Kellogg Insights article How Gig Workers Push Back Against Their "Digital Boss" covers research by Kellogg School professors on the impacts of gig platform five-star customer satisfaction rating systems. Key quote:
"What these platforms have created, in effect, is a system where the traditional role of the manager has been fully outsourced to customers and their star-based ratings."
The researchers found that gig workers often considered the ratings they received were not fair or didn't accurately reflect the quality of their work.
This, coupled with the significant impact ratings have on gig workers' ability to get work and generate income, has resulted in gig workers devising various ways of gaming the rating systems.
Our favorites include:
- offering a discount for a high rating
- asking trusted customers to spread a single project over multiple contracts, so they had the opportunity to receive multiple high ratings
- canceling a project early if it looks like it will lead to a bad rating - even if means not getting paid
- turning down work from customers that give out bad ratings, a common tactic with rideshare drivers.
Another of our favorites is not in the article. This is asking relatives and friends to post 5-star ratings to boost a gig worker's score.
Gig workers accomplish this by doing a project for a friend or relative for little or no money or reimbursing them. This is commonly done by newcomers on a variety of sites.
Five-star customer satisfaction rating systems are not new. eBay popularized them in the 1990s. And their problems and the game playing that result from them have been known for years.
But despite their problems, because they provide an easy way for customers to provide feedback, their use is rapidly expanding.
This has led to the study authors questioning their use. Key quote:
"One thing our paper highlights is the need to rethink whether this model of outsourcing control to a customer and primarily using a five-star rating system for all types of work contexts actually makes sense," Rahman says."
We tend to agree.
