Chasing the App for Algorithm Zen
This is not a rerun. Those are handled by the website design team. The website design team is working tirelessly to get those available as soon as possible. In the meantime, it will just be us couriers, and everyone else. The website design team knows about this article, so they don’t count.
There are a lot of things for a courier to keep in mind while snapping up deliveries. Location awareness, quality of an offer, traffic, and a few more. Often, it’s a relief to have the details out of the way, so the fun part can take place. The drive.
That’s the bonus that is so hard to get, at times. If the wheels aren’t turning, someone isn’t getting paid. That would likely be the courier. It’s a natural and positive state of mind, to feel that moving is progress.
Moving is progress, but moving in the best direction, is positive progress. This is where the app and the algorithm come into play.
Chasing Apps
There are more than a few articles on this site about apps and the interesting ways they play. Not every courier is a tech wizard, and tech can get pretty advanced, even in small doses. Having the time to learn the finer details of an algorithm quickly, while behind the wheel, is a long shot. At best.
Using an app to complete deliveries for pay, is a constant negotiation between gaining money and losing money. One or the other, can happen fast. Or slow. The dreaded scenario is a long drive that ends up costing more than it produces. That’s the opposite of what a courier needs for a good day’s pay.
When the apps first began to take hold, and become more mainstream, they were new, and still being developed. There were certain elements that could be counted on, for the best overall earnings. Couriers that had crew experience, could spot these elements easily.
One such element was the absence of being led. When a courier is led, the routes become dynamic, and more purposeful for that cycle. The effect is similar to a crew courier taking multiple orders in one trip. The route is laid out and can be traveled from one drop off to the next, with no wasted miles.
The Old
As apps became mainstream, zones were developed to help contain deliveries to a specific area. It didn’t always work. The idea of living far away and being able to order for delivery made zones less static. Once upon a time, a courier could rely on only staying in one zone, and maintaining a more concentric pursuit of runs.
If a run caused the courier to leave the zone for another zone, to complete a drop off, the courier would then have to return to the starting zone. This would then set the courier for more opportunities. Lots of wasted miles in that system.
The Zen
Things adapted and the apps got better at turning those wasted miles into usable miles. Zones are still important but are not completely static, and are not the only starting and ending points any longer.
Chasing the app is what I call accepting offers that carry the courier away from the starting zone. These offers usually happen before the current drop off is complete. They will also be tuned to the new area that the courier has just entered. The effect is purposeful miles after a drop off. And algorithm zen.
This effect of being led along by the app can translate into a good series of runs, or not, depending on the area and the quality of the offers. More often than not, the series of runs is a good bet. But what about when that one offer isn’t worth it?
That’s when things will reset. Dismissing an offer in one of these situations, will change the way the algorithm thinks about where the courier is, and whether the next offer will also get rejected.
Making a trip back to the starting zone is a good possibility, after the leading by the app, has been interrupted. This phenomena seems to carry across apps, though some are quicker at getting new offers to the courier, after the initial dismissed offer.
The entirety of this article is from personal experience. Does any courier know what that algorithm is actually up to? Probably not, but there’s something to be said for experience. It is a real good bet, that the algorithm is learning the courier. Turn about is also fair play, courier.
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