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If the situation were reversed, how would you handle it? You run a service that connects two parties, something happens, and there is a dispute. Do you ban one

If the situation were reversed, how would you handle it? You run a service that connects two parties, something happens, and there is a dispute. Do you ban one of the parties, or both, or neither? Do you force them to go to arbitration? Does this scale? How much time, energy, and capital is appropriate to expend on this situation?

dman 8y ago
Reserve an appropriate amount of profits to make things right for the transactions that do not go as expected. How much to reserve needs to be determined on an ongoing basis based on the split of good / bad transactions. I think AirBnb needs to bite the bullet and do their own insurance or find an insurance company that will give users the same kind of experience that AirBnb gives to its clients.
nieksand 8y ago
I would never ban people without telling them why they were banned. That's just moronic. I'd offer banned user contact information that goes directly to a human being which can be used to appeal if the user believes they did not violate said terms and conditions. I'm neutral about how a company handles matters after the appeal--whether it focuses on protecting buyers over sellers. It's totally fine for the decision to be final after said appeal, but the company response had better show that the rep actually bothered to read the appeal message. This doesn't seem like rocket science to me. Your customer service cost scales proportional to number of customers / revenue, which is reasonable. In terms of justifying capital spend... how much are you spending on marketing? Each customer you screw over is canceling a mountain of your outreach efforts via negative NPS.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Customer service costs only scale if the customer is spending enough at your business to offset it. Many people probably don't spend enough to offset this and make more sense to drop as customers than to keep maintaining. And when there are only a handful of sellers in the market anyway, what difference does it make if they have a negative experience to share.
  - nieksand 8y ago
    I assume you're talking about the general case rather than AirBnB specifically? Tell people why they're being banned. There is no excuse not to. I can imagine a B2C freemium product with a high rate of abuse where the non-paying users aren't given the appeal option. But if somebody is paying you, you should have a human driven appeals process. There are certainly cases where customers aren't worth the support cost. Many years ago a SaaS I worked for cut out its entry level subscription because those customers represented most of the support load while also being a minority of the revenue. If you are a monopoly or oligopoly... it might be worth considering what happened to the taxi industry when Uber came to the scene (even before UberX). Years of underwhelming service and zero product development translates to zero customer loyalty. Choice will arrive sooner or later.
  - mattnewton 8y ago
    Not serving people and not telling them why is not customer service. “Automating” something like this is like disconnecting your phone line to “automate” support calls.
aeorgnoieang 8y ago
I'd expect word of people being banned with no explanation to deter others from using my service.
gnode 8y ago
> Do you ban one of the parties, or both, or neither? If banning is your go-to conflict resolution strategy, then there's a natural incentive to take the side of the host and ban the guest. The hosts are fewer in number, so each brings in more profit.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
"How much time, energy, and capital is appropriate to expend on this situation?" That's none of my concern. I honestly do not care about how much trouble this kind of thing is for AirBnB and other such companies.

dman 8y ago

Reserve an appropriate amount of profits to make things right for the transactions that do not go as expected. How much to reserve needs to be determined on an ongoing basis based on the split of good / bad transactions. I think AirBnb needs to bite the bullet and do their own insurance or find an insurance company that will give users the same kind of experience that AirBnb gives to its clients.

nieksand 8y ago

I would never ban people without telling them why they were banned. That's just moronic. I'd offer banned user contact information that goes directly to a human being which can be used to appeal if the user believes they did not violate said terms and conditions. I'm neutral about how a company handles matters after the appeal--whether it focuses on protecting buyers over sellers. It's totally fine for the decision to be final after said appeal, but the company response had better show that the rep actually bothered to read the appeal message. This doesn't seem like rocket science to me. Your customer service cost scales proportional to number of customers / revenue, which is reasonable. In terms of justifying capital spend... how much are you spending on marketing? Each customer you screw over is canceling a mountain of your outreach efforts via negative NPS.

lotsofpulp 8y ago
Customer service costs only scale if the customer is spending enough at your business to offset it. Many people probably don't spend enough to offset this and make more sense to drop as customers than to keep maintaining. And when there are only a handful of sellers in the market anyway, what difference does it make if they have a negative experience to share.
- nieksand 8y ago
  I assume you're talking about the general case rather than AirBnB specifically? Tell people why they're being banned. There is no excuse not to. I can imagine a B2C freemium product with a high rate of abuse where the non-paying users aren't given the appeal option. But if somebody is paying you, you should have a human driven appeals process. There are certainly cases where customers aren't worth the support cost. Many years ago a SaaS I worked for cut out its entry level subscription because those customers represented most of the support load while also being a minority of the revenue. If you are a monopoly or oligopoly... it might be worth considering what happened to the taxi industry when Uber came to the scene (even before UberX). Years of underwhelming service and zero product development translates to zero customer loyalty. Choice will arrive sooner or later.
- mattnewton 8y ago
  Not serving people and not telling them why is not customer service. “Automating” something like this is like disconnecting your phone line to “automate” support calls.

aeorgnoieang 8y ago

I'd expect word of people being banned with no explanation to deter others from using my service.

gnode 8y ago

> Do you ban one of the parties, or both, or neither? If banning is your go-to conflict resolution strategy, then there's a natural incentive to take the side of the host and ban the guest. The hosts are fewer in number, so each brings in more profit.

s73v3r_ 8y ago

"How much time, energy, and capital is appropriate to expend on this situation?" That's none of my concern. I honestly do not care about how much trouble this kind of thing is for AirBnB and other such companies.