Opinion: A customer tried to cancel their hotel reservation online. What happened next is something no company should ever do

The basic idea behind Hotels.com is that it’s a simple place to book hotel reservations, often at a discount. You give up perks like earning loyalty points or status with your favorite hotel chain, in exchange for the convenience and price. I guess, technically, Hotels.com has a rewards program that it shares with its parent company, Expedia, but it’s pretty bad.

Perhaps the thought is that people who are using Hotels.com to search primarily for the lowest rate will be willing to give up on things like earning rewards. Unfortunately, it also seems like the company thinks people are willing to also give up other things – like a great experience.

Recently, I was talking with a colleague who was leaving on a trip and had booked several reservations on Hotels.com. As we finished our meeting, he realised that since some of his plans had changed, he needed to cancel one of those reservations. As you might imagine, he pulled out his iPhone, opened the app, went to the reservation, and tapped “cancel”.

So far, this all seems completely normal, right? That’s what you would expect to do. If a company has an app that allows you to book reservations, or otherwise generally buy something, you would expect that you could use that app to cancel a reservation. In this case, however, it was a little more complicated because the hotel had a cutoff of 3pm to cancel without a penalty, and it was 2.58pm.

By the way, it should always be as simple as tapping a button. We’ll come back to that in a minute. In this case, however, that isn’t what happened. When my colleague tapped the button to cancel, he was placed in a queue to chat with a virtual agent.

Think about this: Instead of connecting the Cancel Reservation button in the app to some sort of process that cancels the reservation, Hotels.com has decided that that process should involve some sort of game where you try to get a chatbot to accomplish basically the same thing. Oh, and in this case, it needed to happen in two minutes.

As I’m sure you can imagine, it did not. I would probably not be writing about it had it happened in less than two minutes – though I would still think it would be a terrible user experience. By the time the chatbot did its thing, the reservation was canceled, but since it was then after 3pm, my colleague was told that his card would be charged the cancellation fee.

You might argue that my colleague should have planned a little further ahead. That’s fair, but – if it’s as simple as tapping a button – it shouldn’t matter. Two minutes is plenty of time to tap a button. What’s the point of technology anyway if it can’t solve a problem like this?

Then again, maybe that was the point. Technology is great in that it can make companies more efficient while providing a better experience for users. The problem is, sometimes companies use technology to force customers into an outcome that seems like it’s better for business.

I get it – companies introduce friction in an effort to reduce what they consider undesirable outcomes. Obviously, having people cancel their reservation is an undesirable outcome, so if you can reduce that by making more steps, or making it harder, you might think it’s better for the business. Making it harder for people to cancel seems like it’s better because if it’s hard, fewer people will cancel.

As a general rule, however, if you’re making things harder for your customers, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re adding technology because you think it will improve the customer experience, it should be an experience people actually want to use. No one wants to use your chatbot.

I have a rule, which is that every online service should have a button that lets you cancel your membership, subscription, or reservation. It should be a single button that’s easy to find on your account homepage. When you press or tap the button, you get one dialogue box that asks “Are you sure you want to cancel? This will take effect immediately.” You have two choices: “Yes, cancel,” or “No, I changed my mind.”

That’s it. There should be no sales pitch or retention flow that ends up making customers angry or frustrated. Sometimes, the best way to keep customers is by making it easy to do everything – including cancel.

In fact, I cannot think of a single time when a chatbot experience was better than either figuring out how to do something on my own or chatting with an actual human. But, again, there was no reason my colleague should have had to chat with anyone. Just make the button do the thing it says on the label.

Netflix, for example, knows this. Signing up for Netflix has very little additional mental overhead cost because canceling is as simple as tapping a single button on the website. In fact, canceling Netflix is easier than signing up. You don’t have to chat with someone, call someone, or do anything other than tap a button.

I reached out to Hotels.com but did not immediately receive a response to my request for comment. – Inc./Tribune News Service