Urban

I started with a year of support queries and spent a day with the customer support team. Four types of request accounted for roughly 80% of the total:

I led the research and design, working with Product, Customer Support, Supply, the engineering team and copywriters. Phone and on-site interviews with ten recent clients helped us understand what the support reports couldn’t tell us.

Clients could only amend or cancel a booking through customer support. The Head of Product and I prioritised self-service appointment management: it accounted for a large part of the support workload, and the business rules were already defined.

I reused the date and time selection screen from the booking flow to make the new feature feel familiar. The question was how to show prices after the user had already paid.

We tested both versions with ten users who had recently asked support to change a booking. I expected the final balance to be clearer, but seven of ten found the original slot price easier to understand.

Practitioner selection already had the highest drop-off in the booking funnel. Rather than sending clients back to find someone else, we let them ask their practitioner to add availability or contact support for an alternative.

Changing the time could mean an extra payment, a refund or no change in balance. We showed the old and new appointment details before confirmation. For refunds, credit was the default, with the original payment method also available.

The cancellation prompts explained the refund available at that point and reminded clients that they could reschedule. The aim was to make both the consequences and the alternatives clear.

Clients wanted reassurance that their practitioner would arrive on time. To understand what reliable updates could look like, we needed to see the journey from the practitioner’s side, too.

Everyone on the team spent a day travelling with a practitioner. They could be leaving home, another appointment or a nearby café. Most used public transport, where they could lose signal; others were driving and couldn’t use their phones.

Heavy equipment, rain, gloves and drained batteries meant we couldn’t expect constant interaction. We brought location, status updates and contact options into the appointment screen. We limited location requests and introduced time-sensitive updates, with a support fallback when the practitioner was out of reach.

A badge highlighted the new status tab. Push notifications sent shortly before the appointment linked directly to it.

Interviews uncovered something missing from the support reports: some clients didn’t know how to prepare for their treatment. We added preparation instructions and explained the value of notifications when appointment updates became relevant.

Instructions were managed through the CMS, so copywriters and the supply team could update them by service and country without waiting for an app release.

Sometimes practitioners reached the right street but couldn’t find the entrance. During research, practitioners described problems with building access codes and parking details. We added address confirmation after booking, when asking for these details made sense.

Clients could correct the map pin within a limited radius, so the address stayed within the practitioner’s service area.

We monitored support requests and cancellations every two weeks for three months after the full release. The four most common types of request fell by roughly 95%, representing an overall reduction of approximately 76%.

Making cancellation easier didn’t increase cancellations. In fact, 18% of users who intended to cancel ended up rescheduling instead.