Powerful & intuitive dashboard

In 2018, I was a part of the founding team who had to come up with a brand new platform that will enable crowdsourced drivers to pick grocery orders from Walmart stores and to deliver them to our customers. 

The Spark Dispatcher app was built along with the Spark Driver app. It's the powerhouse that ensures the operations run smoothly.

Spark Dispatcher Desktop App

The popularity of the Dispatcher app grew and was used by a lot more people and the use-cases grew day by day. The roles that used the Dispatcher app were.

1. Call center agents and managers: Answers calls from the drivers and resolves issues for a specific market. The managers track all the markets and assign workforce accordingly keeping a close track of the issues and escalations.
2. Store associates: Resolve issues when the customer calls to enquire about their order.
3. Business & Operations: Follows the day-to-day operations across markets and makes changes to improve the overall metrics.

Dispatcher for Desktop

The efforts on Dispatcher started as a standalone application. It will be used by the Call center agents to assign drivers or resolve delivery-related issues. As Dispatcher evolved, lot more capabilities were added. The app was soon used by the Store associate in the backroom. We used to travel to the call center in Arkansas every quarter to study the usage of the existing app and also collect feedback on new features that were designed.

Dashboard

A powerful Dashboard that shows all the key information to understand the overall status of the trip.

1. Map and the list view.
2. Visual representation to get a quick understanding of the trip status.
3. Easy access to the trips that require attention.
3. Quick access to Order and Trip details.

Order/Trip Details

Clicking on an order number from anywhere in the app will open up a dialog box with all the related details.

We had to come up with an approach that is quick and also has all the details related to the trip.

We spent a lot of time analyzing the information available and organizing it logically.

Drivers

Drivers are the most important players of the Spark ecosystem. Awarding the top-rated drivers is equally important, but so is providing drivers with enough trips so that they stick to the system.

This section helps understand the right driver for a trip but also get into details and resolve driver-related concerns.

Apart from the most actively used modules, there are a couple more modules that are restricted to the few users who make sure the program runs effectively. Few of the modules are...

Communication

Provides complete control to select audience and send messages to the drivers.

Scheduling

A visualization that helps understand the overall health of the timeslots and the number of drivers available.

Finances

Provides flexibility right from setting the payouts to viewing all the payments received by the driver.

Empowering Store Associates

The key persona for whom we had built the Dispatcher was designed where the call center agents. Due to the clarity, it provided and the ease of use, the store associates were granted access. With minimal/no training, the store associates across the US started using Dispatcher from one of the computers in the backroom.

Soon the number of associates using the application surpassed in a big way. As we went with our research, it was clear that the associates wanted a mobile version due to the nature of their work.

The average size of a Walmart Supercenter is around equivalent to 3 American football fields.

Simplifying complex data

Every associate in the store has a hand-held device. Dispatcher as a product had a lot of information and the goal was to render the right set of information as quickly as possible from anywhere in the store.

Trip Details

Clicking on any of the cards will show all the details related to the trip. The associate will also be able to take actions from anywhere in the store, which they had to run back to the desktop in the backroom earlier.

An updated app... Coming soon

With new use cases and externalization coming to play, we are working on the next-gen Dispatcher Desktop which will provide better visibility and be more powerful.

Similarly, on the mobile app, Associates love the simplicity of Dispatcher and how it makes their life easier. Recent user studies show that the associates want the dispatcher wants more features on the mobile app and we are now working towards the same.