Here Comes the Collaborative Economy Customer Score

Move over Klout. Move over Fico. The new score is the Collaborative Economy Customer Score.

Today, a ground-breaking deal was struck between Uber and Amex (a few days ago, they received millions of dollars from Fidelity). You can use your Amex loyalty points to pay for rides. When you use your Amex card to pay for transactions, these glean additional two times the loyalty points. But all that’s just table stakes. What is really important is that this pushes aside fuzzy and squishy social media metrics to reveal what really matters: finding out the metrics of behaviors and peer-to-peer trust, backed with factual financial data.

The Collaborative Economy is based on peer-to-peer commerce, which results in increased transactions at a local/mobile level and, likely, with higher trust. The collaboration between Uber and Amex enables the construction of metrics to measure the value of this new type of customer.

The new Collaborative Economy Customer Score provides insights never before combined:

1. Customer ratings. Uber drivers rate passengers we know who the best customers are and who’s not worthy for a late night ride.
2. Provider quality. Like Yelp and eBay, customers can rate the drivers, a social metric. .
3. Local transaction data. Since these transactions are happening at a local level, they provide data regarding traffic routes and times, and can, therefore be used to accurately predict when and where people use Uber’s services.
4. New loyalty data. Since Uber and Amex are sharing their data and rewards, they lock in a powerful new relationship.
5. A new perspective. When combined with traditional financial data like loyalty points, credit scores, and net worth, we can have a powerful new insights into customer behaviors.

Putting all five data points together, it means we can marry traditional financial data with customer and provider ratings, and forecast network behaviors at a local level. The combined insights can help us predict who’s likely to spend more money, with less friction in the transaction –and for top brands that’s important.  This data is likely more accurate than Facebook data as it’s directly tied to actual commerce.

Just some other data points: Our recent research found that people that make over $100k are more likely to participate in this new economy. The CEO of American Express is on record as saying card holders spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” last year on Uber rides. Both of these statements indicate there’s money to be made here.

This is a great example of a “Crowd Company” i.e., how corporations and crowd-based businesses can work together within new business models. Get ready for the Collaborative Economy Customer Score.

Related: My prediction that Uber is the next Amazon, A timeline graphic of all corporate partnerships in the collaborative economy.