Error handling in apps is critical as it avoids a potential loss in profit for the company whenever users can be helpfully redirected as opposed to becoming frustrated and leaving the app.

Slack

Slack has pretty great error handling in that it provides multiple steps the user can take to recover their work flow. For Slack, it is important to have good error handling because its revenue stream depends on workplace retention. This means that if it allows too many errors, individual users may get too frustrated with the app, which can result in entire workspaces moving to another Slack alternative, which would result in a massive cut to Slack’s revenue.

Uber

Uber has pretty bad error handling. For the most part, it does not provide helpful information on what is causing the errors nor what the user can do to address them. But for Uber, having good error handling is not too critical because the end result of errors, ultimately, is that a ride is not completed. The loss in profit of one single ride is not huge for Uber since they will have millions more, which is likely why they do not really care about handling errors well.

Banking Apps

To be honest, a lot of banking apps do not really have good error handling either. Most of the time, they will just say that a service is down and to come back later. While this is unideal, it is not a huge deal for banking apps because users already put a lot of trust in them and it would take a lot for them to pick up their money and move it elsewhere. As someone who sees these errors a lot myself, I just have faith the app will be working again when I check in later.