Knowing a few people who have worked in or had hospitality businesses, I think we are witnessing a few different things.

Higher Expectations Firstly, inflation aside, it’s my belief that people’s expectations have actually increased. I have seen it in family and friends. You might not have witnessed this yourself since 2020, but when going to a hotel or a restaurant, people are expecting higher levels of service than they are actually paying for. The general public is getting very aggravated (at least in the West) at not receiving perfection.

What used to be a pub lunch, people are now thinking they are fine dining. You can see it in TripAdvisor ratings alone in Europe. Expectations have increased, during times that quality is decreasing. I’m really not sure what’s triggered this, but this is compounded by the fact that many in the general public have a short fuse and are more willing to voice this. For reasons we’re all probably very aware, no longer feeling they are staying ahead.

Inflation / shrinkflation Secondly, inflation is clearly exacerbating this. As places try to make dishes smaller or inferior quality. If you’re a regular, you’ve likely seen prices increase 15-20% and if you haven’t, you’ve witnessed shrinkflation. And the general public will quite often believe the businesses are the greedy ones, without considering the increased costs for all businesses of late. One end result is then increased automation, either in place, or for online services like helpdesks. To prevent needing to sacrifice the product quality itself. But it’s shrinkflation in services.

Automation That is a clear trend, removing people from the cost during customer interactions. We have witnessed it with more ‘self-service’ restaurants, where you order at the bar or via QR and go and collect it via a beeper. I also witnessed in some cities, companies sharing the same staff. i.e. you have multiple huts or markets where you can order different cuisines from different establishments and you have general staff to collect (or perhaps deliver) your orders. It’s a different concept (but as inferior it is as a service) it is a pretty decent experience being able to order different foods from different places, and receive it at the same time when dining with friends/family. Something that wasn’t all too common in years prior. In general, this caters to greater personalisation.

Tip Culture In the U.S. I’ve heard plenty of examples of tip culture getting out of hand, in spite of reduced levels of service. But I also witnessed this on card terminals in Europe.

I’d be curious to hear from someone working in that industry there. Is it because the opportunities for receiving tips and building personable experiences is reduced or because there is a greater need to receive tips in order to stay ahead of inflation financially?

Generally I think that any businesses recognising and acknowledging loyalty, and ones that are willing to invest time getting to know their customers are worth sticking with. Especially when it’s all too easy to put all customer interaction behind a queuing system.

Recognising Loyalty I had an experience a few months ago, where on a call with American Express, the lady took a few moments to wish to thank me for having used their services for 9 years. It was such a simple thing to draw my attention to, they will always have account creation dates on customer profiles, but it really did have an impact. Even if I wanted to debank myself as many around these woods would suggest I do, Amex may be one of the last standing for that simple gesture. In spite of their horrific merchant fees.

Showing Empathy One other thing I have witnessed are those businesses that allow customers to talk, share their frustration and being listened to. One thing I heard was during 2020, an older lady ringing a local business and asking some random unrelated questions, but proceeding to tell the person in the business all about her life and family. She was ringing simply for a chat, because of feeling lonely and isolated. And this person recognised that and kept her on the phone for 10 minutes, despite the priorities of the business at that time.

Personalisation When logging-in (especially for the first time), asking people what their interests are. So as to be able to suggest the top rated posts in the last 90 days from those categories. This to me is important, as SN currently only has ephemeral content. If you’re not logging in frequently, or don’t read the newsletter, we all know you’ll miss content. Particularly given search, as I’m sure the team will admit, is still not quite there yet.

New Profiles / Bios One thing I love about the ‘recent’ section is quite often seeing new profiles being created and people welcoming the new users. If we could encourage more people to write a bit more about their area of interest, I feel like it would lead to even more natural conversations, improve the quality of welcomes, stickiness and early ‘aha’ moments, as they receive their first zaps.

It’s great that these new profiles ARE visible, but during the next upcoming wave of new users, it’s going to feel an awful lot like Facebook ‘happy birthday’ messages… too generic and absent of meaning.

More Community Features Currently we’re not really ‘following’ people but quality content. It would be great if the trust graph would show us which are our most trusted contacts on SN, and to indicate to us if someone we are aligned with has upvoted or commented on some content.

Lightning Torch How do we get people to realise that the more you engage & zap on StackerNews, the more you will receive? I’m not sure even more seasoned visitors understand this.

I’m wondering if we could try and participate in some sort of Zap Rodeo (or whatever we want to call it). For that to display a random engaged user to send the sats to. If say 10 users pass-on the sats and get their cowboy hat, the sats get boomeranged back to the original user’s account. If it sounds too gimmicky and forced, that’s not the intention. In general I just think we can do more to get newbies zapping & funding their accounts, rather than just using the account as a glorified rss feed. Which will inevitably lead to periods of disengagement.