Waymo started as Google’s self-driving car project in 2009. In 2016, it spun out to become an independent company under Alphabet with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to get where they’re going. For over a decade, Waymo has been developing its fully autonomous driving technology—better known as the Waymo Driver. The technology has been put through the world’s longest and toughest ongoing driving test to enable it to navigate roads safely and reliably—without the need of a human at the steering wheel. In 2018, Waymo launched Waymo One, its autonomous ride-hailing service in Metro Phoenix. To this day, it’s the only service in America to offer fully autonomous rides to the public.
Throughout all of this, members of the public have asked many questions about the technology, with many of them engaging with us through social media. To help address these questions, educate the public, and build trust, we created a series called Wondering about Waymo, where we address questions about everything from the safety of our technology to the tech stack that powers our vehicles.
Wondering About Waymo series objectives:
Educate our followers on Waymo’s approach to autonomous driving technology
Foster an open dialogue and build trust. By welcoming our followers’ inquiries and leveraging our Waymo employees’ expertise to answer them, we’ve created a community of autonomous driving enthusiasts on social.
Strategy
This series lives on Waymo’s FB, IG, TW, and LI social channels, where we consistently receive questions and where the format is conducive to answering them in concise yet visually engaging ways.
Our strategic approach to the series was to make the Q&A style as direct as possible, allowing our followers to submit questions with the lines of communication always open. We then created Waymo social posts to directly answer the most interesting questions.
Implementation & Key Features
Our team consolidated the questions, selected an array of topics, consulted Waymo employees across a variety of disciplines, then brought it all to life through videos with motion graphics.
This content helped make the future of mobility that much more familiar for our audience. The Q&A and feedback loop is always in motion, and our connection with our followers continues to strengthen!
Wondering about Waymo helped strengthen our connection with our community of riders, and enthusiasts through personalized education. Answering our own followers’ questions has helped us to build an informed fanbase that trusts Waymo and continues to turn to us when seeking new information about autonomous driving.
Wondering about Waymo is one of our top performing content series, with an engagement rate that’s 48% higher than Waymo’s average engagement rate. Over the last six months, we’ve received nearly 200 questions from our community, with the number of questions increasing 60% QoQ.
Posts where we answer fans’ questions were met with gracious enthusiasm. Many took the opportunity to thank us for sharing information with them, like Caramelo, “Thanks for sharing this with us ! I had exactly the same question,” or tell others about their first hand riding experiences, like Linda, “I’ve ri[d]sen with Waymo!! Awesome experience. Loved the 3D map.” One follower commented, “This is so comforting for riders!” in response to our video explaining how we communicate with passengers during the ride.
To our delight, our Wondering about Waymo videos also encouraged others to ask questions as well, like Ran Wei, who asked, “Is there a place to learn more about Waymo’s approach to safety and customer experience?” This positive reception helped foster conversations between Waymo and our followers, as we began answering further questions in the comment section.
