Why a deadline works

Behaviour Change

Prospective borrowers must complete a lengthy online application to be considered for a loan. Many of them begin the application but don’t finish it. Kiva enlisted the Common Cents Lab, a behavioral research laboratory, to come up with a solution.

Their suggestion: Impose an ending. Give people a specific deadline a few weeks away for completing the application. On one level, this idea seems idiotic. A deadline surely means that some people won’t finish the application in time and therefore will be disqualified for the loan. But Kiva found that when it sent applicants a reminder message with a deadline, compared with a reminder message without a deadline, 24 percent more borrowers completed the application. Likewise, in other studies, people given a hard deadline - a date and time - are more likely to sign up to be organ donors than those for whom the choice is open-ended.

The application has been open for nineteen days. Three reminder emails have said “when you’re ready”. The applicant read each one, mentally filed it and chose a task with a date.

The fourth says: “Complete sections four and five by 3pm on 18 October. Your saved application will close after that. If you need more time, request an extension here.”

At 2.47pm on the 18th, the applicant is halfway through section five. They request the extension. That response tells the service the application is delayed and still active.

Compare this with the retail countdown clock that reaches zero every evening and starts again the next morning with another seventeen minutes. The retailer uses a similar mechanism and removes the honesty. After one false deadline, customers have good reason to doubt every later claim.

A proper deadline specifies the action, date, time zone and consequence. Give people enough time for the task and preserve completed work. High-stakes services need an extension route because illness, disability and ordinary chaos are facts, however inconvenient they are for conversion targets.

The same discipline applies internally. “Strategy by Friday” could mean a draft, a debate or divine revelation. “Choose one of three routes by 3pm Friday using the agreed criteria” tells everyone which decision must be complete.

The extension request arrives. Support grants seven days. The applicant finishes on the second. The three earlier reminders remain in the email data, all opened and all useless.