Rethinking Cancellation Flow for Uber

I’ve lived in Delhi and surrounding areas for more than three years now and I’m more than grateful that I came here when Uber was just starting out. When I took my first Uber ride, I wasn’t aware of the scale at which they were going and what massive solution they were building. Today, I use Uber at least once a day on an average and I’m still a fan. They are solving for a global audience, but there are always challenges on a local level that they need to take care of. The inspiration for this post came from Mauricio Uehara’s post that suggest a UX idea for Uber for Brazil and Latin America. I am proposing a small update to their UX in India. This is in no way a critique, but simply a humble suggestion that I hope the brilliant Product team at Uber may take a note of.

The Problem

Delhi has had a problem with Taxi owners not picking up riders and refusing to provide their services without a reason. It has been around for more than a decade (even more, I wasn’t around at that time) and it hasn’t stopped.

There are times when you book a trip on Uber, but the driver simply refuses to pick you up (different app but same people) and doesn’t even cancel. You eventually end up cancelling the trip, mostly selecting the correct reason which is “My driver asked me to cancel”. It is more than probable that you are anyway going to book a second ride, but your booking experience just ends there and you have to start all over again. You are already frustrated having had to cancel your booking, and you have to go through the process of entering their destination, selecting the Uber type and payment mode again. What a delight!

The current flow for booking a ride after having to cancel the previous trip

Proposed Solution

There are two routes you can pick to build on this problem —

1. When the user taps on “My driver asked me to Cancel” in the cancellation reasons, show a modal asking if you’d like to book a trip on the same route. Take input in yes or no. If no, continue with the usual flow. If yes, start searching for an Uber right away. Easy peasy!
2. After the user taps on “My driver asked me to Cancel”, skip the intermediate steps for booking the trip and input all the essentials as the same from the previous trip. Land the user on the Confirmation page where they only have to tap once to request a ride. Once it is tapped, start searching for an Uber nearby.

From a Product perspective, I would go with option 1, because it would increase the chances of booking a second ride. From a rider’s perspective, I would still want to have the control, so I would go with the second option. This is open to more analysis, but with sufficient data we can make an informed decision on which way to go.

End note

This started as a solution for the times when riders have to cancel the trip because they were asked by the driver, but there are other valid reasons in the list of cancellation reasons that Uber provides. If you expected a shorter wait time, or your Uber wasn’t driving in your direction or you couldn’t find your Uber, you are more than likely to try and book a second ride. This solution is relevant in those situations as well. On an operational level, they should implement rides in a way where the same Uber isn’t booked for subsequent attempts. That is an improvement I definitely want to see in the Uber experience.