Tag Archives: lyft

Sharing economy lessons from Lyft, Yerdle, & more

Community, Tech,

I recently had the pleasure of attending the San Francisco Community Manager Meetup‘s panel on the sharing economy and writing the official summary post. Here’s an excerpt:

“If there are 19 other drivers posting on the forum, you think ‘Ok, I’m gonna keep driving’.” Super-users were key to helping Lyft scale. Several months into a year in which their goal was launching 70 cities, they had launched exactly one city. They were struggling to find an office space and hiring local employees to work with drivers. Forced to innovate, they thought “what if, instead of having new drivers come into the office, we just have them meet an experienced driver in a parking lot?”

“It was scary,” David admits. “But it worked.” 

Check out the full article at CMX.

What we learned (about ourselves) at CMX Summit

Community, , , , , , , ,

David Spinks‘s CMX Summit did something rare yesterday. It gave us the usual community management tips and cheerleading, which are always appreciated…but it also gave us perspective. We learned from seasoned veterans and psychologists. We talked to people from every type of company and every size role. And we discussed community management as a real career, not a novelty.

From Robin Dreeke we learned that empathy, which many of us have considered a cornerstone of community management for years, is not only a powerful way to accomplish goals but so important that it can get you a “head of” title at the FBI!

David McMillan taught is that for a true sense of community there are a lot of elements necessary : shared experiences, complimentary skills, risk, and the much-maligned turnover…a lot more than you’re going to get from simply tweeting cute stuff to your audience a few times a day!

Emily Castor showed how very intentional – and often very tiny – elements can help set the whole culture of a community.

Ligaya Tichy showed us how communities and community management must evolve with a company.

Josh Miller reiterated what even Buzzfeed has admitted: clicks aren’t engagement.

Nir Eyal showed us that getting folks to regularly contribute to a community is not just about good intentions, it’s about carefully building habits.

And Ellen Leanse showed us that none of this is new, that permeability is better than bottlenecking, and that we must persevere.

Who knows what the #%*& Dave McClure taught us.

What I came away with was a much better look at how our skills are more crucial than they’ve ever been…but also a keen sense that we need to step up to our potential and actually hone these skills, use these frameworks, do and read research, push for the right things instead of accepting the status quo, and go kick some ass. We are in such a position to help companies succeed and stay on top…but we need to put on our big person pants. We have the power. Let’s use it.

Uber’s community management isn’t doing them any favors

Community, Tech, , , ,

Update: I appreciate everyone’s feedback on the title and first line of this post and I’ve updated it to more accurately reflect my views within. It was admittedly link-baity, but my intention was never to trash Uber (as I state multiple times). The rest of this article remains unchanged.

Uber seems like they don’t care about this week’s tragedy. But of course they do. To suggest that the Uber corporation is a bunch of monsters is silly. I’m sure the people within Uber are as horrified as the rest of us that this happened.

That said, you wouldn’t know it to look at their official response to the New Year’s Eve tragedy:

“UPDATE: We thank law enforcement for the quick release of information. We can confirm that the driver in question was a partner of Uber and that we have deactivated his Uber account. The driver was not providing services on the Uber system during the time of the accident. We again extend our deepest condolences to the family and victims of this tragic accident.”

Is Uber to blame for this death? Seems unlikely. Is it Uber’s responsibility to do something here? No. But this isn’t about responsibility. This is about perception and relationships with their community and the larger communities they operate in.

Don’t get me wrong: I give Uber immense credit for making a massive business out of something that many investors laughed at. But Uber has shown over and over that they don’t get community. They seem to think of their customers as a cog in their business.

The biggest example of this has been their price surges, which have been discussed ad nauseam. Are these surge prices based on the economics of supply and demand? Yes. Is Uber trying to gouge customers? Probably not. Is most of the money going to Uber? No, it’s going to the drivers. But that logic doesn’t matter, because Uber has done a terrible job messaging when and to a lesser extent why they initiate surge pricing. A recent article said:

“Although Uber posted a blog to warn people in advance, customers were still pissed to see rates increase. Uber hadn’t perfected its in-app messaging system yet, so some customers accepted rides for two or three times the normal rate without realizing.”

Hasn’t perfected?! Here’s a free tip from someone who builds community for a living: if a key part of your business that you’re unwilling to change is infuriating customers and creating massively bad PR, you need to focus all your energy on “perfecting” the messaging so nobody feels surprised.

Uber's in-app feedback attemptMy former boss, Richard White of UserVoice (and a frequent Uber user) recently wrote a post on the lack of feedback mechanisms within Uber. Another item they’re still “perfecting”?

Meanwhile, a quick look at the Uber News blog shows a focus on expanding to new markets and doing marketing stunts. The only product-related update is about Uber for Blackberry. Oy.

Again, I don’t think Uber means ill will. I just think they are terrible at showing that they care and have no idea how to build a strong connection with their community. I’ve met community managers from their company and, while perfectly nice people and solid social media marketers, I see very little community building or community management in their job description. Uber thinks community is some tweeting out some cute stuff.

If Uber had a Chief Community Officer (see a slightly dated rant on this position here), they would tell Uber that they need to take the time, money, and – yes – potential legal liability to address these frustrations, issues, and circumstances head on. They need to be better at gathering and acting on feedback. For things like surge pricing, there will need to be actual product changes. For tragedies like this week’s, there needs to be a more human, emotional response.

Lyft surge pricing interfaceWant some great examples of this? Look no further than Lyft (arguably an Uber competitor) who focus intensely on community. Lyft’s blog has plenty of marketing content…but it also has customer-focused videos, fun games for their community, new features based on customer feedback, transportation safety info, and more. They, too, are introducing surge pricing…but they’re doing so in a very transparent, slow way. And as you can see, their messaging is very clear about how much you’re being charged, why, and whom the money goes to. They sure “perfected” that fast.

Or howabout Airbnb, who dealt with Airbnb renters destroying hosts’s homes? While they had some missteps early on, they realized it wasn’t worth destroying their community connection in order to save some money and make some lawyers happy. They doubled down on insurance for their members and 24/7 customer service. (There’s some great insight on that decision in this article.) And it worked out – Airbnb is long past these issues and still has an immensely strong community.

It might sound like I hate Uber. I don’t. But I think Uber is a perfect example of a modern company that is suffering because they never built community into their DNA. I think they’re decent people with a cool product and a good business model who are hurting themselves.

Will Uber fall apart because of this stuff? Probably not. But I suspect we’ll see community-focused companies like Lyft leech a lot more Uber customers because of it.