The Tyranny of the Five-Star Rating System
THE LEDE
The process for booking a flight online is relatively easy. The process is automated and a big leap forward from the old days. (Remember waiting in line at the gate for a sticker that indicated your seat?) I have few complaints.
But the airlines sure want to hear from me anyway.
You’re then sent an email asking how your web experience was. And after the flight, another email appears asking how your travel went. Later, you’ll get an email asking how the overall customer service was. It doesn't end. They want a five-star review for every aspect of their work.
I’m a traveler, not an airline industry consultant.
When you go to websites and use apps, you’re often prompted to leave a rating or take a survey. Ratings drive the social web. Sites like Amazon, Google and Yelp ask you to rate a product or business. You’ll get a prompt when you first visit the site, you might get one while you’re in the middle of using an app (“Are you enjoying this app? Please leave a review!”), and another prompt when you check out.
That’s just getting started.
I’ve seen surveys asking for “Just 10 minutes” that take far longer. And if you don’t respond to the email, you’ll get another one reminding you they are still waiting for a review. It’s a bad system, and it doesn’t encourage honesty.
Very little in life is five-star quality. But we’re hounded by car dealers to give them top ratings when we buy from them. The five-star system has an inherent flaw: even if you really like something and give it four stars, that’s a B-. Five stars is an A+. There is a lot of room to measure success between 80% and 100%.
If you look at a normal distribution curve, it looks like a hill. If the reviews were honest and people thought harder about how many stars a given service deserves, then most of the reviews should be in the middle (say, three out of five stars.) But there is no such thing online as subtlety. Apps are given reviews that are either five stars or one star.
Go to an app store, and you’ll see a review “curve” like this:
See that? Nearly everyone thinks the product is either perfect or terrible. How is this information useful?
I purchased a product via Amazon and left a three-star review. I thought the product was good, but just not for me. Within a day of posting my review, the company (CRVFT) reached out and offered a full refund. That’s great customer service. There is value in reviews, but I opted-in to leave mine. The company clearly monitors its reviews and stands by its product. I am much more likely now to try their other offerings.
This is the best way to get feedback. You wait for someone to opt in. You take their review seriously (assuming it’s a serious review) and act accordingly. I understand the desire for data, but when there’s no way to give, say, an A- or B+ to a product, the system is meaningless.
NEWS AND NOTES
SUPER BOWL ADS DRAW BUZZ: This year’s Super Bowl ads seemed to be an impressive bunch, with many drawing online buzz. Among the most memorable were ads for Sam Adams (“Your Cousin … From Boston”), Dunkin’ (Starring Ben Affleck), and whatever the heck the movie “Cocaine Bear” is.
The most watched ad on YouTube was Booking.com’s spot with Melissa McCarthy:
FOX, which aired the game, charged between $6 million and $7 million for a 30-second spot. Which ads did you like? Let me know.
KC STAR ALREADY SELLING SUPER BOWL SOUVENIRS: The Kansas City Star wasted no time in putting Chiefs’ Super Bowl merchandise on sale in an online store. You can, of course, buy a copy of the front page of the paper from the day after the win:
That’s where most newspapers stop on occasions like this. But the Star was ready and has an assortment of souvenirs from a replica of the official game coin to commemorative books. With newspapers in dire need of revenue, this is a terrific way to bring in some money and give the fans what they want.
PEACOCK TO END FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS TO XFINITY CUSTOMERS: Peacock, NBC’s streaming service, is about to cost money for everyone according to Variety. Just a couple of weeks ago, it ended its free, ad-sponsored tier. Now, Xfinity subscribers are next on the chopping block. They have been getting Peacock Premium for free since its 2020 launch. Peacock will end the free service on June 26th. Xfinity users will get some as-yet-unannounced discount rate - if you consider paying for something you had for free a discount. The AV Club notes that Peacock has 20 million subscribers, but could lose $3 billion this year. Call me crazy, but I’m not sure alienating its entire audience will improve Peacock’s standing.
APPLE WATCH’S CRASH ALERTS WORK “TOO WELL” FOR SKIIERS: One of the desirable features of the Apple Watch is its crash detection system. It can tell when you’re in a car crash and will call for help. However, it seems the Apple Watch can’t tell if you’ve been in a car accident — or if you’ve just taken a spill on the slopes. The Boston Globe reports fallen skiers have been responsible for 20 calls to emergency services just at one Maine ski area so far this year.
The good news is that the spills haven’t inconvenienced EMTs too much. When your watch sends a crash alert, emergency services calls you to ensure you’re OK. Still, anything that unnecessarily adds to the 911 load needs to be improved.
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LINKS AND LIKES
YOUTUBE NABS FREAKONOMICS: The “Freakonomics” family of podcasts will soon expand their home on YouTube. The plain-English economy explainer and its four total podcasts have their own YouTube channel, and will be expanding to video programming. A press release announced the deal:
The Freakonomics Radio Network YouTube Channel now includes all new podcast episodes each week, as well as hundreds of episodes each week, as well as hundreds of episodes from the network’s archives. The network also plans to experiment with short-form video, animation, and long-form video on the channel.
In addition to its flagship podcast, the Freakonomics Radio Network includes “Freakonomics, M.D.,” “No Stupid Questions,” and “The Economics of Everyday Things.” You can still find those shows on the major podcast sites.
(For more background: Read about the “Freakonomics” empire which started with a book and has expanded into a multimedia brand.)
ONLINE AD QUALITY GETTING WORSE: Have you noticed a change in the quality of ads on social media sites? Major brands have been pulling back their ads from social media, according to The New York Times. A big reason? The controversy and abuse found on social media is not something, say, Coca-Cola wants to be a part of. Writes The Times:
Recent ads on Twitter, as described by users, have made the platform feel like a tabloid magazine … There were ads for T-shirts printed with a horse’s head superimposed on a heartbeat line, served to someone who does not ride horses nor particularly like them. Also: (there are) fraudulent ads.
Here’s a misleading ad from Instagram:
Looks legit, right? There must only be one “Wordle” app, right? By my count, there are at least a dozen knockoffs in the Apple App Store right now. And it’s cheap to promote them.
The price of advertising on social media platforms has dropped, leaving an opening for shady businesses to hawk their (often non-existent) wares. I find this is especially a problem on Facebook and Instagram, which run ads that are clearly fraudulent.
TOP PODCASTS THIS WEEK: Here are this week’s leading podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
APPLE
SPOTIFY
It’s interesting how different the audience’s taste is between Apple and Spotify. Apple’s crowd seems to like more news-based podcasts, whereas Spotify’s listeners are a bit more eclectic.
REMOTE NOTES/LinkedIn Edition
Newsletter #41
Founder/Writer: Steve Safran
Editor: John Cockrell
Copyright 2023
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