I recently had a new and different experience using Expedia.com – one that, despite my many years as a happy and loyal customer, caused reexamination of two things: how quickly a single online event can cause consumers to reconsider brand value, and the importance of timely error messages in the overall user experience.
After finding a Labor Day flight and saving the price details as an itinerary in my trusty Expedia account early in the day, I went to complete my purchase later that evening. I checked the pricing to ensure it hadn’t changed, entered payment info, and hit the “purchase” button.
But instead of the expected confirmation page, I got … well, nothing. A blank page with the Expedia header and nothing else. I waited about a minute for the customary confirmation email, but it didn’t arrive.
Puzzled, I immediately called Expedia’s customer service line. After explaining the situation to a rep, I was informed the fare pricing had apparently updated during my transaction (although I never saw any evidence of this) and that was why the purchase hadn’t been completed. The current fare was unfortunately now almost double what I’d selected during my transaction. The rep could not provide any other details, so I asked for a supervisor. Almost 10 minutes later, I got one on the line – but just a few moments into our conversation, he disconnected while I was in the middle of a sentence. I called back. Again had to explain the situation to a new rep. Again waited for a new supervisor. And again, almost immediately after I began speaking, was disconnected.
At this point, I initiated a series of email exchanges with Expedia and eventually received a response that at least appeared to be from a human being – but still did not offer any explanation other than “fares sometimes change.”
So what do I know now that I didn’t know before?
This situation pushed me to re-evaluate the current value Expedia offered to my travel efforts. Within a period of less than 24 hours, a brand and company I had happily used for years was weighed, measured, and found wanting. The confluence of the two events: lack of error messaging coupled with the customer service encounter resulted in an inordinate amount of frustration which allowed doubt to enter. And thus, investigation into other online travel services.
Lokion has typically found that while companies are careful to map out the “best experience” scenarios for shopping carts, purchasing and personalization, those same companies often can overlook the importance of experience when things go wrong. We are so focused on what happens online, we also overlook that the “brand experiences” overlap and must work together to accommodate a range of customer situations, feelings and needs.
The website user experience went awry in the absence of appropriate messaging when the transaction didn’t process completely. The blank page clearly indicated to me as the user that something was wrong, but I certainly didn’t understand that the blank page = no valid transaction. From my previous successful experiences with Expedia, I assumed it was a display error, not a “this just isn’t happening” message.
There could’ve been a page stating the fare had increased and couldn’t be processed at the rate I had selected. It might not have mitigated my disappointment at ruined travel plans, but at least it would have been understandable, and it might have altered my decision to call customer service – thus avoiding a non-productive telephone and email exchange.
In light of all the above, I regretfully must re-format my exclusive relationship with Expedia after a relationship of over a decade. Oh sure, it would be easier to stay. I’ve invested a lot of time, after all.
It seems I’m going to be seeing other travel service providers. Call if you’d like to get together over error messaging and customer service sometime. We can do coffee.
- MJ
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