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What Your Brand Can Learn from Airbnb's Customer Service Crisis
The tech and startup media have been swarming with the story of EJ, a San Francisco Airbnb user who had her home completely ransacked and her identity essentially stolen by a recent guest.
 EJ posted a blog entry on June 29 recounting the horrific details of her situation after renting her home for a week to a visitor through Airbnb, a Silicon Valley startup that connects private home owners who have spare rooms or short-term vacancies with travelers looking for homestay lodging.
It was another month before national media picked up her story, immediately following word of Airbnb’s recent round of $112M funding, with coverage initially appearing on Gawker, Business Insider, Hacker News, TechCrunch and Beta Beat – closely followed by USA Today, Financial Times, SF Gate, and countless others. To be frank, the situation makes for a compelling news story – a combination of a homeowner’s worst nightmare, and a tale of a promising startup faced with its first serious customer service conundrum.
In the month in between the initial blog post from EJ and the media frenzy that followed, Airbnb customer service was working with the homeowner to help her recover emotionally and financially and with the San Francisco Police Department to track down the criminals. They acknowledged to EJ that this was the first time in their history of more than two million rentals that this had happened. But the media started to speculate – where was Airbnb’s public acknowledgment of this situation?
That all came to a halt yesterday when Airbnb went on the record on their blog with a letter from CEO Brian Chesky who apologized for the incident and acknowledged that “we really screwed things up.” He openly said they should have “responded faster, communicated more sensitively, and taken more decisive action to make sure she felt safe and secure.”
Additionally, Airbnb has come out with a number of new policies and procedures to make sure nothing like this ever happens again, and if it does, that the homeowner is protected:
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Airbnb is implementing a $50,000 guarantee to protect the property of hosts from damage by guests
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The company is launching a new safety section of their website, featuring a 24-hour customer hotline
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Airbnb has doubled its customer support team in the month since this incident
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They’ve also added safety tips, verified profiles and customized trust settings to their website to further enhance credibility for users
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Airbnb has also been using Twitter for nothing but responding directly to customers who have concerns and questions
For Airbnb, this is truly a lesson in crisis management – the company’s “Tylenol moment” as one Forbes blogger put it – and there are a number of lessons that can be gleaned from this situation.
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Don’t wait to apologize. Airbnb was likely holding off on going public with an apology because they were worried about how it would affect their round of funding. Had they just acknowledged the situation, apologized outright, and mentioned they were taking steps to ensure this wouldn’t happen again – they probably could have avoided the media frenzy.
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Listen to the needs of your customer community. As an Airbnb user myself, I’ve accepted the fact that there are risks involved with participating in a homestay – but have always wondered why the site didn’t offer any advice on how to stay safe, tips for homeowners, or verification on the legitimacy of a rental posting. While it took a shocking incident to make it happen, this is a great example of a company truly listening to the needs of its community and going above and beyond to be doubly sure nothing like this happens again.
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Don’t disregard any of your customer’s stories. This is also a perfect example of what just one unsettling story can do to the reputation of a brand – even with millions of other successful transactions to date. While people appreciate the good, they are going to remember the bad.
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Above all, communicate with transparency, honesty and humility. Despite the length of time it took for Airbnb to apologize, once they did communicate, it was in the most humble and honest way possible. It was evident in the CEO’s letter that the company was truly concerned for the homeowner and wanted to make every effort to be sure their other customers still feel safe using their service. By saying outright “We messed up and we’re sorry,” they truly humanized their brand – something that probably saved them from losing a lot of customers.
-- by Amber Rinehard, Global Community Manager, Text 100
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