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I remember listening to Reid Hoffman interview Airbnb’s founder Brian Chesky [0] and Chesky gave a very compelling story about “11 star customer service.” He cl

I remember listening to Reid Hoffman interview Airbnb’s founder Brian Chesky [0] and Chesky gave a very compelling story about “11 star customer service.” He claimed Airbnb used this during their design to make amazing products. It made me use Airbnb more for a while and I had some really nice experiences, years ago. Now they seem kafka-esque and just a tricky value extraction machine of bullshit. I browse every time I plan a trip and end up choosing hotels because of price, simplicity, quality, and just predictability. The exception is Europe, but that was 4 years ago and I think they just have more of a bnb culture so I expect the culture is better and Airbnb is just the interface to the old bnb catalogs of yore. I wonder if it was all bullshit all along. Or if they failed. Or if they don’t care any more. Or, most cynically, these found that you make more money off crappy customer service and chose to suck and not be great. I call this the “don’t need to outrun the bear” philosophy. That’s good for survival tactics, but I don’t want to get running training from the company just trying to be the 2nd most horrible. If I want 11 star customer service I’m just shelling out the cash for an expensive hotel. This takes a lot of research as 5-star doesn’t mean much. But I’ve had success with Park Hyatts in tokyo, Paris, Zurich and other big metros where their staff and facility was truly willing and capable. [0] https://reid.medium.com/how-to-scale-a-magical-experience-4-lessons-from-airbnbs-brian-chesky-eca0a182f3e3 https://reid.medium.com/how-to-scale-a-magical-experience-4-...

pxue 3y ago
11 star customer service?? I got stranded without a place to stay at my destination and reaching out to their support took 10h in total. I ended up just rebooking another listing on airbnb only to learn I don't get any compensation if I rebooked myself and not through their support system. Lesson learned.
- creer 3y ago
  I think that absolutely is a problem with Airbnb. That problem has been around since the beginning and it's still not solved and that's just plain not acceptable (for many traveller potential customers.) In several ways, Airbnb has abslutely not solved enough feature-level travel problems. An opportunity wasted.
spdif899 3y ago
The point of the 11-star experience is not to actually target an impossibly perfect and amazing experience every time. The idea is to acknowledge that 5 stars is what we tend to rate something that goes perfectly well without complaints, and as a product design exercise it fails to be a good target. So Chesky's idea is to figure out what would make something so absurdly good that someone would rate it more than twice the usual "no complaints" rating - and then work backwards and figure out what is in between the 5 and 11 star experiences. You're never trying to reach 11 by design, but maybe you can target 7 or 9 as an aspirational goal, and thinking through this as a design exercise can help you identify user motivations more effectively.
- prepend 3y ago
  I agree with your interpretation. My point is that Airbnb is like 2 or 3 star now. We obviously aren’t going to have Elon Musk personally teach people to drive the in house Tesla. But when the listing includes use of the house car and it ends up being a motorcycle with no gas that doesn’t start once you fuel it and is shared by a 200 person condo association, it’s nowhere near 5 star. It’s one thing when people are just stupid and don’t know what quality is or should be. It’s another when they are conscious of where they should aim and point away from it.

pxue 3y ago

11 star customer service?? I got stranded without a place to stay at my destination and reaching out to their support took 10h in total. I ended up just rebooking another listing on airbnb only to learn I don't get any compensation if I rebooked myself and not through their support system. Lesson learned.

creer 3y ago
I think that absolutely is a problem with Airbnb. That problem has been around since the beginning and it's still not solved and that's just plain not acceptable (for many traveller potential customers.) In several ways, Airbnb has abslutely not solved enough feature-level travel problems. An opportunity wasted.

spdif899 3y ago

The point of the 11-star experience is not to actually target an impossibly perfect and amazing experience every time. The idea is to acknowledge that 5 stars is what we tend to rate something that goes perfectly well without complaints, and as a product design exercise it fails to be a good target. So Chesky's idea is to figure out what would make something so absurdly good that someone would rate it more than twice the usual "no complaints" rating - and then work backwards and figure out what is in between the 5 and 11 star experiences. You're never trying to reach 11 by design, but maybe you can target 7 or 9 as an aspirational goal, and thinking through this as a design exercise can help you identify user motivations more effectively.

prepend 3y ago
I agree with your interpretation. My point is that Airbnb is like 2 or 3 star now. We obviously aren’t going to have Elon Musk personally teach people to drive the in house Tesla. But when the listing includes use of the house car and it ends up being a motorcycle with no gas that doesn’t start once you fuel it and is shared by a 200 person condo association, it’s nowhere near 5 star. It’s one thing when people are just stupid and don’t know what quality is or should be. It’s another when they are conscious of where they should aim and point away from it.