. And I'm actually having a good day. Maybe that's why. It's so obvious that it often goes overlooked, but eating food is very important especially when you're busy. You never get a task from that project manager to have lunch and maybe you should, but taking a half hour or hour to refuel yourself or on the days when you're really busy just eating your favorite meal at your desk feels like a luxury. It really can make a big difference. And when that food comes from the company, it's a simple and effective way to make sure our team feels supported. Exactly. And if you remember the last time you tried to decide on lunch as a group, you know that it's surprisingly not the least stressful part of your day. Everyone has to agree on what they're eating, dietary restrictions need to be accommodated, and someone has to pay. Naturally, you're then going to spend the next half an hour bugging your colleagues to make sure everyone settles up so you can place the order. Well, the exciting news is that we've got a solution for all of that, group orders and meal programs that make the lunch decision quick and easy for everyone and let you get back to work. So let's take a look at how to set up a basic meal plan for your team lunches. So first, you'll sign in to business.uber.com. You'll select programs on the left hand side, and then you will click create program and select whether you want to create a brand new program or copy an existing program. For the sake of the example today, we will be starting from scratch here. And next, you will have the option to choose from travel, meals, central, or health programs. And for this purpose, we will go ahead and select meal programs. From there, we will enter the program name and description, and then we can set the rules you want everyone to follow when they're using this program. So just like with bride programs, you have a lot of flexibility when it comes to the rules for your meal program, and this includes spending limits, locations where the meals can be delivered to, limiting items that are not within policy, and also the times of day the orders can be made. The employees can be part of multiple programs, so you can be as specific as you'd like here. We'll go ahead and make this one a lunch only plan and set the per person limit at $25, and let's make this program available from 11AM to 3PM. Next, you will select which groups can access the program. And what the group function does is allow you to open programs to specific members of your organization rather than making everything available to everyone. And an example here can be creating a separate group, let's say, for remote members of your team rather than the employees who work in the office every day. Finally, you will click create program to activate your program, and users will either receive an email inviting them to join the company account or one letting them know they can now access a new program if they're already on the account. Thanks, Sarah. So lunch isn't the only meal of the day, though. Right? As much as we all try to avoid it, sometimes work runs a little late or very late. Obviously, this can cause stress on its own, but if you're prepared, you can make sure your team is fueled up to get the work done and get home as soon as possible. Late night meal plans let your team order food to the office after hours without having to worry about whether it's not covered or spend the sleepy next day turning in receipts. Did I mention we hate doing our expenses? It's also a great way to show your team that you appreciate the extra effort they're making. Setting up a program in advance and communicating back to your team lets them know that even though you try to keep late nights to a minimum, when they do pop up, you've got their backs. So a late night program is set up in the same way as our lunch program that Sarah just took us through, but the rules we set up around them are different. We'll save time now and skip to that setup, but if you need a refresher on that, you can always check out the on demand replay. So first, enter the program name and description. Set the rules you want people to follow when using a program, like time restrictions. What counts as a late night for your business is entirely up to you. If you know your team works a wide variety of schedules, your late nights might be early mornings and that's all manageable within the same program. Location restrictions: you also have the flexibility on where you want to support people while they're working late. That might mean late night or early morning deliveries are only intended for the office or you can fully embrace the remote work lifestyle and allow your team to get themselves a late night snack while they're working from their home office. Item restrictions is also a cool one. Companies can set up item restrictions as well, limiting the ability to order alcohol, tobacco, or convenience items if desired. And spending limits especially if you're working from home you may not have it in your budget to pay for the dinner for your employees whole family although if you do that's totally manageable as well and you will be a hero but if you're setting up restrictions, you can do that both on a daily or monthly basis with that spend cap. Just select which groups can access the program, click create program to activate your program, and users will receive an email either inviting them to join the company account or, if they're already on the account, letting them know that they can access a new program. Making sure your team has the energy to get their work done is one thing, but if your team's working out of the office, office, getting into work can be its own source of stress. Okay. Commuting. We've all been there. Right? Nothing interferes with the workday more than when something goes wrong with getting into the office. For a while, with remote work, we didn't have to worry about this. But as we all know, now return to office efforts are ramping back up even more than they were a few years ago. We're all starting to think or maybe even stress about the commute. Maybe your train had no delays on Wednesday, but how can we know for sure that everything will run smoothly on Friday? Or maybe your car started on your way home from work last night, but maybe something goes wrong tomorrow morning. There's just no guarantee when it comes to commuting, unless, of course, you have an in case of emergency commute plan in place. And this is truly one real way to take the stress out of getting into the office. So putting this into context in a real world situation, let's say an employee's car doesn't start. That employee realizes her team has a program set up with Uber for business. She can then take an Uber to work, and she gets there in time for her 9AM meeting. Great. But we can actually take this one step further. What if your employee's partner's car doesn't start? They can then take your employee's car to work, your employee takes the Uber, and everyone makes it to work on time. In this scenario, they're a hero and you're a hero. Plus, your company gets to play a real role in making the whole family's day a little better. Oh my gosh. That reminds me. I've gotta share this story. You're never gonna believe it. So back when I worked in consulting, a VP and I were driving. Those were the days where I actually drove a car. Today, it's usually Uber, but we were driving separately to client's office for our most important meeting of the year. We were presenting our final final deliverable, and I'm right behind him driving along the, the Bay Bridge when his car, I see, slows down and it sputters and it literally dies right in the middle of the bridge. Absolute chaos. And this was the era, remember, when giant paper stuffed binders were deliverables? Our deliverables were in massive binders. So in a scene a scene straight out of an action movie, we pulled off this rolling handoff. He literally leaned out of his window, passed me the binders. I grabbed them, hit the gas, raced to the client site. I got to the meeting on time. Binders were in my hands, trying to look calm. My heart was still racing, and this was just another day in the wide world of consulting. That is crazy, Vanessa Snow. Straight out of a live action. But so let me take you guys through how to set up commute programs. Because had we had one back in the day I would have loved it. So let's start the same way as we do with a meal program. So you'll sign into business.uber.com, select programs on the left, select the program that you need to create rules for a create program, to create a new one. Beneath rules, select the rules you want to establish. For example, we commonly see clients restrict locations so your organization only gets billed when the ride is going to the company office or maybe in my case the client's office. Use Uber platform flexibility to choose whether to partially or fully cover the ride. So for example, we'll build a program that gives team members the flexibility to take an Uber to or from work when they need one. We'll get a little granular with this example and create a plan that just covers rides to work and leaves the commute home to be covered in a different plan. This can be helpful if you wanna learn with rides your employees use more often, especially in an environment where they may usually rely on public transit. We'll set the rules for this program so the destination is the office and we'll limit the number of rides employees can use under this program to one per month. We'll also set the time this program is available, In this instance, let's say between 7AM and 10AM. When you're done adding the rules for the program, click create program. So in addition to commute programs, you might also want to offer transportation support at scale for your organization. And this is where Uber shuttle can come in handy. So let's take a closer look at this offering together. Alright. So whether your team wants to offer regular rides from public transportation hubs to your office or cross campus trips between facilities or even daily commute programs, Uber Shuttle offers twenty four seven visibility, customer support, and a ton of data to make informed decisions about your team's workplace transportation. On the employee side, shuttle helps boost morale and productivity. We're offering your employees an experience with comfortable and spacious vehicles that are equipped with tech and Wi Fi every single time. So no more squeezing onto the bus or train to stand and not be able to get any work done. That leads to a happier employee, which leads to a happier employer. And we've actually heard firsthand from many customers that these benefits have helped to boost employee retention and also recruiting efforts. So a real all around win win for everyone. And if you're interested in learning more about a custom shuttle solution, you can reach out to our team via the link provided in the chat. Alright. So we have done a lot of talk about how you can support your team. But your team is there to support your business, and sometimes unexpected things pop up there as well. For most businesses, your sales and account teams are likely the ones who spend most of the time out in the world. Right? They're the ones who are interacting with clients, pitching new business, and making sure that all the work your team does really aligns with the people you're doing it for. Every one of those interactions is an opportunity for your company to go above and beyond and really to curate meaningful experiences for your current and future customers. And vouchers are a great way to help these teams look like true superheroes. So whether they want to offer a client ride back to the office after a lunch and learn or cover a coffee for a planned face to face meeting that wound up being virtual or even just offer a little something extra to thank them for their time, vouchers let your team share the magic of Uber without needing to wait for approval first. So let's take a look at how to set up a voucher program, and we'll also look at the controls you have access to to really make sure your budget stays intact. We don't want to let anyone just hand out a voucher for a million dollars in Uber rides or Uber Eats credits. So to make sure your team is staying within the guidelines you set up, you can use a locked voucher template. These templates let you set the parameters for a voucher while giving your team the ability to create and distribute actual vouchers on their own. So here's how we can set one of those up. First, you'll sign in to vouchers.uber.com. From here, you can click create new template, then you'll select locked template, and next, we'll customize the restrictions. And you've got the ability here to set a lot of restrictions on how these vouchers can be created, and these include voucher type, value, location, and also timing restrictions. So using that coffee example we spoke out just before, let's create a quick voucher where anyone can spend $10 to cover the cost of that coffee. Once we save that template, the administrators or employees can then create vouchers using this launch template. When it comes time to sending the actual voucher, your sales team just needs to enter the recipient's name and email address, and they'll be delivered the voucher the same way as if you'd created a voucher from scratch. And creating and editing voucher templates is only available to admin, but you can set which users have the ability to use those templates to create vouchers. Alright, Sarah. Well, we're coming up to the end of our time together, but we don't wanna sign off before we've had a chance to answer a couple of questions that our audience submitted during the registration. So everyone remember if we don't get a chance to answer your questions, we'll have someone reach out after the event. So our first question is from Kathy. Our employees travel internationally. Where is Uber available? Sarah, do you wanna take this one? Sure. That is a great question, Kathy. Thanks for submitting. Uber is the only global ride share partner in the market, so likelihood is that we have business where you have business. We are available in more than 15,000 cities over 70 countries across six continents, and you can always check the Uber app for availability in your home city or future destination. We will also drop a link for more info on what's live where and variations by market. Awesome. Alright. And our next question from Valerie. How do you issue ride vouchers for event guests? Another great question. So you have a couple of different options here. General voucher lists are one link that can be used by multiple people, and these are great to include on event invites. This way, everyone who gets the invite can get a voucher, and the company is only charged for vouchers that get used during that event. You could also go the unique voucher link group, which issues one link per person. And this is a great option if you're sending out a smaller number of vouchers or if you're sending out a high value voucher that you wanna lock down a bit more and prevent from being reshared. For an event, this is typically a VIP use case, like, let's say, $50 towards business black rides to and from the airport. Great. Alright. So our next question is from Michelle. Kind of similar here. How do I arrange rides for people not on my team? I can take this one. Because just like you explained, Sarah, we've got vouchers. So this is a great use case for vouchers. Rather than coordinating the specifics of the ride, the voucher just lets those folks handle their own specifics, pull up the Uber app, and call a ride for themselves, or order a meal if you're using a a voucher for, meals. But for rides when businesses want a more white glove service that doesn't need the, rider to actually have the Uber app even on them, it's all through SMS, the communication with folks who aren't on the team, you can actually use a a solution called Uber Central. Uber Central is our concierge booking tool. It's used to fully book rides on behalf of others. So the next question is from Raymond. What is the cost of Uber for Business? Benefits of using it versus just the Uber app. Raymond, this is one of my favorite questions because the answer is Uber for Business is a completely free platform. There are no fees associated with having access to our dashboard or to our team support. So your team or your employees will really simply just pay for the rides taken or meals ordered as you typically would through your expense platform. And the biggest benefits of using Uber for business versus having employees go directly through their traditional Uber experience all tie back to ease of use. So as far as your team, you can manage everything in one place. And to recap, this means business travel, meal plans for the team, courtesy rides to your customers, and another important call out Vanessa mentioned many times, expensive. With Uber for Business, you will never have to chase someone down for a receipt again. As long as they use your Uber for Business programs, it is handled. And this is even easier if you leverage an integration with one of our expense partners. So that highlights a few of the benefits for your team. And as far as your employees, another major benefit comes hand in hand with our partnerships. And we have these in place with Marriott Envoy, American Express, Delta, and more. And we also offer a membership called Uber One, which provides users with discounts on Uber x rides, tons of restaurants across the Uber Eats platform, and free delivery with every order. Alright. Well, we're going to wrap up today's session on that note. Thanks again for answering all those questions, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. Following today's event, you'll receive a link to the recording to revisit any of this content at a later date or to share it with your coworkers. And again, if you'd like to learn more about any of today's material, please visit our website or contact one of our team members to request a custom demo. Thank you everyone for joining. Thanks for your time. We hope to see you again soon. Take care. Bye. Thanks, everyone.