Last week, I had to cancel a flight on Travelocity. The customer service was awful and here is an example of the userflow:
1) Go to the Travelocity Website.
2) Cannot find email address, only see a phone number.
3) Call the phone number.
4) On hold for 20 minutes.
5) Request to cancel a flight for Special Circumstances (funeral).
6) On hold for 20 more minutes.
7) Representative starts talking about Special Circumstances and emails documents to submit.
8) Cancels flight on Travelocity
9) Airline holds my funds until documents are submitted
10) Representative mentions 4-6 weeks until funds will be refunded.
The Three Big User Experience Problems I faced were the time lag, length of process, and lack of empathy.
1) The Time Lag
A user should not have to be on hold for 20 minutes for every 1 minute she speaks to a representative. My phone call was 50 minutes, and I was on hold for 20 minutes. 20 minutes was actually speedy because my friend traveling with me had to wait over 40 minutes per time she was put on hold. Representatives should know where to locate information quickly and be able to tell the caller what the caller wants to know quickly. Users may be prevented from receiving important information because of the lag --they may just hang up instead of sitting on the terrible user experience!
2) Long Process
It took about an hour from finding the information, getting on the phone, to receiving a cancellation confirmation. For my friend, it took over 2.5 hours to go through the process. This is a huge usability problem. A potential solution to the problem is to include a section/form on the website to complete and have a representative call the user on the user's schedule. If cost is an issue, a bot should be able to direct the user or take the user complaints at the moment and bounce it back to another bot or human who can form a solution.
Also, Travelocity requested special documents that it would send to the Airline. The user also has to send the same documents to the Airline before penalty funds can be returned. This is extremely confusing because if the user had booked directly through the Airline, the funds would be returned directly from the Airline. The process can easily take 2 weeks from receipt of documents. Because the length of the Special Circumstances submissions is so long, it lacks accessibility and users will likely forget to submit documents of ignore it. Perhaps this is one of Travelocity's goals!
3) Lack of Empathy
The customer service representative did not seem to understand requests for immediate refunds. In my experience, she was unable to break out of her script and "make an exception" or please the user. Even if she was unable to meet the request for an immediate refund, she was unable to provide an explanation besides "company policy".
As previously mentioned, I cancelled a flight under Special Circumstances of a funeral. Initially, the representative was uncomfortable with even mentioning that I was cancelling because of a funeral. I had to ask bluntly, "Do I need to PROVE I have a death certificate?" The representative began reading the documents that the user would need to submit. She specified the urgent need for the documents to be submitted within 2 weeks. Not once did the representative mention a condolence or "Sorry for your loss." The experience of speaking to the Travelocity representative was like speaking to a robot: monotone and apathetic.
Results?
My friend and I re-booked our flight for later December. We both decided to use Expedia instead. After speaking to a monotone robot who couldn't empathize and waiting for 2.5 hours, users get frustrated and turn to competitors. Providing a good user experience in customer service is essential --or you will lose your customers.