Uber is building a support button so that users of the rideshare service no longer have to email the company's customer care division about unwanted scenic tours, billing issues and so on.
All its life, all six years of it, Uber has relied on email to provide customer support. But now that the company's rideshare network has grown big enough to support millions of trips each day, Uber is working to simplify the way its drivers and customers seek and receive support.
The email approach has become "increasingly inefficient," according to Uber. Teams couldn't learn from one another and work was often duplicated.
"Email not only puts a lot of the work on you, the customer, it also doesn't work in countries like China and India, where people increasingly don't have email addresses," says Uber.
So Uber has decided to make contacting support as streamlined as hailing a ride or picking up fares. The company will release an update to the Uber app that has a Help wizard, which funnels customers to the answers within the app.
"This new approach – easier to use technology and a global network of customer support centers – is already working. Response times are down and customer satisfaction has gone up by over 10 percent," Uber says.
Uber intends to start directing questions to the Help section of its app in the following weeks. The update will start in the U.S. and, over the next few months, expand to the other 68 countries that are home to Uber's network.
"Ultimately, our goal is to create a product that's so great you never need to contact customer service," Uber says.
Those who prefer to contact Uber's support teams via email will still be able to do so after the in-app customer support update.
The new Help menu isn't the only improvements due up for the Uber app. Uber just announced that it is releasing a widget that'll allow third party developers to add "Request a Ride" buttons into their own apps.
The company already has a Request a Ride button third parties have had access to for roughly a year now, but the new widget, aimed at Asia, requires minimum bandwidth and is ideal in areas where network resources are strained.
