Customer Support: How Uber leads the way?

Today, we took an Ola from our home to Nandi Hills and after we returned back, we realized that one of the eye-shades (which was kept in a case) was missing. It was kept in the car most certainly as per the recent memory (however very slim chances it might have been lost in the hills). The driver was not super cordial during the trip as there was a language barrier and he wasn't too keen on stopping multiple times during the trip (the cab was on a daily km's package - 10 hrs and 100 kms). We called him up after 1/2 hrs of the trip and asked about the missing case, he told us that he has checked the car and that there was nothing (Well, we might have lost them, not sure!).

The shades were pretty costly, so i thought its better to report the issue to Ola. I opened the app and found this in the reporting option:

It was interesting to see that Ola provided an option to reach out to the driver and otherwise raise a police complaint if the issue is not resolved; there was no option to reach out to Ola (it was a bit surprising to me and i was curious to see how Uber handles such scenarios). I opened the Uber app and navigated to the 'Lost Items' section and found this flow:

Here, Uber also provides an option to reach to Uber Support in case one is unable to contact the driver or he is unable to help. The additional option, may or may not resolve the eventual issue. But it does show that Uber handles this support scenario in a better way, providing an escalation channel to the customers. Now, there is still an option that a user can separately reach out to Ola for the issue/escalation. Now there are a couple of points related to this:

1) Not a great user experience, users have to separately find the reporting option (via email or in-app flow). Find the details of the ride separately and then report the issue. (Tip: If there is in-app reporting built for this, also easier for Ola to map the report to the ride and the driver/customer profile.)

2) Drivers take multiple trips each day; overtime it'll be interesting to look at reporting trends (complaints/escalations) at a driver level and see how are escalations managed for 'lost item' cases. How are the driver ratings correlated to the reports. These data points will help Uber identify driver behavior (which drivers are helping resolve such cases or if there a tendency of no-coordination for certain drivers etc.)

Thus, a small observation on the in-app reporting behavior for the 'lost items' scenario where Uber shows us how to think with a customer-first approach. As i always say, if you take care of your customers, your customers will take care of you (and your business).

PS: Do share if you had any experiences of 'lost items' with Uber/Ola and if they were resolved and how was the reporting experience?

Disclaimer: This post only looks at one specific reporting scenario and does not compare/evaluate any other support options/experience between Uber and Ola.