Intro to Social Hacking: How we lowered our cancellation rate by 90%

davidtyleryork wrote: post #2

Amazing. And it totally makes sense. Congrats on using clever thinking to improve a very important metric for your business :)

Thanks :)

Re: Intro to Social Hacking: How we lowered our cancellation rate by 90%

#5

Post by ajju » Mon, Mar 12, 2012, 10:19 PM UTC

Very cool! What happens if a group just does not show up?

Re: Intro to Social Hacking: How we lowered our cancellation rate by 90%

#6

Post by tkahn6 » Mon, Mar 12, 2012, 10:20 PM UTC

Cancellations through the service went down, but did actual cancellations (as in, the person just doesn't show) go down?

If you make it harder to cancel you're relying even more heavily on the integrity or conscience of the cancelling party to notify the other group members of their desire to cancel. 90% seems like a really drastic decrease which is why I bring this up.

Re: Intro to Social Hacking: How we lowered our cancellation rate by 90%

#7

Post by ipince » Mon, Mar 12, 2012, 10:24 PM UTC

So you give the canceller the 3 phone numbers of the other 3 people? I'm not sure if I'd want my number to be given away...

Or do you use another number that temporarily redirects/connects them to the other people anonymously? If so, I'm curious to know how you do that.

Re: Intro to Social Hacking: How we lowered our cancellation rate by 90%

#8

Post by sgtsugarfingers » Mon, Mar 12, 2012, 10:27 PM UTC

This reminds me of a really funny image I saw recently. It depicted the perceived consequences of a status update against the "reality". At the top, Obama was presenting to a cheering crowd and just below, Tom Hanks sat marooned on an island screaming desperately at his inanimate volleyball. It's easy to feel like the master of the universe when the whole world is there to cheer for you through digitally mediated approval metrics. But people are not toys sitting idly to provide us a convenient hit of oxytocin when we need it. It's crucial to be reminded of that! Providing a number to call someone and apologize for bailing on them is a spark of genius. Using all this digital stuff should enrich interactions in meatspace, rather than allow us to decouple from it. Bravo!

Re: Intro to Social Hacking: How we lowered our cancellation rate by 90%

#9

Post by waxman » Mon, Mar 12, 2012, 10:30 PM UTC

ipince wrote: post #7

So you give the canceller the 3 phone numbers of the other 3 people? I'm not sure if I'd want my number to be given away... Or do you use another number that temporarily redirects/connects them to the other people anonymously? If so, I'm curious to know how you do that.

Yep, it's definitely not their real a number. We built a simple Twilio app.

Re: Intro to Social Hacking: How we lowered our cancellation rate by 90%

#10

Post by waxman » Mon, Mar 12, 2012, 10:34 PM UTC

tkahn6 wrote: post #6

Cancellations through the service went down, but did actual cancellations (as in, the person just doesn't show) go down? If you make it harder to cancel you're relying even more heavily on the integrity or conscience of the cancelling party to notify the other group members of their desire to cancel. 90% seems like a really drastic decrease which is why I bring this up.

We call these "no-shows" and, fortunately our no-show rate is less than 0.2%. In other words, both groups show up more than 99.8% of the time.

This will likely be the topic of a future blog post...