Last October, news broke that Couchsurfing CEO Tony Espinosa suddenly stepped down, the latest in a long line of setbacks for the newly private company. In this article, originally published in Bootsnall, I explore how an idea with so much promise lost its foundation – its member-build base – leading to its present day downfall.
When I logged onto Couchsurfing a few months ago in San Francisco, California, and put my couch status as “available,” I expected to be bombarded. That was how it was four years ago, when there were only a fraction of the members on the site. Now, with 7 million members, and, me, hosting in one of the most popular travel destinations in the world? I braced myself.
Days passed. Then a week. Not a single request, Despite 183 positive references and 42 vouches, no one wanted to surf with me. My long-time Couchsurfing friends in the city told me it was the same for them. Sparse requests, and those that came, poorly-written, often from empty profiles. Guests who never showed up, messages that were never responded too.
The site had changed.
I knew the situation was bad. The heart of Couchsurfing – hosting and surfing – was disappearing, the very same city where the site itself has its Corporate headquarters. But once management put the values of venture capital funders over the organic, self-organized traveler base, and reorganized with a top-down, “start-up” mentality, it was, to me inevitable.
An Idea that Could Change the World
What Couchsurfing did was utilize the power of the internet to enable and expand the natural human spirit of openness. It allowed people with similar worldviews to connect over vast distances. Knocking on a stranger’s door turned into sending a couch request. Seeking friendly locals on the streets turned into travelers coming to weekly potlucks or cafe gatherings. The positivity was incredible – in the first few years as a Couchsurfer, I never heard a single negative experience.
Couchsurfing was Globalization done right; sharing culture, ideas, with no or little financial transaction. Uniting over commonalities across cultures, that, itself, could change the world. That’s why I organized my first event, in 2008, as a potluck in a San Francisco park – so that everyone could attend. That was why, then, I accepted every single request, regardless of profile, gender, or age. Because it was the right thing to do, true globalism.
We built Couchsurfing, not management, who, in those days, did little more than provide a basic, buggy, but functional website. We, who believed in the idea, the Couchsurfing spirit of sharing, setup local groups, potlucks, events, and told our friends about this new, radical, powerful social network. It wasn’t perfect; Couchsurfing had its turf battles, conflicts, and, too often, an elitism exhibited by long-time members, but despite that, it was revolutionizing travel. The sky seemed the limit.
Warning Signs
After my yearlong trip around the world – during which the discovery of Couchsurfing, as a host and surfer in Spain, Germany, Hungary, Turkey, Malaysia, Thailand, and Japan, made my trip what it was, I donated $50 to the site to become a verified member, hoping to donate more once I had a steady income.
Five months later, Couchsurfing announced that it was opening a “basecamp” in the Bay Area, a place for volunteers to gather to help develop the site. The local community buzzed – this was a city was some of the brightest people in both technology and non-profit management. There was so much potential to work and build a stronger, better Couchsurfing that could, finally, meet its true potential.
That hope quickly faded, as basecamp became a metaphor for the disconnect between management and members. Tucked away in a house in posh Berkeley, basecamp showed little interest in either the local community, or San Francisco’s vast knowledge network. Techie friends of mine tried to contact basecamp, eager to help fix some glaring holes in code or database structure, but were rebuffed. Basecamp members turned out to be Casey Fenton’s, Couchsurfing founder, inner clique, unaccountable, and, even more amazingly, invisible. They almost never came to San Francisco events, rarely had the community over, and gave little inkling of what was happening inside. Even more shocking – they were getting free rent, a generous per-diem, and even had an in-house chef with a generous budget. My donation was going to fund their vacations in comfortable California digs.
This lack of transparency, sadly, continues to this day. I never donated to Couchsurfing again.
Stealing Couchsurfing from its Members
Couchsurfing announced in 2012 they had failed to receive non-profit charity status and were going to reorganize as a B Corporation. In fact, they already had $7.6 million in funding from venture capitalists, and without any consultation with members, a new CEO, Espinoza, had been hired.
It was a coup. The site we had built and organized was suddenly under the control of a CEO who had never before used Couchsurfing and investors who were interested more in the site’s monetary potential than its power to break barriers between cultures.
Immediately, with money flowing in, member input became irrelevant. The wiki was removed, group pages were transformed, statistics about the site became “private information,” and the Ambassador program was revamped. Couchsurfing was now a start-up. Millions of new members created empty profiles, while thousands of older ones stopped logging in at all. As a “service,” CS even experimented charging customers. The problem was that WE, the members, were what management was trying to sell, the connections, networks, and communities we had built. They couldn’t profit off of our work because money was rarely a motivation. Not surprisingly, Couchsurfing Inc failed to monetize the site, leading to Espinoza’s resignation and the uncertainty the site finds itself in today.
The Future of a Nine-year old “Start-Up”
That CS was having problems was no secret. My article on the Rise and Fall of Couchsurfing struck a cord – getting nearly 7,000 Facebook likes and hundreds of comments. Couchsurfing inc. responded as a Corporation would – with boilerplate PR talking points, copied and pasted to forums all around the web. One staffer, however, sent me a personal message, expressing surprise at my opinions and wondering if we would talk more about my concerns. Was this Couchsurfing finally listening? Was there hope?
We met at a cafe, and, for nearly 45 minutes, I was subject to being talked at about all the great things going on at CSHQ, why my article was wrong, and how all the Couchsurfers she knew (later I saw her profile only had 14 references, almost all from fellow staffers) were happy about the changes. It wasn’t a meeting to understand the frustrations and anger of members, but to convince me that HQ was right, and that we should trust in their opaque vision.
Like my articles, anything I said would not be taken seriously. Members, like me, would have been willing to donate to the site if they could show, with full transparency, how money was being spent, and allow for greater participation in development. Instead, they rebuffed our attempts to help, ignored our concerns, and kept spending money in secret.
Couchsurfing made a deal with the devil – venture capital money – and lost its base. It’s a lesson to any social network that aims to connect people in meaningful ways. Empower your members. Be transparent and collaborative. As my experience in non-profit social activism has shown me, people want to be part of something big, to have ownership. Couchsurfing was built on that collaboration, and once that was taken away, everything we had built came crumbling down.
As any civil engineer knows, a building needs its foundation to stand strong. Likewise Couchsurfing needed its foundation – members – to survive.
You are forgetting to talk about Couchsurfing having been outsourced to Concentrix which is the biggest issue.
Concentrix which is a low service company
has been given the support team but it seems
as well the safety team. I received a message
from CS saying that it was a trial period.
Concentrix is based for example in Belfast
but as well in India.
At the safety team it is always the same
Caytee answering for 8 millions people.
Who is Caytee and where is she based?
If Caytee who pretends to be in United states
and who pretends to be a women, would be for example
a Pakistanese engineer based in India, it is
not a problem for me, but the lack of transparency does not seem legal to me or at least should not be legal.
There is as well a lot engineers on CS and the problem of hacking of CS that I might have observed is something people should be more aware of.
If you are a guest and you use the Wifi of your host, if this host is engineer it is very easy for him to have access to all your passwords, it happened to me and I had the confirmation by other members that they hacked their guests and had access to all their FB account, CS, private mails. It is another danger.
The other problem is the suspension of decent women for feminism activism by CS (Concentrix?) trying to inform other women of certain risks. For example in the Emirates if a woman got raped, she might end up to jail, and in this kind of countries, the CS embassadors should be women in majoritiy or men coming from countries where the women’s rights are more respected. But it is the contrary, all the embassadors are males, some of them having a lot of complains from women, but not being attackable as protected by their positive references. And those embassadors come mostly from countries where women’s rights are in a very fragile position. But they do not accept it, and are not aware of it. If you try on the wall to inform, the messages are immediatly flagged mostly by Pakistanese men or Muslim men sometimes very radical, and deleted and replaced by the wrong information. And the women are suspended by Couchsurfing (Concentrix)?
The negative references are often deleted even if polite.
Beside that it is of course impossible to give a negative reference. A friend of mine was hosted by a guy hugging her half naked all the time, very fat and ugly and stinking, he was walking his dog once a day 10 minutes and the dog was trapped on a balcony 24 on 24 with no toy or cover or anything, not even sure for those 10 minutes, the dust was all over the flat like a haunted house. She did not intend to live a negative reference but when the guy started to harrass her and wrote him a negative reference that she would erase when he would stop, so the guy immediatly reacted by saying that the gave her money, which was totally wrong but how can you prove it???
If you leave a negative reference to a man he will react by saying that you were half naked in front of him, asking for money, or stealing money. And the genius of diffamation is that there is always a doubt.
So it is nearly impossible to give a negative reference.
Beside that when women in countries where women rights are an issue like being jailed in case of rape, and that they try to create a group women hosting women, the harrassement from men, insults, agressivity, hacking is a not stop problem, and at the end it can happen that the woman who created the group would be suspended for feminism activism. You can contact on this matter a film company providenceprod at yahoo.fr trying to regroup all the complains from women.
The good news is that in case of a collective case from women against CS the case might be very easy now to be won as so many mistakes and proves against CS.
For the transparency of the safety team on CS and somewhere else this link could be fullfilled by an American citizen and given on this site and other sites as non American I cannot start it.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/
https://www.facebook.com/concentrix.india?ref=ts&fref=ts before the team of Concentrix India was on the page and you could see a majority of men. Now it is a woman looking very European.
I received a letter from CS telling me that the SAFETY TEAM had been given to Concentrix as a trial period.
It seemed obvious to me that in the Middle Est Concentrix India was in charge and not Concentrix Belfast but providenceprod is opening an enquiry about this to find proves from workers at Concentrix India.
Customer Service Representative (Couchsurfing) – Full Time/Permanent – DayshiftSalary: On Application Company: http://www.adverts.ie/jobs/concentrix/Location: Belfast City Centre, AntrimAd Views: 491http://www.adverts.ie/reportad.php?ids=3161510&referer=/jobs/concentrix/customer-service-representative-couchsurfing-full-time-permanent-dayshift/3161510Viewing 1 of 1 photo
Concentrix Jobs: Customer Service Representative (Couchsurfing) – Full Time/Permanent – DayshiftDescription:Industry:http://www.adverts.ie/jobs/call-centre-customer-service/303304
http://www.adverts.ie/jobs/media-new-media/303319
http://www.adverts.ie/jobs/travel-tourism/303336Employment Type:Permanent Full TimeSalary:On Application
Our people are the future of our business which is why we invest time in recruiting the right people.
Established in 2004, Couchsurfing is a global community of 6 million people in more than 100,000 cities who share their life, their world, their journey. Couchsurfing connects travellers with a global network of people willing to share in profound and meaningful ways, making travel a truly social experience.
Our employees are passionate about Concentrix’s partnership with Couchsurfing, their role and the overall success of the company. Our people embrace the Concentrix and Couchsurfing cultures to provide the highest levels of customer service possible.
Working at Couchsurfing should be an enjoyable experience. Have fun with it. Be kind to our members and help them travel more easily and safer.
Responsibilities:
Provides a warm, friendly and personal inbound customer service to the member community through inbound voice and email
Takes the opportunity to ‘Shine’ through every interaction by showing a lively interest in customers, having a natural approach in communication, becoming a local expert and being an advocate for the brand.
Leads the team in providing professional expertise and embracing the client brand in every interaction with the customer making it an individual experience.
Adherence to agreed processes, service level agreements and driving and exceeding individual and team targets.
Proactively seeks ways to improve the customer experience through each interaction
Takes ownership to enhance own learning to ensure sufficient knowledge to excel in the role.
Multitasks and adapts to a fast paced environment.
Continuously searches for improved ways of responding to customer needs through all contact channels.
Proactively seeks feedback on ways to improve individual and team performance.
SKILLS
Essential Criteria:
Fluency in written and spoken English
Customer Focus – 6 -12 months experience in telephone or face to face customer service, building relationships with the customer. Behaviour – all agents are expected to conduct themselves in a friendly and pleasant manner in the office and in their external communications. If there is something preventing an agent from behaving in the expected manner; they should inform their supervisor what is affecting their conduct.
Showing Empathy – being able to place yourself in the role of the person requesting assistance is a key success factor for our agents. Our members are generally caring people who enjoy meeting and travelling with others; they respond best to like-minded people. The ability to pick up on the emotions of the person on the other end of the phone or email conversation and react appropriately is a necessary skill for all of our agents.
Working with Others – Demonstrates experience of working in a team based environment supporting the team in achieving the highest quality standards and takes an active role in generating team morale
Planning & Organising – Ability to multitask on various contact channels to achieve personal and team targets. Plans and prioritises workload in accordance with contact volumes
Effective Communication – Clear verbal and written communication is needed between agents and our members and between agents and the rest of the company. Professional business writing skills are a prerequisite for employment. Good grammar, punctuation and spelling is expected in all messages to our members.
Specialist Expertise – High school diploma or equivalent. Judgement – making good decisions is part of everyday life for our agents. Our agents need to be able to determine what is and what is not within company policy and take necessary actions. We want a lively community of Couchsurfers to enjoy our website. At times this means politely correcting member behaviours. The balance between requesting member compliance and coming off as harsh will be difficult if the agent does not exercise sound decision making skills.
Resilience – Demonstrates resilience and ability to work on own initiative
Problem Solving – Demonstrates problem solving and shares best practice with the overall customer experience, focusing on customer engagement
Responsibility for Results – Demonstrates ownership and accountability to achieve deadlines and targets, takes ownership to increase knowledge of the brand.
Hours: Monday-Friday 8am-5pm
BENEFITS:
Concentrix provides a bright, modern and exciting place to work with excellent staff facilities
The opportunity to travel and work abroad in a multi-lingual environment
Performance Related Pay
Eye Care Provision
Cycle to Work Scheme
Childcare Vouchers
Annual Reward & Recognition Ceremony
Free cakes and fruit on a Friday!
28 days annual leave (rising after 2 years)
Stakeholder Pension Scheme
Team and Concentrix events
Short link: http://www.adverts.ie/3161510
Couchsurfing is now Concentrix
Concentrix negative reviews by former employees all over the net.
Worst place everCoach (Former Employee), Belfast – June 24, 2014Pros: some great people, brilliant clientCons: everything elseAfter my first day I already wanted to quit, worst place to work, ever. Salary is ridiculous, you have to bag for everything, even for an answer from your manager, management is completely incompetent. If you make the smallest mistake, you are treated like a mass murderer. If you are doing your job right, you are ignored and treated as a child. No rewards, no recognition, no nothing. Only good for those who just arrived to Belfast, and need to make the living as long as they are searching for a new job. –
Bad management/ No advancement opportunityAccount Executive (Former Employee), Greenville, SC – June 23, 2014Pros: good earningsConcentrix is a company that is in need of management skills. They do not reward employees for over achievment. The more you earn at Concentrix the better the chances are that you will be let go.
Unfortunately I was stuck there for a whileCommunity Manager (Former Employee), Belfast – July 10, 2014Avoid, They suck your blood for the less money they could pay you.
Not the best place to work, very unpleasant staff and a substantial amount of conflict.
Being harassed by Managers, sick management is horrible, been to work sick so many times because I was scared to get an investigation, schedules and shift rotas are a mess, business management doesn’t care about agents, extremely high amount of work while being understaffed for months, unreasonably controlled, wouldn’t recommend to anyone to start working there!