Customer Support at the Push of a Button

At Uber, we work day in and day out to provide a great experience for drivers and riders in cities all over the world. But we know there will always be times when you need to get in contact: a purse left in a car; an abusive passenger; a bug in the app. And when you do need to get in touch — whether you’re a driver or a rider — our goal is to make it as quick and painless as possible.

Six years ago when we first got started, all Uber’s customer support was done via email, at support@uber.com, and handled by our local city teams. That was fine when we were smaller. But as we grew —  there are now millions of trips taken every day across 69 countries  —  this approach became increasingly inefficient because the individual city teams could not learn from each other. There was also a lot of duplicate work.

So we started to think about how we could better support our customers around the world. Over the last two years we have invested millions of dollars in a global network of support centers in Chicago (US), Phoenix (US), Limerick (Ireland), Krakow (Poland), Wuhan (China), Hyderabad (India) and Manila (The Philippines). We also wanted a better technical answer than just email. 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.

After all if you can get a ride — or work — at the push of a button, why shouldn’t you be able to get great customer support as well? Well we’ve now built a simple, easy to use in-app answer. Want to ask about a jacket you lost on a night out? Check your passenger rating? Submit a question about a receipt that looks wrong or an odd trip route? Just tap “Help” and all the information you need is right there.

 

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. So over the next few weeks, we’ll begin directing riders and drivers to contact us directly through the Uber app instead of via email. You can message us there, or follow up via the email notifications if that’s still your preferred method. This change will begin in the US and expand globally over the next few months. Ultimately, our goal is to create a product that’s so great you never need to contact customer service. In the meantime, we’re doubling down on our technology so that when you need to get in touch, it’s as quick and easy as getting a ride.