Built Superhost.

Transcript context

…ested him for a complete what to feel feature, a coupon. Like he was about to pay something like 120 euro and suddenly you get 15% discount because Edge found out that there is a coupon you can apply. And you just get 15% discount. That's for me exceeding expectation because I was not even asking for a coupon. I was about to pay the 120 euro anyway. So that also by itself creates a kind of surprise. So these are the three pillars. We need to play with them. We don't have to do them all at the same time. But every time we bring the product, we need to think about how can we reduce friction? How can we anticipate our user's need? And how can we... like create that exceed expectation part of the products. And I really wanted to make this clear because sometimes people think about the light as the confetti or, I mean, the other day I was giving a workshop and someone showed me like, hey, if you shake the phone, you have snowflake falling. Yes. Yes. Yeah, I mean, why not? But that's not the light I talk about. It has to come with a value. It has to come with a concrete reason. And I call this like the confetti effect. Like people think about confetti as a way of delighting their users, but if it doesn't bring any value, then... Don't do it. And by the way, I'm not here to say don't do confetti. I mean, why not? Confetti could come with value and could bring some joy. And the best example is on Airbnb, maybe the one that you're most familiar with. Like I'm an Airbnb user, both as a host, but also as a guest. And as a host, I have a goal, which is to make sure that I always keep my super hosts back till like I love that. And of course, it allows me to provide the best experience for my guests. And you know how it works. Like every three months, Airbnb reassess whether you want to, you can remain a super host or not. But you know what happens? Like every three months, if you're renewed as a super host, and when you open the app, the app turns into confetti, like just to celebrate that moment with you. And that kind of moment is like, why not? Because I feel like Airbnb is recognizing my effort and celebrating that small moment with me. So it's about making sure you understand the value of your users and making sure that you're providing a solution that just brings them joy and surprises. The Superhost example is actually really interesting because I built the Superhost program. That was one of my projects at Airbnb, me and my team. And interestingly, it came from not from like, here's a metric we need to move. Let's build Superhost. It instead came from this guy, Chip Connelly, who was just on the podcast, who was a longtime hotelier. And he's just like, you need a way to differentiate status and levels of quality. And this is one way to do it. And there's a lot of actually fear on the product team that this is going to take search conversion. People will be distracted by this thing. Interestingly, it made hosts really happy like you, just like I want to be Superhost. I don't know why, but I want to be Superhost. It didn't actually move any metrics, which is interesting. It might have changed over the years, but it was an interesting contrarian project that feels like, how could you not have it? But it didn't really move any metrics, which always surprised us, but maybe it did later. Anyway, I really love this very simple way of thinking about delight. And I think you're almost underselling what this framework is helping people with, which is just how to build great product experiences. So there's this joy plus surprise piece, which is just the emotional component. You'll feel delighted if there's joy and surprise. And then this three piece, more, I don't know, even practical way of thinking about it, removing friction, anticipating needs, exceeding expectations. Like this is how to build great experiences. And part of that is being delighted by it. Part of it is just, this is a great experience. I think a big elephant in the room with this question is B2B versus B2C. And just like, when is this not, worth your time. I imagine companies like Workday and SAP and ServiceNow and all these Salesforce that did really well, very undelightful. The way I think about this is when it's like a greenfield market and there's nothing amazing yet, you don't need to make it as great of an experience as long as it's solving a real big pain point. But as the market gets more competitive, Linear is a good example here, the way you can stand out is make it a much better experience make it much more delightful um thoughts yeah thanks for bringing this b2b versus b2c thing because it comes a lot and every time i talk about the light people might connect that to the b2c world and honestly for me like as long as there are human using the product at the end of the day then they need their emotion to be honored so So, for example, when I actually started this project of the light, I realized that most of my career has been mostly close to the B2C work. Yes, like I've been working on Skype, Spotify, Google Meet, Google Chrome. So I quickly realized that I needed to interview people from the B2B space so that I get the sense of what's the light in their space. So I interviewed people from like GitHub or Atlassian or Snowflake. I mean, I really wanted to get the variety of industry and type of industries. And what I realized, which is probably not a surprise, is that they do value emotional connection in a way or another. I mean, it's not something new. They just do it in a different way. So, for example, for Dropbox, they do have a product principle called Cupcake. For Snowflake, they have something called Superhero. I mean, the names could vary, but the meaning is exactly the same. I mean, it's all about bringing joy to the customers. So I came up with this concept of B2H, which is business to human. For me, it's really important to take into consideration human emotion while building the product, whether in a B2B space or a B2C space. And by the way, exactly as you said, since people are so much exposed to B2C examples, I mean, the expectations are getting higher. And we are expecting also from B2B products to become more human and to feel more human. So actually, when I wrote this book, I defined what I call humanization as a type of delighter. I mean, I listed a couple of delighters and humanization is one of them. And I even said it's my favorite. It's about asking the following question. If my product was a human, how would the experience would be better? Just think about it that way. So for example, when I worked for Google Meet, and I actually joined Google Meet right when pandemic happened, like 2020. And we had, of course, to work on those challenges of like how people are taking these new ways of working from home. So instead of comparing Google Meet to Zoom or Teams or whatever other video conferencing tool, do you know what did we compare Google Meet to?…

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