Today’s start-up Q&A is from Zeynep Demirbilek, a 13 times multi-award-winning entrepreneur and CEO & Founder of Service Club.
First, tell us about the business
Service Club is a Members Club for delivery personnel where they can have access to training and job opportunities all over the world. Our tagline is “A Training, Filtering, Recruitment & Onboarding Tool for Delivery Apps & People” and we work in close partnership with food delivery apps and services providing them high-quality, filtered delivery drivers.
Our customers are both delivery apps and delivery drivers. I’ll expand on that more in the next section.
Why did you start your business?
I’m a problem solver by nature and my entrepreneurial brain wanted to solve a couple of problems I noticed in the delivery sector. In plain terms, I identified:
- Delivery apps: There is a high cost associated with quality leads and a high staff rotation or turnover rate.
- Delivery drivers/riders: There is a lack of continuous jobs and a lack of consistent income.
This is an industry where there is an increasing demand for delivery couriers yet the cost of filtered lead generation is extremely high. The onboarding process of unskilled workers is long and drawn out with lots of drivers dropping out towards the end. Delivery app staff rotation rate is very high. Insufficient income, lack of jobs, guidance and stability are the main reasons for this.
So, what if there was a platform that could solve all of these issues? Enter Service Club’s delivery job platform – designed from the ground up to educate the delivery driver demographic via our academy and provide them access to job opportunities in their location.
What are the high points?
Since our launch in 2018 there have been a number of challenges along the way but we are proud to say as of 2021 we have 40,500+ jobseekers registered, 8,750 microlearning modules completed and several more signed contracts to enable us to scale up the business. Amazon have even had something to say about us:
On a softer note, we’re currently at the point where we have established a fantastic team of individuals from a variety of diverse backgrounds and skillsets. Now that we have a strong team, we’re moving premises from our co-working space to a beautiful new Service Club Headquarters (still in Barcelona, Spain).
What were the toughest challenges and how did you get over them?
The most common challenge is building a great product that adds value and solves problems. The answer, as always, is being present and dedicated to your customers- requesting and using their feedback at any given time. Building on this, keep your request queue as small as possible so you don’t let your customers wait too long. We’re very attentive and appreciate any/all feedback that we receive from our valued customers – they’re a critical part of our process!
Marketing – tell us about a marketing tactic that works really well for your business? What are your main sales channels?
We’ve had a very diverse marketing approach to date and we’re constantly evaluating our options. Our main channels up to now have been LinkedIn, industry forums, email marketing campaigns to niche-relevant companies, and also social media. One of the best things we ever did and continue to do is build strong relationships with our customers.
More recently, we have started content marketing campaigns to generate additional organic traffic. The theory is, there’s lots and lots of questions being asked within the industry and with our fantastic academy – we know the industry best. So we’re putting content out to contribute value back to the industry and help keep readers interested in pursuing delivery jobs.
Our academy is what differentiates us from other delivery job platforms. The main reason we came up with the idea of creating a microlearning platform within an app was because we wanted to upskill our riders and make them an employable asset to any company. This is what makes Service Club unique.
Also, it is worth noting that in all our marketing efforts we haven’t even scratched the surface of B2B marketing yet and this is part of our medium to long-term roadmap. Our SaaS pitch to customers is generally so successful that we end up with a trial contract for X amount of couriers. Service Club is in quite a unique position – we’re the only company pitching this innovative solution for our customers and they tend to receive us well.
Technology – how does technology fit into the business?
We began with a tech-first approach to the business and technology is at the absolute core of Service Club. Our main focus for now is to build a scalable internal structure and an academy that will be able to deliver on our promises of providing both training and jobs. Even aside from our own platform, we use technology to communicate, to launch marketing campaigns, perform outreach and get feedback from customers.
With many years’ experience in this industry, I have used my expertise to build an app that facilitates microlearning modules focused on building job seeker skills around specific delivery jobs while making the experience innovative, gamified and fun (where possible!).