5 ms·

I've been working on a startup in the user feedback space [1] full-time for the past 3.5 years, and love to see the topic of user feedback on Hacker News. Uber

by a13n 8y ago

I've been working on a startup in the user feedback space [1] full-time for the past 3.5 years, and love to see the topic of user feedback on Hacker News. Uber doesn't want your feedback because they care about your ideas/opinions. They want it because it's critical to their business. Put yourself in their shoes. They have 75 million users and 3 million drivers. A critical part of growth is retention: not bleeding the existing user base you have, by offering a quality service. So how do they identify undesirable drivers to maintain the safety and quality of their service? And in a scalable way... You ask users to give drivers a review out of 5 stars. Chances are, if multiple people give a driver 1 star, others will too. It's a pretty good proxy for driver quality. I can definitely see how this feels "dehumanizing" and like you're a "cog in the system". You are a cog in the system. You're a cog in their automated system for keeping their service safe and high quality. There are different kinds of user feedback, for different reasons. One kind is user interviews, where you want to hear people's ideas and opinions for how you can do better. This is pretty human. Reviews are pretty automated, and just a different kind of "feedback". If you run a consumer company (as opposed to B2B), it isn't practical to conduct user interviews on even 1% of your entire user base. So it isn't surprising that giving feedback to consumer companies tends to be a pretty negative experience. [1] https://canny.io https://canny.io [2] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics/

fipple 8y ago
I want to be a cog in 95% of my interactions. I only try to extract meaning from a few of my relationships.
iaabtpbtpnn 8y ago
I give Uber drivers 5 stars unless they did something egregiously horrible, because I know that if I give 4 stars, and enough people do the same, that driver will be banned from the platform, even though most people would say that 4 out of 5 ain't bad. Similarly, if I ever actually take the time to fill out a receipt survey from a retail store, I just give full marks across the board, because I know that otherwise some poor underpaid single mom is gonna have to "be accountable" for my responses to an uncaring corporate drone. On the other hand, a person giving a 1 to an Uber driver or bad marks across the board on a retail survey is probably unduly pissed off, and upon further reflection (or exposure to the consequences of their score) even they might not agree they suffered a truly 1-worthy experience. So my question to you is, how do you distinguish signal from noise?
- jetrink 8y ago
  It's as if these companies were an extraterrestrial intelligence and mathematics our only common language. What does a 4 express? The other absurdity is that the only context for these rating is the value that appears under a driver's portrait. One person is 4.67 driver, while another is a 4.89. Now rate your driver using the numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.
- hugh-avherald 8y ago
  I'm surprised Uber doesn't add a remark like "Your rating for <Driver> will be compared to your ratings of other drivers." beneath the rating. This could (a) encourage people to give 1-5 star ratings more uniformly and (b) discourage constantly giving 5-star ratings. Depending on how much they wanted to get more uniformly distributed ratings, they could (a) make the rider rating depend on the uniformity of the ratings given or (b) just use a comparison rating ("Was this better or worse than your previous trip?").
  - lozenge 8y ago
    They don't want uniform ratings. They can either show "average rating 4.7" for a driver (assuming everybody is rating 4 or 5 because they don't want the driver to be fired), or "approval rating 70%". 4.7 of course sounds better.
kaycebasques 8y ago
> love to see the topic of user feedback on Hacker News I'm also very interested in the topic, but in a slightly different domain. I'm on a mission to get "was this page helpful?" feedback widgets on all technical documentation across the web. Recently I just helped the Kubernetes folks [1] add it to their docs site. One of my high-level goals is to get the docs community to aggregate all of this data in order to benchmark typical ratings for common types of documents. E.g. what's the typical rating for a tutorial? I also want us to start actively experimenting in order to validate what kinds of changes lead to meaningful improvements in documentation. E.g. adding examples to conceptual overviews improves the rating by 5% (not real numbers). Find me on the interwebz if you'd like help implementing one of these systems in your docs, or want to join this project. [1] https://github.com/kubernetes/website/pull/11037 https://github.com/kubernetes/website/pull/11037
- flukus 8y ago
  I've noticed MS seem to use this to improve their developer documentation, a few pages I've rated poorly have been improved over the years. Annoyingly the same company has "would you like to do a survey" popups all over their other sites a few seconds after you load the page, at least let me read the content first so I can give half informed feedback.
  - kaycebasques 8y ago
    Yes, as a general PSA for the HN community, if you see a "was this page helpful?" widget on a developer doc, the team probably really does use that data in order to triage what docs need updating. So if you don't usually interact with those widgets, you might consider trying it. In particularly, if you rate a doc as unhelpful, and they give you a chance to provide freeform feedback, that is usually the most helpful information. Otherwise we have to guess at why a doc is getting a bad rating.
fossuser 8y ago
Uber's feedback is the most frustrating because I can't rate in the only instances that I'd care to. - Driver calls and asks where I'm going then cancels ride - Driver drives up to me and asks where I'm going then cancels ride - Driver drives around aimlessly for 40min trying to get me to cancel and then cancels ride - Driver for Uber eats picks up food, steals it, then cancels ride In all of these instances the cancellation removes the ability to rate - these are the cases when I'd want to rate zero stars. If the person picks me up and takes me where I need to go I'll rate them five stars, in the worst case I just won't rate them.
- exclusiv 8y ago
  I've seen this quite often too! In my experience it happened more with Lyft and when I hailed a ride from the airport. I live pretty close to the airport (6-20 mins) so the sneaky drivers that see the fare will call me and confirm my destination. I confirm and then they just sit in their waiting spot indefinitely, hoping I cancel. Understanding their strategy, I walk down to the lower level with the app still open and take a cab home. They see me physically moving (haha) and have choice but to cancel. I leave the app open even when I get home. I even had one driver listed as hearing impaired who called me up to confirm my destination. He had no trouble hearing and confirmed he would be right there to get me (only to just wait it out so I would hopefully cancel!) Next time - leave the app open and use another service or grab a taxi. They'll see you move on the map and you'll waste their time since they were trying to waste yours. :) Also - I always tip about double the norm for any driver that picks me up and doesn't have a bad attitude because I know they would have preferred a longer trip. I shouldn't have to do this, but I'm a business owner and I don't mind rewarding those that do the right things.
  - fossuser 8y ago
    I think Uber will cancel it for you if you leave the pick up zone so that doesn't work. In those instances I've put my phone down and waited them out, but Uber still charged me (even though they're not supposed to). I was able to get them to reverse the $5 fee after some arguing, but was still unable to negatively rate the driver.
  - 8y ago
cma 8y ago
Maybe there are safeguards, but it seems like this lets Uber racially discriminate by proxy.
ctas 8y ago
Canny is awesome. I've had huge problems getting feedback for my profitable side projects, so I built https://www.emojion.io https://www.emojion.io (same goal, different approach) to drastically reduce the barrier for visitors and see there, within one week over 200 useful user responses were submitted. I usually spend half an hour a day responding to the feedback and maybe adjusting my roadmap. It definitely changed my workflow and my users are happy to be heard.

by a13n 8y ago

fipple 8y ago

I want to be a cog in 95% of my interactions. I only try to extract meaning from a few of my relationships.

iaabtpbtpnn 8y ago

I give Uber drivers 5 stars unless they did something egregiously horrible, because I know that if I give 4 stars, and enough people do the same, that driver will be banned from the platform, even though most people would say that 4 out of 5 ain't bad. Similarly, if I ever actually take the time to fill out a receipt survey from a retail store, I just give full marks across the board, because I know that otherwise some poor underpaid single mom is gonna have to "be accountable" for my responses to an uncaring corporate drone. On the other hand, a person giving a 1 to an Uber driver or bad marks across the board on a retail survey is probably unduly pissed off, and upon further reflection (or exposure to the consequences of their score) even they might not agree they suffered a truly 1-worthy experience. So my question to you is, how do you distinguish signal from noise?

jetrink 8y ago
It's as if these companies were an extraterrestrial intelligence and mathematics our only common language. What does a 4 express? The other absurdity is that the only context for these rating is the value that appears under a driver's portrait. One person is 4.67 driver, while another is a 4.89. Now rate your driver using the numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.
hugh-avherald 8y ago
I'm surprised Uber doesn't add a remark like "Your rating for <Driver> will be compared to your ratings of other drivers." beneath the rating. This could (a) encourage people to give 1-5 star ratings more uniformly and (b) discourage constantly giving 5-star ratings. Depending on how much they wanted to get more uniformly distributed ratings, they could (a) make the rider rating depend on the uniformity of the ratings given or (b) just use a comparison rating ("Was this better or worse than your previous trip?").
- lozenge 8y ago
  They don't want uniform ratings. They can either show "average rating 4.7" for a driver (assuming everybody is rating 4 or 5 because they don't want the driver to be fired), or "approval rating 70%". 4.7 of course sounds better.

kaycebasques 8y ago

> love to see the topic of user feedback on Hacker News I'm also very interested in the topic, but in a slightly different domain. I'm on a mission to get "was this page helpful?" feedback widgets on all technical documentation across the web. Recently I just helped the Kubernetes folks [1] add it to their docs site. One of my high-level goals is to get the docs community to aggregate all of this data in order to benchmark typical ratings for common types of documents. E.g. what's the typical rating for a tutorial? I also want us to start actively experimenting in order to validate what kinds of changes lead to meaningful improvements in documentation. E.g. adding examples to conceptual overviews improves the rating by 5% (not real numbers). Find me on the interwebz if you'd like help implementing one of these systems in your docs, or want to join this project. [1] https://github.com/kubernetes/website/pull/11037 https://github.com/kubernetes/website/pull/11037

flukus 8y ago
I've noticed MS seem to use this to improve their developer documentation, a few pages I've rated poorly have been improved over the years. Annoyingly the same company has "would you like to do a survey" popups all over their other sites a few seconds after you load the page, at least let me read the content first so I can give half informed feedback.
- kaycebasques 8y ago
  Yes, as a general PSA for the HN community, if you see a "was this page helpful?" widget on a developer doc, the team probably really does use that data in order to triage what docs need updating. So if you don't usually interact with those widgets, you might consider trying it. In particularly, if you rate a doc as unhelpful, and they give you a chance to provide freeform feedback, that is usually the most helpful information. Otherwise we have to guess at why a doc is getting a bad rating.

fossuser 8y ago

Uber's feedback is the most frustrating because I can't rate in the only instances that I'd care to. - Driver calls and asks where I'm going then cancels ride - Driver drives up to me and asks where I'm going then cancels ride - Driver drives around aimlessly for 40min trying to get me to cancel and then cancels ride - Driver for Uber eats picks up food, steals it, then cancels ride In all of these instances the cancellation removes the ability to rate - these are the cases when I'd want to rate zero stars. If the person picks me up and takes me where I need to go I'll rate them five stars, in the worst case I just won't rate them.

exclusiv 8y ago
I've seen this quite often too! In my experience it happened more with Lyft and when I hailed a ride from the airport. I live pretty close to the airport (6-20 mins) so the sneaky drivers that see the fare will call me and confirm my destination. I confirm and then they just sit in their waiting spot indefinitely, hoping I cancel. Understanding their strategy, I walk down to the lower level with the app still open and take a cab home. They see me physically moving (haha) and have choice but to cancel. I leave the app open even when I get home. I even had one driver listed as hearing impaired who called me up to confirm my destination. He had no trouble hearing and confirmed he would be right there to get me (only to just wait it out so I would hopefully cancel!) Next time - leave the app open and use another service or grab a taxi. They'll see you move on the map and you'll waste their time since they were trying to waste yours. :) Also - I always tip about double the norm for any driver that picks me up and doesn't have a bad attitude because I know they would have preferred a longer trip. I shouldn't have to do this, but I'm a business owner and I don't mind rewarding those that do the right things.
- fossuser 8y ago
  I think Uber will cancel it for you if you leave the pick up zone so that doesn't work. In those instances I've put my phone down and waited them out, but Uber still charged me (even though they're not supposed to). I was able to get them to reverse the $5 fee after some arguing, but was still unable to negatively rate the driver.
- 8y ago

cma 8y ago

Maybe there are safeguards, but it seems like this lets Uber racially discriminate by proxy.

ctas 8y ago

Canny is awesome. I've had huge problems getting feedback for my profitable side projects, so I built https://www.emojion.io https://www.emojion.io (same goal, different approach) to drastically reduce the barrier for visitors and see there, within one week over 200 useful user responses were submitted. I usually spend half an hour a day responding to the feedback and maybe adjusting my roadmap. It definitely changed my workflow and my users are happy to be heard.