Monsoon Prep Part 03: Driver readiness

If driving through Mumbai’s peak traffic feels like a task, doing it during monsoons is a different ball game altogether. Rains slashing on the windshield impairs vision, and roads become slippery, sometimes cratered, both of which slow down traffic. The longer drives are physically demanding, and the ensuing anxiety to reach home or office in time isn’t particularly enjoyable.

We understand that maintaining service levels during this season, and taking on the responsibility of your commute is a bigger challenge, and we want to make sure our drivers are well prepared for it.

Part 03: Driver and team readiness

Since the last monsoons, we nearly doubled our fleet and driver team size. For some of our drivers and team, these are the first Mumbai monsoons. While nothing quite prepares you like the real deal, we’ve observed that a detailed brief and discussion around the various scenarios that might arise helps manage them calmly and confidently. Our goal is for the team to be able to deal with issues swiftly and offer you a safe commute experience.

We’ve seen an array of scenarios over the past eight years that demand better driver preparedness and have set up SOPs for each of them. Some key ones include:

1. Adapting driving style as the intensity of rain increases
2. Early departures from office, based on office timing changes due to bad weather
3. Knowledge and training on alternative routes in case of waterlogging
4. Relay of traffic and weather conditions to buses at later timings, to facilitate better decision making
5. Better driver-customer interaction when anxiety levels rise

We’ve kept an open channel of communication with the drivers so that we’re able to adapt our SOPs as required.

While not all of these are new interventions, we’re committed to executing them better every year. Moreover, we wanted to let you know what you can expect from Cityflo.