How Far Can You Push Customers' Trust?
In the wake of Airbnb's home-vandal scandal, start-ups in the collaborative consumption space are rebuilding peer-to-peer buying's reputation. Here's how.
Airbnb found itself in a public relations nightmare this summer that threatened to undermine its whole ethos of amiable and unique person-to-person connections. Gawker published an account of a user of the start-up vacation-property rental site whose home was ransacked by a vistor who destroyed property, rummaged through her personal belongings, and set fire to sheets. The incident had some wondering if the site was doing enough to protect its users as it facilitates transactions between strangers.
It's a question that stretches well beyond just Airbnb: a number of fast-growing start-ups are bucking traditional methods of booking a room (like Airbnb), renting a car (Getaround), leasing office space (Loosecubes), hiring a helping hand (TaskRabbit), or planning a vacation (Vayable). The new wave is sometimes referred to as "collaborative consumption" because it connects people with limited resources to those with under-used assets and relies on a sense of community among users.
But without the usual marketplace checks and balances in place, how much are customers willing to trust each other to provide safe and reliable experiences? It's one thing when you're talking about buying a used lamp over eBay—but entirely another when you're handing over the keys to your only set of wheels.
The companies say they learned a lot from the Airbnb incident and are taking steps to protect their users, from pre-screenings to providing insurance coverage. But how do you get people to trust a total stranger with something as valuable as their car or home or office? The answer, say the companies, lies in social media and going beyond the typical client-customer relationship.
Providing a Security Blanket
The San Francisco woman whose Airbnb house was ransacked was followed by more tales of users who returned home to find their belongings rifled through, birth certificates stolen, and general havoc caused by meth addicts. It was a PR double whammy for the company, which was also slammed for not responding fast enough and not fully vetting its users.
Does that mean the new world of collaborative consumption is still just as vulnerable to creeps as Craigslist? The companies say they now have something going for them that you won't find on Craigslist: insurance.
Airbnb says the incident was an anomaly among the thousands of other successful transactions that go through its site every month, and that business did not suffer because of the controversy. But the company also stepped up development of tools in its "Trust & Safety" center on its site to ensure comfort levels, which includes a new $50,000 host-guarantee the site launched in the summer to let hosts know Airbnb will support them in cases of theft and vandalism.
But the Airbnb incident provided an example to other similar start-ups of what they can do to insure customers feel as comfortable as they would buying from a family owned store down the street.
Starting in January, Loosecubes—a office-space leasing site based in Brooklyn, New York—is implementing an optional insurance rider brokered through a national insurance firm that will cover $50,000 worth of damage to the workspace to make hosts feel more comfortable.
"So, just in case a Loosecuber spills a coffee on your iMac or accidentally writes on your whiteboard with a sharpie, Loosecubes will have you covered," says Anna Thomas, the company's chief happiness officer.
It also includes some general etiquette norms in its terms of agreement, such as not sharing sensitive information from other workers in the space.
Vayable, a service that lets users search for and pay for unique travel experiences designed and curated by locals, interviews all of its guides before approving their experience packages, either in person or by Skype, founder Jamie Wong says. The company also reviews packages before they go live on the site to make sure they are clear for travelers to understand. "We feel a strong sense of responsibility to users," she says.
In the case of start-up TaskRabbit, which lets users hire other people for everyday errands or odd jobs, the company puts its errand-doers through a questionnaire, video interview, criminal background check, and an online quiz on the company's manual before accepting jobs through the site. Plus, like most of these new services, the site offers 24/7 customer service.
"Truly, they're our first line of customer service out there in the field," says Leah Busque, TaskRabbit's founder and chief product officer.
Drivers using peer-to-peer car rental site Getaround are required to provide their drivers license number as well as Facebook information for security. But the site also limits what kind of cars can be rented: nothing older than 1995 or with more than 150,000 miles on it. And if all else fails, there's 24/7 roadside service.
Enabling the Return to Real, Live Human Connection
Sites that deal with this kind of peer-to-peer connections are increasingly banking on the safety net of social networks, same networks that have caused the decline of real-world communities over the past two decades.
Now, these businesses are not only harnessing a bounce back from that effect—people are looking to make connections with real people again instead of just booking a service through an automated website—they're also counting on the fact that it's hard to remain anonymous in the days of Foursquare checkins and tagged photos.
"Technology is enabling people to get off the Internet and connect with each other offline in a trusted way," Busque says. "Fifteen years ago, there was probably a kid in the neighborhood who would wash your car, mow your lawn. As the Internet initially developed, we lost that sense of community. The Internet really siloed us in early days."
Real-world connections are especially of interest to the people who use Loosecubes. The kinds of developers, creative-industry wrokers, and other independent professionals who need workspace often benefit from being exposed to new kinds of coworkers—even ones from different fields. A recent study cited by the Brooklyn DIY Business Association says that 80 percent of people in co-working spaces end up going into business with their fellow coworkers.
"I think there's kind of this yearning for people to get back together in person," Thomas says. "A lot of really great Loosecubes experience is born out of that kind of serendipity."
