Great, insightful article for techies; very interesting insight into your business strategy and R&D. Thanks for sharing!
Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing
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Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing
#32Great write up. It left me wondering - do you think you could have started here? Or did the competitive format bring you the talented experts & public attention you needed to make consultation work? Congrats on the re-launch.
hi emhart, interesting question. The contest format was certainly novel and helped garner a lot of early attention from press. So there's that. But I think you may be right that the contests helped us a) find experts, but also b) learn what was possible. That somewhat fits with the idea that crowdsourcing is best when you have less info. Once you have more info, then (at least we think) it's best to work with fewer s…
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing
#33I think crowdsourcing's issue is with the experience. For a customer, crowdsourcing requires more effort than plan google searching for example. You need to submit your issue, come back, edit/comment. Bad experience is much more frequent than good ones. And a neutral experience is closer to a bad experience which might result in the user not going through crowdsourcing again. Good luck with the new direction
I think this is spot on. We used to underplay the experience issue, but then we realized a poor user experience often hinders access to the best savings.
What made this worse was the animosity between customers and experts. It was expected between competing experts, but the concept of the "award" (and by necessity "switching award") caused tension in all directions. We still had many great results, but not to the level needed to build a great business. The difference with the current system is night and day. Everyone is on the same side; it's even a little erie since we're so used to the previous animosity.
Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing
#34Honestly the pricing is the real unnerving part here and it's definitely going to be a deal breaker for much of your audience.
Personally I'd prefer something like this: I enter my current flight details and the price I was going to pay (your experts should be able to verify this price as correct pretty quickly?), and then your experts would give me a better flight plan and I'd pay you 10% of the difference or something, and nothing if your experts don't find a better plan. This way I'd always feel like I'm 'winning' by using your service and not taking an expensive shot in the dark.
Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing
#35So I am traveling to 2 continents in the next month (Including the US). Most likely a minimum of 3 cities.
I have always wanted to use FlightFox but what is holding me back is the uncertainty of what I will get AFTER I have committed to pay.
What happens if I want to change my flight? Cancel? With the existing travel agent model, I am certain stuff like this will be taken care of.
When is the relationship over after the purchase or after the journey.
PS: Like Brett said, your pricing is really confusing. Is
London ---> New York international or Multi city?
How about,
London---> New York ----> San Francisco ----> Accra International or Multi City or both?
Do i pay different prices?
I plan to book my flight over the next few days. I am really tempted to prove I am an early adopter :)
Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing
#36Disclaimer: I was a Flightfox expert. It was one of the best computer games I ever played and it occasionally paid me to play. (In a similar vein, Drupal development is the best MMO I could imagine -- the graphics surely leaves something to be desired but the social aspect is literally life changing and the quests keep you in flow.)
I am not sure whether flight search in a crowdsource format could or should arise again but Flightfox made the (deliberate?) blunder of revealing all expert email addresses to the other experts in an email announcing big changes coming on January 14. If this would be a bigger industry, that'd been quite some news... I know at least one person who is thinking on continuing -- thanks Flightfox for keeping the community alive.
Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi encoderer, we were saying the same thing before testing this format. However, unlike travel agents, our guys are genuine flight experts. If you travel wide, fly a lot, or use miles, you'll understand why this matters. Behind the scenes, it's all about commissions. Agents work on commissions and most flights don't pay commissions. So it makes little sense for agents to spend hours on your flights. This manifests in…
A lot of travel agents are genuine flight experts. If you don't believe that then you haven't spent much time with good travel agents. Also, it's not about the commissions. That went out with the '90's Source: I've worked in this field for 13 years now and sell a SAAS product to travel agents.
Okay then, how do I find a travel agent that will book me the cheapest flight to London for 50 bucks?
Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing
#38Very interesting learnings, and well-presented too!
I have to say, I don't see this as abandoning crowdsourcing -- the "crowd" of experts is continuing to work together. To me it looks more like investigating various approaches to getting good results from the crowd, and discovering a better alternative for the particular problem. Terminology aside, it's very interesting to think about what other situations this pattern could work in.
Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing
#39Honestly the pricing is the real unnerving part here and it's definitely going to be a deal breaker for much of your audience. Personally I'd prefer something like this: I enter my current flight details and the price I was going to pay (your experts should be able to verify this price as correct pretty quickly?), and then your experts would give me a better flight plan and I'd pay you 10% of the difference or someth…
Hi Ryan, segmenting is our greatest challenge and (planned improvements aside) your experience was intended. It's the old startup adage: better to have 1,000 customers who love you than 1,000,000 who don't care.
What you're suggesting is what we call "gambling against Kayak". That's not our target market because it's not the market we can help most. We often say internally, it's not whether we can possibly help a customer, but whether we can likely help them.
Our idea to create "products" was to help segment customers into those we can help most. For example, complex trips, flying premium, using frequent flyer miles, traveling with pets, euro-city hops, etc. These are the people we can "likely" make happy and will help us grow to then target a wider audience.
Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing
#40It is a pleasure to see this analysis of the business strategy, what worked, and why. Tweeted. :-)