Intro to Social Hacking: How we lowered our cancellation rate by 90%

http://blog.joingrouper.com/intro-to-social-hacking-how-we-lowered-our-ca

by waxman • 14 years ago

277 42 14 years ago

blog.joingrouper.com

Amazing. And it totally makes sense. Congrats on using clever thinking to improve a very important metric for your business :)

waxman9• 14 years ago

Thanks :)

kbadal• 14 years ago

Brilliant integration, Waxman!

ajju• 14 years ago

Very cool! What happens if a group just does not show up?

waxman9• 14 years ago

It's extremely rare (see above), but when it does happen we do everything we can to make it up to the other group (free drinks, free Groupers, profuse apologies, etc.) and lay down the law on the other group (including removing them from the community).

pbhjpbhj• 14 years ago

Have you sought statistics for no-shows that aren't reported. There's a general prohibition against reporting other people's failings particularly when trying to appear warm and accommodating.

Not sure how you'd do it except perhaps as an exit question for people leaving your community.

tkahn6• 14 years ago

Cancellations through the service went down, but did actual cancellations (as in, the person just doesn't show) go down?

If you make it harder to cancel you're relying even more heavily on the integrity or conscience of the cancelling party to notify the other group members of their desire to cancel. 90% seems like a really drastic decrease which is why I bring this up.

waxman9• 14 years ago

We call these "no-shows" and, fortunately our no-show rate is less than 0.2%. In other words, both groups show up more than 99.8% of the time.

This will likely be the topic of a future blog post...

LokiSnake• 14 years ago

Just a hypothesis, but is this because users are committing in groups of 3? I bet no-shows would increase if you paired groups of 2 or 1.

ipince• 14 years ago

So you give the canceller the 3 phone numbers of the other 3 people? I'm not sure if I'd want my number to be given away...

Or do you use another number that temporarily redirects/connects them to the other people anonymously? If so, I'm curious to know how you do that.

waxman9• 14 years ago

Yep, it's definitely not their real a number. We built a simple Twilio app.

itsprofitbaron• 14 years ago

IMO, I'd highlight that its actually not their phone number rather its a Twilio number etc which is used to call them up.

So I would change:

  we would give you a number for the other group, and YOU WOULD CALL THEM (not us) TO APOLOGIZE.

To something like:

  we would give you a number for the other group which does not reveal their actual phone number, and YOU WOULD CALL THEM (not us) TO APOLOGIZE.

The reason for this, is if users read your company blog it may put them off when/if they read it as, I immediately assumed that their number is be given out which could lead to confusion.

sgtsugarfingers• 14 years ago

This reminds me of a really funny image I saw recently. It depicted the perceived consequences of a status update against the "reality". At the top, Obama was presenting to a cheering crowd and just below, Tom Hanks sat marooned on an island screaming desperately at his inanimate volleyball. It's easy to feel like the master of the universe when the whole world is there to cheer for you through digitally mediated approval metrics. But people are not toys sitting idly to provide us a convenient hit of oxytocin when we need it. It's crucial to be reminded of that! Providing a number to call someone and apologize for bailing on them is a spark of genius. Using all this digital stuff should enrich interactions in meatspace, rather than allow us to decouple from it. Bravo!

waxman9• 14 years ago

Thanks! Really well put.

sixQuarks• 14 years ago

Hahaha! I love the "don't click the hook" image on your web site. Brilliant! Did you guys create that yourselves or is that some sort of plugin?

waxman9• 14 years ago

Ha thanks!

We hand-rolled it with jQuery and a hook image from iStockPhoto (what can we say, we couldn't avoid the the easy fish pun), but if people are interested we could release it as a jQuery plug-in.

digitallimit• 14 years ago

Are you guys hiring? :P

fruchtose• 14 years ago

I think using too many fish/aquatic puns is unhealthy psychologically. You otter look into finding someone who can kelp you with this issue.

hellweaver666• 14 years ago

It's a bit like the 'do not pull' lever in the Photojojo product pages.

abbasmehdi• 14 years ago

This is so smart! A lot of tech is awesome but lets never forget that its humans with actual psychologies using the technology. These users face social pressures to be upstanding and responsible like we all do in real life - being online is not an excuse for bad behavior - this is a great example of the merger b/w virtual and real lives.

Seems like LinkedIn pioneered this, HN also does this to a great degree, but now Grouper is taking it to the next level as it holds you responsible for your online actions offline.

The wheels are turning in my head about ways to leverage people's desire to manage their personal brand into a mutually beneficial situation for all parties involved. Good job Waxman! You might have stumbled upon something profound here.

waxman9• 14 years ago

Thanks, Abbas!

We're actually soon going to roll out a big, new feature that will take this notion to the next level. We're really excited about it. Stay tuned...

batiudrami• 14 years ago

I really like this idea as well. Are you pitching it as a dating site or just as a group of people to hang out with? Making it groups, in my mind, takes away a lot of the stigma of online dating websites, though I wonder what you gender breakdown is like - do you have many groups of men compared to women? Is there a wait time before a night can be organised?

craze3• 14 years ago

Let this be a lesson: not all your problems can be solved by code. Sometimes you need to take a step back and think about the root cause of the problem. Often times (as well as in Grouper's example), the solution is to reconstruct your model so that your incentives and/or consequences are clearer to your users.

weff2• 14 years ago

I've visited the website and I'm confused: are Facebook-less creatures unable to partake in the service? Wouldn't that be kind of weird?

waxman9• 14 years ago

Sorry, @weff.

Right now we require Facebook, because we heavily rely on the graph to match groups while requiring minimal work from our members. For instance, we want to make sure the two groups don't already know each other, and we haven't figured out a good way to replicate this functionality without Facebook (e.g. "tell us all the people you know!")

If you have any ideas, though, we'd love to hear them.

weff2• 14 years ago

Yeah, I did not foresee that; it's actually quite critical you use Facebook.

Anything requiring the users to confirm they don't know the name of the other party slows the process quite some and removes the laissez-faire element.

rolleiflex• 14 years ago

This is one of the very few fair reasons to use facebook. However, I would have liked to see the explanation in the website (why only facebook?) and a stronger wording telling what you will and won't do with facebook. You're saying "We won't post on your behalf" but you don't say anything about what you will do. You might not post on my facebook, but you might be looking through my messages; that kind of thing is unfortunately the hallmark of facebook itself. Without an explanation, a facebook-only site looks very fishy. (heh)

cdcarter• 14 years ago

And what about people looking to meet with the same gender? Even though you aren't actively advertising as a dating service, I imagine that if me and two friends showed up, the girls looking for eligible single men might be a little sad.

Alex39172• 14 years ago

For what it's worth, anyone who liked this post would probably really like this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communities...

there• 14 years ago

They would like a book that hasn't been released yet?

Alex39172• 14 years ago

All the chapters are available for free on Bob Kraut's website, I didn't realize that the book hadn't come out yet.

tripzilch• 14 years ago

Great solution and great job on making sure they're not getting each others phone numbers!

leak• 14 years ago

Really great article and solution!

This is a company I would invest in today. These guys know the game and are playing it accordingly.

GGNH• 14 years ago

nice post, Wax. can't wait to go on one come the summer!

EGreg• 14 years ago

I rarely upvote things to boomark them, but this is exactly the kind of thing that I like to read about.

We are building a platform for groups of people come together, kind of like grouper does for 3 guys and 3 girls, but a different approach. And psychology is a huge part of it! Making people want to do what you want them to do, or not want to do what you don't want them to do, is an art. But it is also a science, and there should be some sort of knowledge base of psychological tactics, in social apps or otherwise.

Anyone know of anything like that?

davemel37• 14 years ago

There is a reason there is no Knowledge base of psychological tactics in social apps or otherwise. It's because those that really understand people and these tactics appreciate how valuable it really is and more importantly know how to make you want to throw gobs of money at them for this information!!!

Here is what I can tell you without getting in trouble. People take action because of emotional reasons, and justify that decision with logic and "objective" reasons to defend their decision to others.

Every single thing you want your users to do is causing them pain. They do not want to click... Before they do even the simplest thing possible, they will rack their brain for excuses to not do it and avoid the pain you created for them. Your job is to make it MORE PAINFUL NOT TO TAKE ACTION!!!

There are two ways to do this. (you should do both) 1. Make the process as painless as possible. 2. remind them and aggravate the pain that led them to your app in the first place.

Make sure your messaging not only hits on the emotional triggers at play and focuses on the benefits, not the features... (People buy the hole, not the drill) but more importantly gives them the tools to defend their action to their friends and everyone else who they need to defend the decision to. ------------

You should read Napoleon Hill's book "Think and Grow Rich," if you read it carefully, you will see it is literally a bible of understanding human nature and the world, etc...

Here is a slightly relevant excerpt and list from the book, "The 10 Mind Stimuli. The stimuli to which the mind responds most freely are:

1. The Desire For Sex Expression 2. Love 3. A Burning Desire for fame, power, financial gain, money... 4. Music 5. Friendship between either those of the same sex or those of the opposite sex. 6. A Master Mind Alliance based upon the harmony of two or more people who ally themselves for spiritual or temporal advancement. 7. Mutual Suffering, such as that experienced by people who are persecuted. 8. Autosuggestion 9. Fear 10. Narcotics and Alcohol.

I hope this helps... Good Luck!

kxmg546• 14 years ago

To what purpose?

seancoughlin• 14 years ago

i dig how you changed the cancellation process, because it encourages ppl to do what your app is intended to do - get groups of 3 together in real life. your old policy was giving incentives for your core mission NOT to happen. i wonder how your service plans to thrive in nyc, where a similar service - ignighter - had to go to india to really succeed. would love to hear your thoughts.

HalibetLector• 14 years ago

Did overall Groupers scheduled also go down once people realized they couldn't cancel without having to do it themselves? also, is the no-show rate still 0.2% after implementing this policy? I find it hard to believe these other metrics didn't move at least a little bit.

Intro to Social Hacking: How we lowered our cancellation rate by 90%

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