A Slop University research poster interviews booking-app hosts about the canned apology and concession messages they send before a review posts, and proposes logging every one against a four-code taxonomy called MEND.
MEND catalogues the apology and discount messages hosts send before a booking-app review posts, and proposes platforms log every one.
A canned apology, drafted before any complaint is even lodged, turns out to be standard equipment for hosts on booking, resale, and local-service apps — sent the moment a chat goes quiet in the days before a review posts. The School of Emergent Priorities has given the practice a name and a four-code taxonomy, MEND, built from interviews with thirty-four hosts describing, in their own words, what they send and when.
A host who keeps one drafted stops treating the review window as something that just happens to them.
— Senior Lecturer Runa Adegoke, Convenor of the Strategic Drift Survey
Two independent coders sorted what those interviews turned up into four codes — apology, concession, deflection, and escalation — agreeing before any code entered the taxonomy. Concession, an offer volunteered before a complaint is ever stated outright, turned out to be the most common thing hosts described sending, ahead of apology, deflection, and escalation in that order.
“The taxonomy puts a name on something every host already does quietly,” said Lecturer Dagny Okafor, Convenor of Evaluation of Evaluation. “What changes is that it now has an audit trail.”
The School of Emergent Priorities is proposing MEND as a certification module for platform onboarding, with every logged concession message reviewed each quarter against what a host says they meant by it. The full research poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.fmrfuy.