Top 3 Learnings from our San Francisco Course

1. Improving Customer Service is a common recommendation for many platforms in the sharing economy. After listening to all four presentations, I noticed that most if not all groups made recommendations regarding customer service. Many platforms bury the direct contact information within layers of FAQ and help pages (Airbnb), while others offer a direct customer service phone number but the response time is slow and the representative isn’t that helpful (HomeAway). It’s important for all platforms design a straightforward, simple flow to their customer service centers on both the website and the mobile app, as well prepare to scale for their growing customer base. Afterall, there is nothing more frustrating than having expectations for an on-demand service set by the company, and then having trouble using the service when you are ready to give it a try. 
   
2. Excess Capacity. I took away a lot from our meeting with GWU alumnus, Noah Karesh, at Feastly. Although I knew that opening and maintaining a successful restaurant was difficult, I had no idea how small of a profit margin (Noah stated about 2-6%) restaurants have. It was the identification of this inefficiency that got Noah to start the Blind Dog Cafe, a pop-up cafe located within an established bar in Washington DC. The Blind Dog Cafe was able to operate out of an existing space that wasn’t being used except in the evenings. This same thinking, which was identified in Peers Inc. as ‘excess capacity’, ultimately led Noah to create Feastly. Since starting this course, I constantly look to identify where and in what systems within my personal, profession, social, and educational lives there is excess capacity and how I can make more efficient use of it.

   

   Blind Dog Cafe operated in an established bar during 7am-4pm when the space wasn't being used.

3. In the Sharing Economy, fixing something over here might ‘blow something else up’ over there. This was a concept introduced to our class by ‘True Mike’ of Uber. As a project manager, he would work to solve an issue in one area of the platform and that would often ‘blow something up’ or create another problem in another area of platform. This concept made me think about Airbnb’s creation of the Instant Book feature as a way to counter various forms of discrimination by hosts. With Instant Book, guests who have over 10 reviews from a host and a high average rating can instantly book any property without prior approval from the hosts. However, now many hosts, particularly single women, are concerned and upset about losing the ability to screen potentially undesirable guests. This cycle is a big challenge for all of the sharing economy industries and I believe it will continue to happen despite of the best  preemptive measures.