Instacart: you never forget your first

Your order is being fulfilled.  Just kidding, your order has been cancelled.

That was my first - and so far, the only - Instacart experience.  It was a beautiful December day, and I got wind of a great deal on a power tool at Lowe's.  (Can never have too many power tools, amiright?)  It was a one-day sale, act fast, don't have time to drive to a Lowe's store, and no delivery available type of situation.  Luckily, we live in the time of multiple delivery services, created to satisfy our boundless desire for instant satisfaction - with same-day or within-the-hour delivery.  Using one seemed like a good option, I thought, let's give it a go.  Even with delivery fees and tips, it still made sense.

The honeymoon

Within seconds, my registration was completed, and my order was in.  "Your order is confirmed" triggered the next dopamine release, and I felt a sense of accomplishment and congratulated myself on my own resourcefulness.  But the magic was not over. In the next couple of hours, the Instacart mobile app very helpfully kept me appraised of the status of the order via frequent updates.  There, a shopper was assigned to my order.  Then, they were on the way to the store.  Instacart turned out to be not only a great listener, but also a wonderful communicator. It spoke my love language - through acts of service, gift giving, providing words of affirmation. Things were moving fast, but it felt so right. Instacart and I were clearly meant to be together.

Less suck

Then, out of the blue, the stream of reassuring, feel-good messages was interrupted. What came next was not even "hey, we need to talk" or "there might be a problem". It was a straight up breakup-over-text bombshell. "Your order has been cancelled."  Was this a mistake? Did I do something wrong? I was going through the list of possible reasons, replaying my words and actions in my head, confused and disappointed, but still hopeful. Surely, they will tell me why. Maybe, we can still fix this.

Alas, no such luck. The message did not provide any reason for the cancellation. Instead, it promised that I would get a refund. Well, OK, in this case a refund should be a given, but it was helpful to get the reassurance. At the same time, a refund sounded very final and irreversible, as in there was nothing else that could have been done to get the order fulfilled. So, what the hell happened?

The mobile app did not provide any additional insight either. Nor was there a follow-up email with an explanation. The silence was deafening, and the mystery was unsettling. Instacart, I was so into you, how could you let me down like that?  If there was anything my IRL relationships have taught me, it was to confront things head on.  So, I responded with "What was the reason for the cancellation?"- let's get things on the table, this is the time to be honest with each other.  This conversation will make or break us.

When I quickly got a response, I was excited.  Wow, these guys are on top of it.  As a read on, however, I was getting confused and slightly annoyed (1st world problems, I get it): "I understand you had trouble applying promotion to your order".  Nope, that was not the issue.  What in my original message may have suggested I had an issue with a promotion?  The rest of the email did shed some light on the seemingly inexplicable disconnect: it was auto-generated.  It didn't make me feel better, and the link between my message and promotions was puzzling.  Yet I chalked it up to the imperfect nature of auto-responders.  So, I followed up again and got a human to get back to me.  Finally, I had my explanation:

Well, that sucks, but obviously not the end of the world.  I will get over it. Grammatical and syntactic errors aside, what annoyed me, however, was lack of timely transparency.  By the time I received this human response, it was already too late, and my coveted Lowe's deal was no longer.  Had I known this earlier, I might have been able to do something about it - like, place another order, or make alternative arrangements.  I asked the team the most obvious followup question (although wasn't holding my breath): "Curious - why wasn't the reason for the cancellation included in any of Instacart's communication?  I suppose it could have been any number of reasons, it would have been super helpful to know it at the time of the cancellation - to understand what happened, but also have the information to be able to take the correct followup action."

The response, unfortunately, was just a rehash of the earlier email, plus a note that my feedback will be shared with the appropriate team.  And just like that, we had ourselves a very disappointing conclusion to an initially stellar and promising customer experience. Not only the cancellation process was flawed, but the customer support followup was a letdown, putting the entire relationship in question.

Product manager's thoughts

I have a lot of empathy for customer support teams. I've worked with them side by side for many years, and they are often caught between a rock and hard place - the customer and the product team - with very limited, if any, ability to influence the product experience. It's a tough (and often, not terribly well paid) job. Most of the time, the best they can do is pass the feedback along, while bearing the brunt of customers' frustration. Yet, it could have been handled better - with the right language, it could help soften the blow, rather than, as it was in this case, add to the frustration.

The product experience fail, on the other hand, is a clear miss. Same-day delivery is all about timing.  That's the whole point of the service.  If something goes wrong, getting a timely notification is great.  But I also want to know why things went wrong - because that helps me figure out what I need to do.  Now, not later.  At a minimum, the notification - either via email or in the app - should have included the reason for the cancellation.  Better yet, it should have provided me some suggestions.  If you couldn't fulfill the order earlier in the day, is there an option to do it later?  Is it possible to assign it to someone else?  Do I need to resubmit?  Should I give up?

More awesome

Better customer experience breeds greater loyalty.  First customer experiences, as we know, are particularly vulnerable to failures - it's hard to come back from a fuckup. Instacart has been around for a while, and my guess there's been ample time to dial this in.  Was the messaging overlooked because order cancellation is relatively infrequent?  Was the information blackout a result of human error? Well, this guy thinks you can do better, Instacart.  There might be yet a second chance for this relationship. I will keep the door ajar.