Previously I wrote about the awesome job TripAdvisor does in designing a motivational experience for its users. In particular, I claimed that TripAdvisor is outstanding at fostering a sense of competence. They provide tons of feedback about how many reviews you’ve written, how they break out into categories, who’s reading and liking them, and how you can achieve increasingly greater tiers of reviewer glory on their platform. A TripAdvisor reviewer always knows what he or she has accomplished and how to do the next bit more.
TripAdvisor is also ace at the hot trigger game; they frequently email me that a review has been liked or published or read, and invite me to click through to see what one.
Recently I received a monthly summary report email from them that I thought was an excellent example of ongoing competence and relatedness support:
The competence support almost speaks for itself–I have a clear summary of the reviews I’ve written, the people who have read them, which ones were most successful, and my point accumulation through the site’s reviewer ranking program. The relatedness support in this email was new to me as a TripAdvisor reviewer. Suddenly I am able to see what types of people I’m “connecting” with via my writing worldwide, and that there are almost 50,000 of them!
Usually I think ongoing emails from any vendor are a pain, and I try to unsubscribe post-haste. But not TripAdvisor; their emails motivate me to continue to use their service. These guys are motivational whizzes.