Last Updated on August 9, 2018

Jayride.com’s Head of Operations Vinko Grgic sheds some light on building a company and a team that understands travellers’ needs and works to solve travellers’ problems.

Jayride.com’s mission is clear: to provide access to seamless transport experiences for travellers. Key to achieving this is having a team with empathy, a team that understands that the traveller must come first. As a team, we are driven to understand what it is our travellers want from their transport.

I’ve been at Jayride.com since the early days, when we were just a team of three (we’re more than 70 today!). What I loved about the company then, and still do now, is the transparency and accountability that every team member has in their work. Part of this has been always asking the question, ‘what do travellers want from their transport?’. Is it better price? What about ease, certainty, less wasted time?

But it’s not enough to know the what, you have to find out the why. Why is price important? Is it because a traveller is on a budget, and so they want to spend as little as possible getting to the airport? Maybe they forgot about ground transport in their budget planning, and now it’s an unexpected cost? Or maybe they don’t want to pay a high price when they’re not sure what service they’re going to get. If we understand the what and the why, then we can build solutions that solve our travellers’ problems.

At Jayride.com we push ourselves to find out the answers so that we can really understand what it is our travellers want. It boils down to the fact that we are travellers ourselves, and when it comes to transport, we have expectations, wants and needs just as other travellers do. It means that every decision we make is with empathy – if we wouldn’t do something, why would our travellers?

For example, I’m a father and a husband, a keen surfer and a busy exec. My life can be quite hectic, so my transport needs are all about ease. When my family travels, I want to know that our transport is organised in advance; that the transfer company will be able to take me and my family when we need, where we need; that traffic will be considered; that our luggage can fit and a baby seat is included; and I want to be informed about pick-up times and locations – having a young child and usually lots of luggage means I do not want to be running around like a headless chicken not knowing what’s going on! Only after all of those boxes have been ticked do I consider price, and it needs to be reasonable. I am happy to pay more to remove my hassle, but I’m not fancy. That’s just my story, and every traveller has their own.

There are thousands of different ground transport needs out there and there are thousands of transport companies who are working hard to service those needs and look after their passengers. But the internet is a big place, and it can be hard to find your way through the noise. So bringing travellers and transport providers together in one platform is crucial. And to be valuable to travellers, this platform needs to help them make decisions by having all choices covered, in one place, that’s easy to use.

This is quite complex… but it’s a solution Jayride.com offers travellers – a single source of comparing and booking from thousands of transfer companies across hundreds of airports around the world. We’re not perfect, we’ve still got plenty of work to do to provide a completely seamless experience. But that’s the way it should be; always setting higher standards and striving to achieve better solutions.

In order to provide a platform that works to remove effort for travellers requires people who are talented, capable and give a damn about the traveller. This brings me nicely to the team behind Jayride.com, the team solving these complexities. Who are they? What do they want and why do they want it?

The team at Jayride.com is a hard-working, enthusiastic and talented bunch. We’re a healthy mix of technology, marketing and business backgrounds (along with other important roles required to run an international travel platform).

Everyone has a different reason for joining the company – whether they’re keen travellers themselves and believe in the vision of the company, whether they’re looking for the challenges and satisfactions that come with working in a fast-moving company, or whether they want to make an impact – and enabling these people means aligning all their different goals so they can remain focused, motivated and productive.

This is where I come in. My job is to align our people to Jayride.com’s mission. I need to create a team that is resilient and flexible, so they can deliver on what the traveller needs, now and in the future.

I don’t know what the future of transport looks like. I don’t believe anyone truly can know (we’ve been surprised before!).

But I do know that our team is working hard to be ready for whatever the future throws at us. Be it driverless cars, shared economy, AI, blockchain, or whatever buzzword… we’re ready for it, because we have a fantastic team who puts the traveller first.