Creating Technology for Social Change

Liveblogging #ODR2014: Increasing Trust through Resolving Issues in the Collaborative Economy

I’m here at the #ODR2014 conference. ODR2014 is the annual meeting of the Online Dispute Resolution Forum, an international assembly of lawyers, mediators, technologists, and others who care about technology and dispute resolution.

The livestream is here and embedded below:

 


 



Colin Rule, our host, introduces Monroe Labouisse, Former Director of Customer Service and Trust and Safety at AirBnB (now Head of User Operations at Stripe), and Nick Waldmann, Director of Customer Support / Trust and Safety at TaskRabbit; like Colin, both are former eBayers (slides). 

Nick begins by defining trust in the context of the collaborative economy. He runs through a series of analogies and images (the metaphor of a ‘well-lit room’ sticks with me) which boil down to trust as the practice of feeling safe to share different types of information about oneself. Monroe distinguishes trust from fraud models, certifications, and guarantees, which he sees as conditions for safety as distinct from trust. Trust is built through, e.g., having excellent customer service, where users feel like they can build a genuine connection with the service provider.

How can trust be measured? Nick and Monroe define repeat usage, fewer customer inbound contacts, and net positive word of mouth as metrics indicating trust; poor experiences, negative social media engagement, and frequent escalations of complaints as metrics indicating a lack of trust. As Brian Burke did in the earlier session, both nod toward the epistemological issue of ‘silent sufferers,’ i.e. those who have such a bad experience they don’t even leave reviews. Ideally, your trust solutions will help identify possible bad experiences so that your customer relations teams can be proactive in reaching out to customers before they can disengage.

Monroe says that PayPal once asked its customers what generated trust. Consistently, three things mattered: 1) a well-designed, beautiful, up-to-date website, 2) accessible customer service, 3) TV commercials. Monroe says this last one shocked him, but the logic articulated by users were that if your company could afford TV commercials, you must be for real.

He then lays out what he thinks a successful dispute resolution process looks like: 1) easy to file, 2) do what is necessary right away, 3) constant contact with parties, 4) immediate refund (if applicable), 5) pushback on abusive behavior only. AirBnB and TaskRabbit, like eBay, find that customers expect fast service. Companies need to take on the risk associated with quick refunds in order to meet customer expectations and do the right thing in order to build trust.

An audience member asks how many disputes their companies have. Monroe won’t disclose a number but says the percentage of disputes in the sharing economy is quite low (<1%) of transactions. Nick also won’t disclose a number, but says, echoing Colin’s point from the last panel, that he finds their disputes often increase brand loyalty. Colin steps in to note that, across the industry, 1-3% of transactions being disputed is a round number, but the vast majority are are resolved amicably for those who implement a dispute resolution strategy.