Happy 10th birthday AirBnB! - you sure taught us some lessons

AirBnB. You've probably used it - if you haven't, 300 million people and rising have (and it's currently valued at more than $30 bn). All for a business founded exactly ten years ago this month.

So - what's to learn for other businesses? The main thing for us is that this is a business built on reviews.

AirBnB understood - from the very beginning - that making reviews front-and-centre would drive business for their hosts

From the start the guys at AirBnB realised that intelligent use of reviews was going to be important for them. More than important - core.

Why?

• Reviews - which are mandatory in both directions - give users the confidence to book. You might find reviews for a hotel on TripAdvisor or Booking.com useful, but only about one in a thousand guests leaves one on those platforms. On AirBnB it's well-nigh 100%. 

• Reviews give hosts the confidence to accept bookings, knowing they will be able to see previous hosts' experience with the guests.

Without these two - core - functions, it is likely that AirBnB would still be two guys and a dog sleeping on air-mattresses in San Francisco.


So: lessons for other businesses?


Make reviews as 'mandatory' as you possibly can. There are many ways of doing this without alienating customers. 

1.  Explain, right at the beginning of the transaction, that it is company policy to ask all customers for a review once the transaction is complete.

2.  Explain, also, that this is entirely at the customer's discretion, but emphasise just how helpful such reviews are for a) future customers and b) the business and all its staff.

3.  Discuss the way the customer found you - if that included reading reviews (or personal recommendation) then you will be half way to getting a review.

 This button - 'Leave A Review' - is prominently displayed next to all of our clients' reviews. Alongside the reviews themselves it provides crucial reassurance to anyone reading them that any customer can leave a review at any time. And consumers love transparent businesses.

4.  Explain that any customer can - at any time - go to your website and write a review. This is one of the most popular aspects of review management with consumers - because it reassures them that the business is obliged to accept every customer's opinion.


So - some questions for your business...

• Do you have 100 reviews - independently verified - on your own website? If not, why not?
• Do you have at least 50 reviews on Google? If not, why not?
• If you do have reviews, were those reviews acquired compliantly? Or did you just invite selected customers to write them (that's illegal, by the way)?

These may look a tad harsh, but, as we all know, the business world is harsh. As professional review managers of many years' standing we know why so many businesses are unable to answer 'yes' to these questions - because they are, understandably, concerned that they will attract misleading or factually inaccurate reviews. 

But fear not. That's why HelpHound exists, to provide moderation and verification - ensuring that our clients' businesses are fairly reflected in their reviews, like this...

Over 500 reviews on their own website and nearly 300 on Google

...and this was a business with two reviews on Google when they joined!

HelpHound is here to give businesses like yours the confidence to engage with reviews.

Reviews: What we can all learn from AirBnB

 We constantly look at other businesses to see how they are using reviews; AirBnB are just one - great - example of a business which has realised that reviews are not just a useful addition, but core to their success

When AirBnB began their journey they recognised they had to overcome one significant hurdle: trust. How could they ensure - as far as possible - that hosts and guests would have the maximum reassurance that both parties would uphold their sides of the deal?

Reviews became the answer...

They took a long hard look at TripAdvisor. How to emulate them, but go one better? Simple: don't just invite reviews, but make reviews mandatory - on both sides of the equation. Now, for every stay, there's a review by the guest and a review of the guest by the host.

The impact:

   These 3 screen-grabs are taken from AirBnB's blog 'Building for Trust' - today. If you would like to see Joe Gebbia of AirBnB's TED talk on this subject it's here (it's worth it for the story of the traveller whose life was saved by his AirBnB hosts)

First we'll look at this from the consumers' point-of-view, it answers all these questions at a stroke:

• Am I getting all their guests' opinions? 
• Was the stay value for money?
• Did anyone not enjoy their stay? And, if not, why not?
• Are the hosts painting the full picture? 

And now from the business's...

• They know their guest is getting the full picture. They know the guest can rely on their fellow guests - completely. They know it gives their potential guest the confidence to go ahead and book.

And a word for the nay-sayers:

We have all heard the AirBnB horror stories. They are invariably as a result of one or both parties going off-piste and not communicating (or paying) through AirBnB. bear in mind that AirBnB list 1.5 million properties across 34,000 cities - it works!

Become like AirBnB

Explain to your customers that leaving a review is considered standard practice for your business, and explain why:

• because you rely on them 
• because your potential clients rely on them

 ...then you can sit back and watch the business roll in.


N.B. At HelpHound we are proud that our review management system - Dialogue™ - only works for good businesses. If you think your business will attract a lot of negative reviews, then perhaps you need to address whatever failings might cause your customers to write them before you join.

Dialogue does incorporate a great - and extremely effective - dispute resolution mechanism (called Resolution™); and our clients and their customers do make use of it. An average of 8% of all reviews go through Resolution - with over 97% of those resulting in a satisfactory outcome for both parties.

Learn from Uber and AirBnB

Both Uber and AirBnB were early adopters of reviews - they knew they were a major key to the credibility of their service; how else were they going to gain that crucial element of trust from their potential users?

here's Uber:

 If a review can instill trust in a £10 cab ride, think what it can do for any other transaction

And AirBnB:

With most successful businesses there is one key element that ensured that success. With Facebook it was the introduction of the 'relationship status' field (remember Bebo - Facebook's predecessor? No - not many people do!). Without reviews Uber and AirBnB might still be struggling startups.

So: if you are in a business where trust is a key element of your potential customers' decision making process (and we are struggling to think of a business where it is not) you need to think seriously about adopting a credible review management system. Otherwise, one day, you may find your business in the same hole that London cabbies and small hoteliers find themselves in today.

Postscript for our clients: Are you impressed by Paolo's responses? Then check your module to make sure that your responses are right up-to-date.

What all businesses can learn from Uber and AirBnB

In our last article we referenced Bill Tancer's book 'Everyone's a Critic'. Here's another great article by Bill.

Its core message is that businesses such as Uber and AirBnB could not exist (and certainly would not have grown as they have) without reviews. 

So here's our question for those of you who are not yet clients: how on earth does any other business think it is going to succeed without them?

Paris - 20,000 AirBnB-ers in one day

£400 a night

That's over 10 stays for each and every hotel in Paris.

So when are hoteliers going to start taking notice, and, even more importantly, reacting?

Denial

Here are some of the things hospitality professionals are saying about AirBnB:

• They are downmarket
• They don't provide the level of service we do
• They are in the wrong area
• They are not covered by the same insurance as we are

...and we are not going to argue those points here, just let the numbers speak for themselves.

Reality

The truth of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of AirBnB-ers (who are no longer student backpackers - the average price for a night in Paris is over 80 euros) are choosing to stay at an airBnB because they like the experience. how do we know this? Because AirBnB gets them to write reviews.

AirBnB hosts know they will only get a great review if they go the extra mile, so they do. They provide a great concierge service: they tell their guests about local restaurants, site-seeing opportunities, transport and nightlife, and they make sure the rooms are prepared to their guests' specific requirements.

How to compete?

Hotels must become more guest-friendly. banish the days of 'a nod from the doorman and keys handed to the guest with nothing more than a smile.' Greet your guest, spend time to understand their requirements, help them to get the most from their stay.

Hotels that do this will have nothing to fear from AirBnB, but those who continue in denial will suffer.

Hotels - a useful insight into your competition

You may not immediately see AirBnB as a direct competitor (if you don't we suggest you read this piece in the Guardian, it also details AirBnB's phenomenal growth), but they are filling hundred's of thousand of rooms a month, and we don't believe those travelers would have simply stayed at home without AirBnB.

No matter: you should be aware of the aspects of AirBnB's offer that attract; the video we have linked to above does have relevance (remember we visit hundreds of hotels a year ourselves), and we would be very surprised if there was absolutely nothing to be gained from viewing it.

And there are lessons for us in there as well: in 2014 we will be introducing a forum for our members. There you will be able to interact and discuss topical issues - including ways to get the very best from your membership of Dialogue.

While we're on - note that AirBnB has proritised 'reviews' over 'description' "because we think they're way more important": second only to images (see 55.15 in the video).

Meanwhile, please do comment on the posts in this blog!