Managing Metrics To Protect Your Status And Your Assets
How success often requires balancing conflicting decisions
In my view, there are two sides to being successful as a Turo host.
On the one one hand, your success on the Turo platform is determined by a set of metrics that eventually earn you the status of Power Host and/or All Star host. There are certain perks and benefits that come with each of those statuses and both “clubs” are good to be a part of.
On the other hand, your success as a carshare host is determined by your business’s balance sheet and monthly profit and loss statement. In other words, your monthly profit, and the sustained value of your assets versus liabilities are important indicators of how well you’re actually doing.
Over time in this business you’re going to find yourself having to make decisions to protect one of these two areas of success that risks the other and managing your business will be a tightrope walk between the two.
These are the metrics Turo uses to determine your success in their eyes.
Every host should strive to become a Power Host ($9,000+ in earnings per quarter) and an All-Star host as there are valuable benefits that come with each. Here are the performance metrics you need to maintain to be an All-Star.
Response Rate - 95%
This is the percentage of trip requests that you respond to with a message in the app messaging. If you have instant booking turned on this will always be 100%. If you have it turned off, and fail to message the guest back and the request expires, this metric will take a hit.
Acceptance Rate - 90%
This is the number of trip requests that you approve and actually get booked. Again, if you have instant booking turned on this will be 100%.
Commitment Rate - 95%
These are the trips that you accept, and do not cancel. Every trip that you cancel will impact this score.
Five Star Ratings - 90%
This one is self-explanatory. You need to get nine 5-star reviews out of every ten completed trips to maintain this metric.
Completed Trips - 10
This is simply the number of trips you have to complete to qualify for All-Star status if the other metrics are met. In my view, this number is meaningless and it really should be much higher.
As a new host, it’s pretty easy to hit these numbers and achieve All-Star status quickly. But your’e a new host. You likely haven’t experienced two very important things that will challenge how you approach managing these metrics.
Bad Trips
Unfortunately this will eventually happen to you. You’ll have your first guest from hell, and others will follow, and you’ll begin to wonder if things like instant booking and going through with trips that seem to get off to a bad start are worth it. And you’ll eventually get your first negative review from someone, simply out of retaliation for a damage claim or a reimbursement.
Gut Check
After you’ve had some bad trips, you’re going to develop a sixth-sense, allowing you to be able to determine how well, or how badly a trip may go. Your gut will begin to guide you, based on past experience, and it will often be right.
Your gut will guide you to make decisions that threaten your metrics.
This is why Turo gives us some wiggle room in the metrics. They know that not every guest is a 5-star guest and we’re going to have to make some difficult decisions to protect our assets and profitability. After your experiences and sixth-sense have turned your into a veteran host you’re likely to begin making some different decisions.
Turning Off Instant Booking
This is going to allow you to screen your trip requests, read the ratings and reviews of the guest before accepting, and begin hosting the ones who are most likely to be 5-star guests. Of course this will also mean your acceptance rate falls because you’re going to be declining some trips. Once you get close to the 90% threshold, you’ll need to monitor your decisions closely. There are two important things to understand about this:
First, if you turn off instant booking, you still need to send a message to the person requesting the trip as quickly as possible to maintain your response rate. Automating a message to be sent immediately upon trip request will accomplish this for you and you can do this with a service like Streetsmarts (Free 2-month Trial Here).
Second, when you get multiple requests and you have a “stack” to choose from, once you accept the most favorable one, the others will automatically cancel and this will NOT negatively affect your acceptance rate.
Cancelling Booked Trips
Sometimes there are going to be red flags that appear once a trip is booked that concern you and, often, following your gut and cancelling the trip is the right thing to do. If you are an All-Star host, the cancellation fees are waived, but an automated cancellation review will show up in your reviews.
There are times when this is a smart move to protect your assets, but you should not do this carelessly as your metrics, reputation, and placement in search listings will eventually be impacted.
Deciding Between Money and Stars
When it comes to reimbursements, this is where your ratings, and profit are on either side of the tightrope. Sometimes a guest will give you a lower rating after you submit a legitimate reimbursement, perhaps 4 stars instead of 5. And this will likely not qualify as retaliatory for possible removal, especially if they don’t write a narrative and just hit the stars.
There will be times that you’ll have to ask yourself if that $3 fuel replacement with $10 inconvenience fee is worth a hit to your ratings and not earning a good, returning guest just because the fuel needle is a tick below full. There will be other times when you absolutely should charge the maximum cleaning fee for a trashed vehicle needing professional detailing, knowing that your reviews may take a hit.
You’re eventually going to experience all of the above sooner or later.
As long as you know how to effectively manage a monthly profit and loss statement, have a professional work ethic, an outstanding approach to customer service, and a healthy level of common sense, you’ll learn how to balance all of these metrics and factors well to be financially successful, and one of the top hosts on the Turo platform at the same time.