
Intro to Social Hacking: How we lowered our cancellation rate by 90% - waxman
http://blog.joingrouper.com/intro-to-social-hacking-how-we-lowered-our-ca
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sgtsugarfingers
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!

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waxman
Thanks! Really well put.

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EGreg
I rarely upvote things to boomark them, but this is exactly the kind of thing
that I like to read about.

We are building a platform for groups of people come together, kind of like
grouper does for 3 guys and 3 girls, but a different approach. And psychology
is a huge part of it! Making people want to do what you want them to do, or
not want to do what you don't want them to do, is an art. But it is also a
science, and there should be some sort of knowledge base of psychological
tactics, in social apps or otherwise.

Anyone know of anything like that?

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davemel37
There is a reason there is no Knowledge base of psychological tactics in
social apps or otherwise. It's because those that really understand people and
these tactics appreciate how valuable it really is and more importantly know
how to make you want to throw gobs of money at them for this information!!!

Here is what I can tell you without getting in trouble. People take action
because of emotional reasons, and justify that decision with logic and
"objective" reasons to defend their decision to others.

Every single thing you want your users to do is causing them pain. They do not
want to click... Before they do even the simplest thing possible, they will
rack their brain for excuses to not do it and avoid the pain you created for
them. Your job is to make it MORE PAINFUL NOT TO TAKE ACTION!!!

There are two ways to do this. (you should do both) 1\. Make the process as
painless as possible. 2\. remind them and aggravate the pain that led them to
your app in the first place.

Make sure your messaging not only hits on the emotional triggers at play and
focuses on the benefits, not the features... (People buy the hole, not the
drill) but more importantly gives them the tools to defend their action to
their friends and everyone else who they need to defend the decision to.
\------------

You should read Napoleon Hill's book "Think and Grow Rich," if you read it
carefully, you will see it is literally a bible of understanding human nature
and the world, etc...

Here is a slightly relevant excerpt and list from the book, "The 10 Mind
Stimuli. The stimuli to which the mind responds most freely are:

1\. The Desire For Sex Expression 2\. Love 3\. A Burning Desire for fame,
power, financial gain, money... 4\. Music 5\. Friendship between either those
of the same sex or those of the opposite sex. 6\. A Master Mind Alliance based
upon the harmony of two or more people who ally themselves for spiritual or
temporal advancement. 7\. Mutual Suffering, such as that experienced by people
who are persecuted. 8\. Autosuggestion 9\. Fear 10\. Narcotics and Alcohol.

I hope this helps... Good Luck!

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Alex3917
For what it's worth, anyone who liked this post would probably really like
this book:

[http://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-
Communities...](http://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communities-
Evidence-Based/dp/0262016575)

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there
They would like a book that hasn't been released yet?

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Alex3917
All the chapters are available for free on Bob Kraut's website, I didn't
realize that the book hadn't come out yet.

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LeandroLovisolo
Link for the lazy: <http://kraut.hciresearch.org/content/books>

~~~
jgarmon
Supplementary material: the Onlinesmanship WIki
<http://onlinemanship.wikia.com/wiki/Onlinemanship>

Curated by Theresa Neilsen Hayden, who at one time modded comments at
BoingBoing. As a former forum mod myself, I can attest that there are LOTs of
great crowd-hacking insights here.

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sixQuarks
Hahaha! I love the "don't click the hook" image on your web site. Brilliant!
Did you guys create that yourselves or is that some sort of plugin?

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waxman
Ha thanks!

We hand-rolled it with jQuery and a hook image from iStockPhoto (what can we
say, we couldn't avoid the the easy fish pun), but if people are interested we
could release it as a jQuery plug-in.

~~~
fruchtose
I think using too many fish/aquatic puns is unhealthy psychologically. You
otter look into finding someone who can kelp you with this issue.

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tripzilch
Great solution _and_ great job on making sure they're not getting each others
phone numbers!

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craze3
Let this be a lesson: not all your problems can be solved by code. Sometimes
you need to take a step back and think about the root cause of the problem.
Often times (as well as in Grouper's example), the solution is to reconstruct
your model so that your incentives and/or consequences are clearer to your
users.

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abbasmehdi
This is so smart! A lot of tech is awesome but lets never forget that its
humans with actual psychologies using the technology. These users face social
pressures to be upstanding and responsible like we all do in real life - being
online is not an excuse for bad behavior - this is a great example of the
merger b/w virtual and real lives.

Seems like LinkedIn pioneered this, HN also does this to a great degree, but
now Grouper is taking it to the next level as it holds you responsible for
your online actions offline.

The wheels are turning in my head about ways to leverage people's desire to
manage their personal brand into a mutually beneficial situation for all
parties involved. Good job Waxman! You might have stumbled upon something
profound here.

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waxman
Thanks, Abbas!

We're actually soon going to roll out a big, new feature that will take this
notion to the next level. We're really excited about it. Stay tuned...

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batiudrami
I really like this idea as well. Are you pitching it as a dating site or just
as a group of people to hang out with? Making it groups, in my mind, takes
away a lot of the stigma of online dating websites, though I wonder what you
gender breakdown is like - do you have many groups of men compared to women?
Is there a wait time before a night can be organised?

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

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waxman
Thanks :)

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seancoughlin
i dig how you changed the cancellation process, because it encourages ppl to
do what your app is intended to do - get groups of 3 together in real life.
your old policy was giving incentives for your core mission NOT to happen. i
wonder how your service plans to thrive in nyc, where a similar service -
ignighter - had to go to india to really succeed. would love to hear your
thoughts.

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weff
I've visited the website and I'm confused: are Facebook-less creatures unable
to partake in the service? Wouldn't that be kind of weird?

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waxman
Sorry, @weff.

Right now we require Facebook, because we heavily rely on the graph to match
groups while requiring minimal work from our members. For instance, we want to
make sure the two groups don't already know each other, and we haven't figured
out a good way to replicate this functionality without Facebook (e.g. "tell us
all the people you know!")

If you have any ideas, though, we'd love to hear them.

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rolleiflex
This is one of the very few fair reasons to use facebook. However, I would
have liked to see the explanation in the website (why only facebook?) and a
stronger wording telling what you will and won't do with facebook. You're
saying "We won't post on your behalf" but you don't say anything about what
you will do. You might not post on my facebook, but you might be looking
through my messages; that kind of thing is unfortunately the hallmark of
facebook itself. Without an explanation, a facebook-only site looks very
fishy. (heh)

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ipince
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.

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

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itsprofitbaron
IMO, I'd highlight that its actually not their phone number rather its a
Twilio number etc which is used to call them up.

So I would change:

    
    
      we would give you a number for the other group, and YOU WOULD CALL THEM (not us) TO APOLOGIZE. 
    

To something like:

    
    
      we would give you a number for the other group which does not reveal their actual phone number, and YOU WOULD CALL THEM (not us) TO APOLOGIZE.
    
    

The reason for this, is if users read your company blog it may put them off
when/if they read it as, I immediately assumed that their number is be given
out which could lead to confusion.

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waxman
Fixed! Good call.

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leak
Really great article and solution!

This is a company I would invest in today. These guys know the game and are
playing it accordingly.

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HalibetLector
Did overall Groupers scheduled also go down once people realized they couldn't
cancel without having to do it themselves? also, is the no-show rate still
0.2% after implementing this policy? I find it hard to believe these other
metrics didn't move at least a little bit.

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

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waxman
It's extremely rare (see above), but when it does happen we do everything we
can to make it up to the other group (free drinks, free Groupers, profuse
apologies, etc.) and lay down the law on the other group (including removing
them from the community).

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pbhjpbhj
Have you sought statistics for no-shows that aren't reported. There's a
general prohibition against reporting other people's failings particularly
when trying to appear warm and accommodating.

Not sure how you'd do it except perhaps as an exit question for people leaving
your community.

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GGNH
nice post, Wax. can't wait to go on one come the summer!

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kbadal
Brilliant integration, Waxman!

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tkahn6
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.

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waxman
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...

~~~
LokiSnake
Just a hypothesis, but is this because users are committing in groups of 3? I
bet no-shows would increase if you paired groups of 2 or 1.

